Look, it’s a bathroom!
Although technically, it's a man and a woman.
Although technically, it's two people, and one happens to bewearing a skirt.
Although technically, it is a series of lines and shapes that evoke the simplest structures of humans.
There is nothing particularly intuitive about these two people, and yet anyone who has been anywhere in public knows that an image of a man and woman next to each other signify that there’s a bathroom (or toilet, restroom privy, water closet….) somewhere in the vicinity for your convenience.
These people, or representations of people, not only signify where our bathrooms are but tell us about the nearest escalator in a crowded subway station, the nearest hotel off the highway, or where you can get your bag checked an unreasonable number of seconds before your flight departs from the airport. These pictograms are what graphic designer Ellen Lupton calls Helvetica Men, after the Helvetica typeface that often accompanies them (Lupton and Miller, 43-4). Though seemingly ubiquitous today, they’ve only been around for about 50 years. In the United States, these figures have been mostly standardized following a 1974 report by Cook and Shanosky Associates in collaboration with The American Institute of Graphic Arts. The report was directed to the United States Department of Transportation to create a universal system of pictograms that could be used to locate essential services (The American Institute of Graphic Arts, 1-2). It’s important to note that these symbols, henceforth called the DOT pictograms, had precedent from decades before the report.
Many of the DOT pictograms communicate through action. Where there is an escalator, Helvetica Man is riding one. Where there is lodging, Helvetica Man is sleeping in a bed. Where there are customs, Helvetica Man is checking a bag. To show where bathrooms are, why do pictograms opt for these symbols? Helvetica Man wears his pants, and Helvetica Woman wears her skirt. They are not doing anything that mirrors how humans use bathrooms. This is likely because the actions taken in bathrooms are private and can evoke disgust. However, an object-oriented approach, such as using an image of a telephone to signify a phone booth, is not used either. All there is are two people: one happens to be a man, and one happens to be a woman.
The DOT pictograms hinge on our understanding that public bathrooms are segregated by gender. These pictograms essentially make the colloquial labels of “men’s room” and “women’s room” explicit. The Helvetica Man and Helvetica Woman are, in essence, literal depictions of the most basically understood gender dichotomy. Their long-standing association with bathrooms reinforces the notion that the bathroom is the premiere gendered space.
Yet, the ability for transgender people to use the bathroom they identify with is a critical right. Multiple surveys of transgender adults demonstrate that many often avoid public bathrooms out of fear of judgment, sometimes resulting in health complications such as kidney stones and bladder infections (James and Coley, 34; Francis et al., 2). In educational settings, transgender students often face harassment for using the bathroom associated with their gender identity (Francis et al., 5-6).
The history of public bathrooms and their continued need to exist is contested. While it is widely thought that gender-segregated public bathrooms are a relatively recent invention dating to the 19thCentury (Sanders, 148), there is significant dispute of this theory, with precedents from classical Rome and colonial North America (Carter 258-60, 269). Regardless, the gendered bathroom is an institution that warrants critical evaluation. An increasingly common approach is adopting a gender-neutral bathroom, either as a supplement or replacement to existing bathrooms. Adding an additional gender-neutral bathroom, though more cost-effective (Francis et al., 7), is argued by some to be inadequate since it creates an unfair dichotomy of those who use gender-neutral bathrooms and those who do not need to (Francis et al., 6; James and Coley, 41). Some architectural projects have been proposed to elegantly eliminate the need for gender-segregated bathrooms while providing strong privacy protections. Many are predicated upon segmenting toilets once contained in stalls into individual, fully walled rooms with communal sinks (Sanders, 149-50).
While the Helvetica Man has long been a useful symbol for indicating where a bathroom is, it also reveals the gendered presuppositions inherent in an act that male, female, transgender, and gender-diverse people all do. Hopefully, the coming years will see a design ethos for bathrooms that allows for all people to feel included and safe.
Sources
The American Institute of Graphic Arts. “Symbol Signs: the Development of Passenger/Pedestrian Oriented Symbols for Use in Transportation-Oriented Facilities.” 1974, p. 1-172.
Carter, Burlette W. “Sexism in the ‘Bathroom Debates’: How Bathrooms Really Became Separated by Sex.” Yale Law & Policy Review, vol. 37, no. 1, 2018, p. 227-97.
Francis, Jacinta et al. “Gender Neutral Toilets: A Qualitative Exploration of Inclusive School Environments for Sexuality and Gender Diverse Youth in Western Australia.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 19, no. 16, 2022, p. 1-13.
James, Shauntey and J. Coley. “Separate But Unequal: Revisiting the Discussion of Trans-Inclusive Bathrooms.” Sexuality &Gender Policy, vol. 6, no. 1, 2023, p. 33-36.
Lupton, Ellen and J. Abbott Miller. Design, Writing, Research: Writing on Graphic Design. Kiosk, 1996.
Sanders, Joel. “From Stud to Stalled!: Architecture in Transition.” Log, Fall 2017, no. 41, 2017, p. 145-54.