7/15/24

As society grows further from allowing quite as many children in the mines, and Minecraft sales continue to skyrocket, we can easily interpret that the children yearn for the mine. In a similar vein, we've seen some growth regarding the women's rights movement, the past five years not included, a space growing in between the expectation that a woman is to give birth, stay home, and live her life as nothing more than a mother and wife and what a woman truly is. As children continue to prove their affinity for escapism, no different can be said for women in general. In my time home, I've run through my mind with memories of the real Pennsylvania. I, like many others, fall constant victim to a romanticized mindset, frequently forgetting the past experience of my own that resulted in me moving so far away in the first place. As I sat in my Mother's house, scanning the walls and floorboards for fleeting glimpses of my childhood, one symbol struck a certain thought process that nobody but myself wanted to explore further. As a people we have all become very familiar with the redundancy of the nautical-themed bathroom, and with it has spawned more than enough long-running jokes about the oddity that is Mothers and their specified interest in an ocean-themed pooping experience. 

The first thing I wanted to think about was the simplest question to ask; the why of it all. What is the reason nautical themed bathrooms are so major, not exclusively but especially for Mothers residing in Eastern and Western States? My initial thought was the deep, almost emotional connection mothers have for beaches. In my experience, a Mother never seems to go to the beach for the same reason as the rest of the family. The Dad is excited to boogie board, the kids are excited to swim and build sand castles and run around, and the mother is excited to read. I remember myself and my family almost picking on my stepmother whenever we went to the beach, not only because she really only read when we got there, but because reading was what she was known to do. She read when we were all at home, she read when she went to bed, she read at work, she read waiting to pick me up from school, and she read more than anyone I knew. So I always found it somewhat questionable when we finally got to go somewhere that all she wanted to do was the same exact thing she always did. But it hit me, sitting in my Mother's bathroom counting the random seashells and starfish in a mason jar next to the sink, that it was never about being able to read at the beach for my stepmother as it was about being able to swim at the beach for me. The Mother picks their kids up from school, makes dinner, does the dishes, the Mother runs the errands, and does back-to-school shopping, and the Father works 9-5. As far as we've come from gender roles further into married life, with not as much emphasis on the Mother doing everything and the Father making money, the expectation is lessened but the reality is not. As much as society itself no longer enforces such behavior, men will always be men, and women will always do the heavy lifting. 

With this thought process, I began to think more about escapism. Taking reading at the beach as an example, reading itself is somewhat of an escape, no less than a film or video would be one. Thus when I see my Mother sitting at the beach reading, it isn't that she doesn't want to swim, boogie board, or build sand castles, but as much as everyone else wants to experience an escape from their lives typically nowhere near a beach, so does the Mother; the only difference is that her escape is an escape from us. At the beach, it's the first time the Mother gets to sit back and do nothing, and the Father is entertainment. So taking that at face value, one question persists, lingering in the back of my mind. If a Mother's relaxed demeanor at the beach is a result of a found escape and the lessoned weight of Motherhood on her shoulders, why and how does that result in the nautical-themed bathroom we all know and love? My first thought is that, like the beach, maybe the bathroom is somewhat of an escape in and of itself. Me personally, I often hide in the bathroom as a spot I can cut literally anything out. It is a safe space, and with that, comes a sort of parasocial relationship with it that I really hope I am not alone in feeling. But examining further under a similar lens as the beach, the relationship a mother has to a bathroom could be very special. As I stated, I'm functioning under the assumption that the Mother who decorates her bathroom nautically is one in a somewhat one-sided marriage, if nothing else but in terms of responsibility. And with that comes the assumption that she would also be in charge of most if not all of the decorating. In a bathroom, a man might shave, maybe wash his face, shower, piss, and shit. There is much less asked of them, and therefore, much more of a strenuous, momentary feeling of appreciation for the toilet-bearing space, especially regarding women. A bathroom for a woman, and a Mother, is one of unity. It holds secrets she doesn't want to be shared, it holds some of her most prized possessions. Hours toile away as she shaves with candles lit and a Miles Davis record playing (my experience at least). But it's hard to feel the strong intimate connection one wants to feel with a bathroom when it still looks like the entire rest of the house. White tile floors and white walls paired with white towels and a white shower curtain tie it all together. It makes sense, in the head of this fictional women weve discussed, that she may want to add a little light. Maybe a wall plug-in scent dispenser shaped like a lighthouse. Then she goes to the beach, smack dab in the middle of thinking about redecorating. She finds shells and towels with fish and a shower curtain with a navy blue line at the bottom that just really feels boat-like, but most of all, she finds peace. More than anywhere or anything else, she finds relaxation left all alone with her book, a humorously large straw hat, and her favorite book. And the only other place not at the beach in which she can achieve such peacefulness; is the bathroom.

 She adds mason jars of sand and bowls of cool seashells, towel hooks shaped like octopi, and a bathmat the same color as sand. Slowly but surely she's turned her homely oasis into a nautical-themed one, in which she can read a book in the bath or simply brush her teeth and be reminded of the times her husband did the heavy lifting.