Bathrooms and toilets

[peterbirks]

Yes, it was quite a nice weekend away, thanks. Although the pleasure was a fraction spoilt by returning to a distinct brown stain on the hall ceiling — apparently caused by a leak on Friday evening. It's still not conclusively established whether this was caused by a leaking pipe (my bathroom is above the hall) or by the gutters being blocked by falling leaves. However, the latter is now the favourite.

Incidentally, for our American readers, the British define as a bathroom a room with a bath. Radical, I know, but we're simple like that. We call a room with a toilet in it, but without a bath, "a toilet". This seems to make sense to me. So why do American realtors (whom we call "estate agents") call a toilet "half a bathroom"? And why do people ask to be told where the bathroom is, when they want to know where the toilet is?

Anthropologically, this is actually an interesting question? Are Americans, as a rule, embarrassed at the concept of shitting? For a people proud of calling a spade a spade and being "straight-up" about things, this seems a little unlikely. And yet, and yet, when it comes to bodily functions, there seems to be a prudishness in America that you don't find in, for example, Europe.

Once you get used to it, there's no problem. And, of course, the English have their own foibles for saying things that they don't mean (as anyone who has attempted to deal with the ridiculous concept of English understatement will testify) or using one word to describe another. But I still get a ridiculous image when a realtor's advertisement refers to 3½ bathrooms.

More on MidCon later tonight, when I get round to uploading the photographs.

Comments

[geoffchall.livejournal.com]

The whole toilet thing is European-wide, or certainly applicable to France. There's a hilarious Luis Bunuel film (Discrete CHarm? Phantom of Liberty?) featuring a posh dinner party where everyone is sat on the toilet, attending to bodily functions. Occasionally a guest will excuse themselves discretely, in order to retire to a little room wherin they eat before returning to polite company.