Tuesday 12 March 2013

The Bathroom As the Space for Female Conversation

We now look at one of the questions that has plagued mankind for generations: why do women feel obligated, and possibly compelled, to go to the bathroom in small groups and engage in gossip, chit-chat, and what has been termed, 'girl talk'. 


Why the bathroom was chosen as the designated space for discussion has yet to be discovered, but we can confirm that often they like to prune themselves gazing upon their reflection in mirrors whilst engaging in conversation. In this respect, since the bathroom is already equipped with basic apparatuses for the pruning process, such as the aforementioned mirror, paper towels, taps with running water and hand soap, this could be one possible reason why women have chosen the bathroom for their safe haven during 'girl talk'. 

Women will often leave their pack without much warning aside from brief, often euphemistic, sentences, such as "We're just going to powder our noses" or "Time to go to the little girl's room, coming [insert name of other female here]", leaving the men of the pack to shift awkwardly in their seats and make mumbled assertions that they will have 'guy talk' in retaliation to the shift in pack dynamics that occurred almost without them noticing. Most of this 'guy talk' will often revolve around why women always seem to go to the toilet together and the inability of the men of the pack to understand the female drive for 'girl talk', particularly when there seemed no need or build up in the conversation up to that put which would lead them to suspect that the women might want to discuss different matters of which they know not. Occasionally, although this is somewhat rare but not unheard of, the men will make jokes and/or fantasize that the women actually go to the bathroom together to engage in homosexual activities, but again this is not all that common and is usually reserved for a subspecies of men, the jerk (or sometimes the very horny).


Sometimes a woman is not aware of her natural and social obligation to engage in 'girl talk' in the bathroom, and might feel ostracised And/or ashamed in having neglected her social duties as a woman, illustrated in this dramatization by David Willis in his webcomic, Dumbing of Age:  


dina has never seen any sitcoms

As we can see here, the social competent female instinctively knows to follow the first girl to the bathroom, to "check if she is all right", whilst the social inept female has to ask one of the men of the group what is going on. Once notified of the social phenomenon that "Girls like going into the bathroom to talk", she, after a moment of reflection where she realises the mistake she has made, immediately acknowledges that she has not been prudent in her duties as a female and makes her way to the bathroom.

Why women feel compelled to do this and why they have chosen the bathrooms of public places as the space for 'girl talk' will always remain mysteries that mankind seems pitifully unable to answer, but the more we examine this strange phenomenon, the more we can hope to perhaps one day glimpse at the truth .

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