The Private Lives of Public Bathrooms

How psychology, gender roles, and design explain the distinctive way we behave in the world's stalls

By Julie Beck

The Atlantic - Apr 16 2014

When Oprah Winfrey served on a Chicago jury in 2004, she couldn’t go to the bathroom attached to the jury room unless her fellow jurors sang to drown out the noise. One of the songs they sang was Kumbaya.
When Alexis Sanchez used the bathroom in her college dorm, she brought her iPod with her.
“I would blast it,” she says. “I would play 'D. A. N. C. E.' by Justice, and some Maroon 5 song. That was my poop playlist. It had to be a ritual or else I would focus too much on if there were other girls there who could hear or smell what was happening.”
Sanchez, now a 22-year-old front-end web developer for the Tampa Bay Times, has since abandoned her poop playlist, but is still incredibly anxious about using public bathrooms—for both numbers one and two. “It’s definitely a problem,” she says. “It affects my life.”
Many people, like Oprah and Alexis, suffer some degree of anxiety about going to the bathroom when others are present. Paruresis, or “pee-shyness” is classified as a social anxiety disorder in the DSM-V, the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic guide. It’s a sort of performance anxiety, a fear of being scrutinized by others while you go.

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