Women’s Room Miracles
There’s a change happening amongst us that is acutely noticeable in a very odd place: public bathrooms. At a bar or club, late at night, on more occasions than I can count, I’ve experienced beautiful moments of honesty and vulnerability in women’s bathrooms (it also happens in gender neutral bathrooms, but not if there are cishet males there). There’s a growing recognition that we must rally around each other, support each other, protect each other. When those pure moments happen, we collectively exhale the loneliness, fear, and shame that is a part of the experience of being a person who identifies as female in the United States.
I’ve found that by showing my own vulnerable side, others feel safe to do the same, which creates a space free of judgment. In this space, we can come to a higher understanding of ourselves and each other. Not every bathroom experience is transcendent; sometimes, I just pee, wash my hands, and reapply my lip gloss.
It’s rather easy for me to strike up a conversation in a bathroom where there is a dance floor because I am always in a somewhat awkward position. You see, I am the sweaty woman in the club.
I don’t suffer from any medical condition like hyperhydrosis, I’m a summer baby and I just have active well-developed sweat glands. I joke that I have an evolved air conditioning system. I also have very fine hair, so when I sweat even a little, I look like I jumped into a pool. I don’t try to stop the sweating, I just try to manage it. I carry a hairbrush in my bag and if there’s a hand dryer, I squat down underneath it and blow dry and style my hair.
When women come into the bathroom and see me, they have a choice about how to react: annoyance/disgust/insouciance or empathy. I nudge the latter reaction along by acknowledging that I am a sweathog and laughing at myself. If the person is prone to empathy, I’ve just made a genuine connection. They usually laugh and make their own self-deprecating comment. Then other women get involved and we start building each other up. Not all the time, but a heck of a lot of the time.
Just last night, I had two remarkable experiences. They both start — of course — with me dripping in sweat underneath the hair dryer and commiserating with someone about the heat and the sweat. A woman came in, looks down, I smile and give a half shrug. She says she feels me. If she was sweating, I couldn’t tell. She was the kind of woman that glistened. Or maybe she was sweating, but she was strikingly beautiful. Her skin was like almond milk, smooth and tinged with caramel color. She had bright almond shaped eyes, an easy smile and I immediately warmed to her.
I stood up and we introduced ourselves. Her name was Natalie. She was talking about how sweaty she is, but she’s just gotten used to it, being as old as she is. I start to get excited because I love the “I bet I’m older than you game.” Natalie says she is certain that she is older than me. I don’t think she looks over 30. Lots of 29 year-old women think that counts as old. Perhaps it is for a divey dance club at 1 a.m (in which case I am practically a senior citizen). I say “let’s bet a drink” (but I don’t intend to cash in on it when I win). We shake on it and she says with a smirk, “I’m 38.” She’s sure she’s got me. I smile and laugh. First I tell her that she looks amazing and I honestly thought she was a decade younger. Then I tell her that I’m 42. She starts jumping up and down and demanding to see my driver’s license. She gushes about my skin and I gush about her skin. She tells me how she’s half black and half white, and in a jokey voice she elbows me and says “in case you couldn’t tell.” I told her I kinda figured, but I’m not the kind of asshole who says “what are you?” to people. She hugs me and tells me she loves me. I tell her I love her too. Boom, genuine moment. Exhale.
As we are leaving the bathroom, she was telling me some anecdotes about white allegedly well-meaning people saying stupid shit (like the ridiculously and not so subtly racist “you’re surprisingly [insert quality the person thinks is complimentary] for being biracial”) when another woman approaches us. She tells Natalie how beautiful she is. She overheard us and says she’s biracial, too, half Asian and half white. This woman was much younger. She talks a bit about Asian fetishists and men viewing her as an object. I tell her that I cannot even imagine what she deals with because those Asian fetishists are fanatical. Before I went blond, people often assumed I was Asian so I have some limited experience with those jokers. I tell her that I am sorry she has to experience that dehumanizing bullshit. She nods, she says she has a nice boyfriend who isn’t like that, but that she can’t stand it when guys hit on her and tell her how they find Asian women so sexy, blah blah blah.
Natalie reassures her, “It’s going to be a lot easier for you than it was for me. It’s changing. I see it. You won’t have to experience everything I did, thank god. I really think it’s getting better.” We all hugged and rejoined our friends. Bonus genuine encounter on the way out! Also, optimism for humanity level up.
I haven’t mentioned that I was pretty much sober for all of this. I’m not much of a drinker; I don’t process alcohol very well so it’s easy for me to avoid. I mention this because being the sober woman at the club is a bit like being a superhero. I have all my faculties at my disposal and almost everyone is on their way to getting smashed or already smashed. With great power … whatever, I have no qualms about intervening when I think it’s necessary.
Later in the evening, under the dryer again, I notice a woman was vomiting in the stall. The others in the bathroom were visibly annoyed. I asked, “Is she yours?” They scoffed, “No.” They all looked like they were in college or maybe just out. I was about to give them a little lesson in sisterhood.
I yelled, “You okay in there?”
The stall door swung open and the drunk girl hobbled her way up and out of the stall. I steadied her softly by the elbow and found her eyeballs and asked again if she was okay.
She quickly responded, “I’m okay.”
The other girls shuffled around, but continued to watch. I looked at the drunk girl again and said, “Hey, we have all been there. We’ve all gotten a bit more fucked up than we would have liked, so NOBODY is in a place to be judging you right now.” I glanced around to make sure the others were on board. They began to voice agreement. She relaxed. I said a bit sternly (but still tenderly), “it’s okay to get fucked up, but I need to make sure you are safe. Are you going to be able to go out there and keep yourself safe? Are you going to be able to make good decisions about your safety? Do you have people with you?”
She straightened up and said, “Yes. I’m good. I have friends with me and I will be okay.”
She slumped a bit down the wall and confessed, “You’re right, I did get more fucked up than I wanted. I was having feelings about an ex and I just wanted to forget it and have fun.” The women all rallied around her, chiming in their understanding and support. I nodded. The girl looks up and thanks us. She says to me, “it really means a lot that you asked me if I would be safe out there. I feel so safe in here, and even out there, but it really isn’t so safe out there.”
I looked at her and the other women in the room and said, “we all need to help keep each other safe, right? It can be pretty dangerous out there, especially if you have been drinking and aren’t making good decisions. Can you guys promise me that you will do what I did if you see someone that might need help? We must take better care of each other because THEY (pointing outside the bathroom) will not.”
They all fucking got it. Every last one of them, full buy-in and commitment. Hopefully, they remember.
Bathroom bonding isn’t a new phenomenon, but it is different now. I have become better at engaging strangers and openly discussing typically thorny topics, but the sisterly change I’ve noticed isn’t just me. We are becoming more open, more aware, more frustrated with what we have to endure as women. There’s no more denying that there’s a large segment of the cishet male population that views us as less capable, as sex objects without bodily autonomy, perhaps as less than human.
I used to encounter a lot more defensiveness in women’s spaces, but now I find them openly saying that they go to hang out in the bathroom so they can just breathe and bond. It’s like a home base.
Each of these experiences, where we foster our connection and sense of shared responsibility to care for our sisters, is a small victory for humanity. Hopefully, there will be ripple effects. Maybe, if we all commit to make it so, we’ll be able to have these experiences more frequently and even better, outside a stank bathroom.
