A Classist View of Toilet Bowls
Created | Updated Feb 5, 2003
I believe that all the people in the "first world" can be divided up quite neatly into two groups: those who clean their own bathrooms and those who don't.
As I was cleaning mine yesterday, I realized that some people don't ever have to do this task. (I was a bit pissed, not because of this division, but because my husband was doing an activity he enjoyed, while I was bent over the nastiest item in the house, wondering where all the little hairs come from and if I could clean them without ever having direct contact with one.)
There's something very real about cleaning your bathroom. It reminds me that I don't live all day in my head, but have real actions with real consequences that must be dealt with. No matter how deep my views on, say, social Darwinism in America's high schools, if I forgot to rub the toothpaste out of the sink in the morning, I still have to scrape it out in the evening or it will become one of the hardest substances on earth. (Aside: Someone should really study the industrial value of hardened household items, such as toothpaste or egg yolks. Who knows the benefits for society?)
Anyway, when I got out of college I had to realize, no one's going to hand me the Nobel Prize and say, "Now that you've won this prestigious award, you will be waited upon hand and foot, so that your time will be more free to think up even more ideas that better mankind."
Here's where the division becomes acute: the people that don't have to clean their own bathrooms seem to live in a world of their own creating. Make a mess? Poof! It's gone! No worries, and no wasting your time on such unimportant things as real life. There is also very little understanding of people who do. I fear that our greatest intellectuals may be distancing themselves so far from reality that their thoughts will only apply in the ideal world, as opposed to the real one composed of overflowing trash cans, shaving can rust rings, and toilet bowls.
Perhaps this is simply a class division. However, in working for my college during a summer on the cleaning crew, I've seen people of different classes come closer together, specifically because they were working on something tangible.
Also, it seems the more you can see immediate results from your work, the better you feel. Don't get me wrong, I've never gotten an INTELLECTUAL high from toilet bowl cleaner, but there is relief and solidarity with others that comes from menial labor.
In conclusion, I believe the best way to clear your head and maybe end classist perceptions is to force people from all walks of life to simply clean their toilets themselves. Well, maybe.
As I was cleaning mine yesterday, I realized that some people don't ever have to do this task. (I was a bit pissed, not because of this division, but because my husband was doing an activity he enjoyed, while I was bent over the nastiest item in the house, wondering where all the little hairs come from and if I could clean them without ever having direct contact with one.)
There's something very real about cleaning your bathroom. It reminds me that I don't live all day in my head, but have real actions with real consequences that must be dealt with. No matter how deep my views on, say, social Darwinism in America's high schools, if I forgot to rub the toothpaste out of the sink in the morning, I still have to scrape it out in the evening or it will become one of the hardest substances on earth. (Aside: Someone should really study the industrial value of hardened household items, such as toothpaste or egg yolks. Who knows the benefits for society?)
Anyway, when I got out of college I had to realize, no one's going to hand me the Nobel Prize and say, "Now that you've won this prestigious award, you will be waited upon hand and foot, so that your time will be more free to think up even more ideas that better mankind."
Here's where the division becomes acute: the people that don't have to clean their own bathrooms seem to live in a world of their own creating. Make a mess? Poof! It's gone! No worries, and no wasting your time on such unimportant things as real life. There is also very little understanding of people who do. I fear that our greatest intellectuals may be distancing themselves so far from reality that their thoughts will only apply in the ideal world, as opposed to the real one composed of overflowing trash cans, shaving can rust rings, and toilet bowls.
Perhaps this is simply a class division. However, in working for my college during a summer on the cleaning crew, I've seen people of different classes come closer together, specifically because they were working on something tangible.
Also, it seems the more you can see immediate results from your work, the better you feel. Don't get me wrong, I've never gotten an INTELLECTUAL high from toilet bowl cleaner, but there is relief and solidarity with others that comes from menial labor.
In conclusion, I believe the best way to clear your head and maybe end classist perceptions is to force people from all walks of life to simply clean their toilets themselves. Well, maybe.
