Will You Come to the Bathroom With Me?
Why do girls always have to travel in packs?
I know it all started in elementary school when the biggest mystery being talked about in the hallways was “what does the inside of the girls' bathroom look like?” Trust me, even after almost nine years passed grade school, I still hear this get brought up. I have heard it all: “I bet it doesn’t smell as bad,” and “I bet it’s bright pink and they have diamond all over the place!” I even remember one kid thinking the girls’ bathroom has couches and vending machines. Granted, that may describe some bathrooms located in say Washington Square Mall, but for an elementary school? Probably not.
Now, fast forward to the enlightenment that contained the news that the bathrooms look the exact same, (with a few hardware differences here and there) but there are new questions that arose. “Why do girls spend so long in there?” “What does it mean to ‘powder your nose’?” and “why do girls go to the bathroom together?” I’ll be honest, for the longest time, I didn’t know either. Now I understand.
It’s about 8 o’clock at night and you’re getting ready to go out with two of your girlfriends (this is after COVID of course) and you’re all excited because it’s the first time you’ve been out to socialize in a long while. You get to the bar and after being there for about an hour or so, three guys come and start flirting with you. After about two more drinks you know that time is coming and you got to go, but walking away would leave your friends outnumbered 2 to 3. You ask your friends to join you, leaving your gentlemen friends a bit confused.
Are you and your friends gossiping? Fixing your hair? Giving each other a pep talk? Maybe hyping each other up? Or was there something else? Yes, all of those things typical girly conversations and habits happen more often than not in the women's’ restroom, but other times it’s to get friends out of what could become a when dangerous situation. What if you had walked out and saw that your friends were gone? Or maybe something happened to your drink when no one was looking.
Dangerous situations like that do not happen all the time, and not all men will put women in danger that way, but it is possible. Some women can’t even walk to their car alone in fear of being attacked, and there is a reason you will find women holding their keys in between their fingers or have their pepper spray ready to go. Having that power in numbers with you even in a private setting such as the bathroom can make women feel safer than you think.
