• SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    In the US at least, the women’s restrooms used to say “colored”

    The reason we still have gendered bathrooms is because we didn’t change building codes for bathrooms and water fountains after segregation.

    • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      I mean…you are more right than you think.

      Bathroom fixture manufacturers created a massive marketing/propaganda campaign around the idea of Hygiene, and the idea that its better for your health and safety, simply because they wanted to sell more fixtures…and the way to do that was to get more houses built with indoor plumbing facilities, because in the era before this… a solid chunk of the population still used outhouses, and bathed in portable tubs they filled with water heated up one pot at a time on a stove once every few weeks… if that. and because filling the tub was so much work, the whole family washed in it, without changing the water… usually the husband first, then the mother, then the kids in order of age got to bath in the bouillabaisse of mom and dads filth.

      You’d be gobsmacked how many things like that are the result of marketing.

      Milk being essential for bone health? Another marketing gimmick, from the dairy industry.

      Diamonds are essential for proposals/weddings? Another marketing gimmick, from the diamond cartels.

      and more.

      • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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        7 hours ago

        I knew about diamonds and I believe about milk.

        But you can pry indoor plumbing and hot water heaters from my cold dead hands. Sometimes the marketing works because it’s a good idea lol

      • turtlesareneat@discuss.online
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        15 hours ago

        Deodorant was first marketed to immigrants and that’s how it took hold. People mildly-to-seriously stank for all of human history and it just was, perfumes have always been a market too. But then someone was like “but what if we made these folks feel even more ostracized to sell them a solution”

        And this began the “your body is fucking disgusting” cycle that now encourages us to literally coat ourselves head-to-toe in (eczema to cancer causing) chemical deodorants. Great.

        • ℛ𝒶𝓋ℯ𝓃@pawb.social
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          7 hours ago

          Okay but like, the human body does in fact suck in many ways, one of those being that we’re naturally filthy as fuck.

          It’s worth noting that the above is, of course, an opinion. I find human stench repulsive. Many do. Some don’t. But regardless, I don’t think less of a person or culture for not using or having access to the typical hot water + exfoliating + soap + deodorant + scent + moisturizer method that western culture holds so dear. I couldn’t do without it. And yes I’m slightly grossed out as a natural reaction when people don’t use it. But I don’t think "that uncultured savage pig doesn’t bathe* in that situation, that would just be horrible. Unfortunately many do think that way, and I agree that that kind of hostile, accusatory thinking is likely partially due to western marketing.

          I personally am a transhumanist in philosophy. I think that if we can make a way to make the human body some radiant vessel that would have been worshipped as a goddess across most of human history, that such an endeavor is worth while. But many look down on others when such standards become normalized. That is the key difference: another main tenant of transhuman philosophy is the idea of bodily autonomy. You inhabit the vessel you want, whether bathed or not.

          And I agree that marketing has, in fact, been instrumental in pushing that “your body is fucking disgusting” idea onto others so heavily. Capitalism capitalizes best on making people feel lower or less important without a product.

        • silasmariner@programming.dev
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          15 hours ago

          Deodorant and I have never really spent much time together - perhaps because I live in a mild climate and don’t do much sports - but god damn do I love a hot shower.

  • ceoofanarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 day ago

    This is why i don’t understand why bathroom companies aren’t creating more genders in order to create more bathrooms.

    • Zkuld@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      But they have to be careful because otherwise people might realize it’s cheaper and easier to just label bathrooms with “sitting” and “sitting+standing”.

  • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    When I was in college, it was funny how the engineering building only had one restroom per floor - they were all mens until like the 70’s, cuz wommin can’t be engineers of course.

  • Carrot@lemmy.today
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    1 day ago

    I’m all for all-gender bathrooms, but there MUST be at least two public bathrooms at any given spot. I can’t tell you how uncomfortable it is to take a first date to a museum, both need to use the bathroom, and walk into the single, silent, all-gender bathroom, and try to pretend you can’t hear each other doing your business. I assume gay folks have been struggling with this since the beginning, but y’all should have said something

  • solrize@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    It’s sort of the other way. Buildings in the southern US before the 1960s, besides having gendered bathrooms, also had separate bathrooms for white and black people. So 4 kinds of bathrooms. The Pentagon today is apparently a bathroom user’s paradise, because it was built in the 1940s with enough bathroom capacity for all its users even having the 4 kinds of bathrooms. Then after desegregation, its bathrooms got consolidated into just 2 kinds (by gender). So it now has 2x more bathroom capacity per person than newer office buildings have.

    • klay@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      are you sure its 2 times the capacity per person now? Because that makes no sense. Without additional info, there should be the same amount of people using the same capacity of bathrooms now.

      Just the number of bathrooms usable per person has changed, so you are more likely to have a bathroom nearby. But you don’t have more room or more toilets per sé.