On Thusdays we Smash the Patriarchy
Last week I stayed at a lovely Hyatt Regency Hotel in San Diego. The rooms were nice, clean, with balconies and good carpets with room to do yoga. I grumbled a bit about being next to the really loud elevators, but quickly got used to the sound.
What bugged me, though, was the sheer patriarchy of the showers.
Over the past few years I've slowly changed shower fixtures so everywhere I usually shower I have a hand-held attachment, sometimes by itself that can be positioned up high, or sometimes as part of two part fixture. You know why? Because I don't have external genitalia. Women menstruate and want to wash off their vulvas. They get sweaty UNDER their boobs. Unless you outfit the shower with a way to do handstands, we need hand-held attachments.
There was *ALSO* no place to prop a foot up to shave. Seriously, this was a business meeting in a beach town. 50% of their clientele will want to shave their legs. No bench, no shelf, no grab bar, either. Why no grab bar? Who doesn't like having a grab bar when standing on one leg trying to shave on a slippery surface?
Which leads to the OTHER issue: ever since my son broke his back and we needed to use shower chairs, I've become really attuned to how HANDY it is to have a bench or chair in the shower. (That's another reason we like hand-held attachments as an option: we can set them low enough to be accessible to someone in a chair.)
I travel a lot and I expect there to be single shower spigots in most older bathrooms. But the combination of a NEW bathroom and NO place to shave my legs and NO grab bars and NO handheld showerhead just seemed to me to display the utter lack of women or disabled people on the Hyatt design team.
What bugged me, though, was the sheer patriarchy of the showers.
Over the past few years I've slowly changed shower fixtures so everywhere I usually shower I have a hand-held attachment, sometimes by itself that can be positioned up high, or sometimes as part of two part fixture. You know why? Because I don't have external genitalia. Women menstruate and want to wash off their vulvas. They get sweaty UNDER their boobs. Unless you outfit the shower with a way to do handstands, we need hand-held attachments.
There was *ALSO* no place to prop a foot up to shave. Seriously, this was a business meeting in a beach town. 50% of their clientele will want to shave their legs. No bench, no shelf, no grab bar, either. Why no grab bar? Who doesn't like having a grab bar when standing on one leg trying to shave on a slippery surface?
Which leads to the OTHER issue: ever since my son broke his back and we needed to use shower chairs, I've become really attuned to how HANDY it is to have a bench or chair in the shower. (That's another reason we like hand-held attachments as an option: we can set them low enough to be accessible to someone in a chair.)
I travel a lot and I expect there to be single shower spigots in most older bathrooms. But the combination of a NEW bathroom and NO place to shave my legs and NO grab bars and NO handheld showerhead just seemed to me to display the utter lack of women or disabled people on the Hyatt design team.