What can bathroom signs tell us about gender, sex, and society? Plenty, according to this great article by Marissa at The Society Pages, a multidisciplinary social science project organized by the University of Minnesota’s sociology department.
Marissa has gathered an extensive, thought-provoking, and occasionally hilarious collection of bathroom signs from around the world. (A few are anatomically correct, so they might be NSFW.) In addition to sharing the images, she makes a lot of good points about the social construction of gender. It’s a great read. (Thanks to Lee Wind for pointing it out.)
Anyone else shudder at the messages our kids might be getting from some of these signs?
(Photo credit: Irina Slutsky. Not from the abovementioned article, but proof that there are clearly even more examples than Marissa has catalogued.)