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Contemporary home decor.

Are there dirty pictures on your bathroom wall? Who studies home decor?

  • Middle Class home decoration tropes: I've noticed that even in homes with a very staid and conservative overall "look", that in the bathroom you will frequently find wall-hangings that evoke mild titillation, or demonstrate humorous scatology, or low-brow humor. Is this a real thing, or just overrepresented in the bathrooms I've seen most often (white, Midwestern, Protestant)? Or is it not a thing at all, and just confirmation bias on my part? The homes I've visited the most have been Midwestern, white, protestant, and working- or middle-class. For most of my early upbringing they were also rural. The overall home decor I remember most is very conservative and aspirational: family photos, nature scenes, some cultural object designed to show that one could afford travel. Just... bric-a-brac. Its primary function seemed to be to advertise: "We are clean and respectable people who are (or should be regarded as) middle-class." But all bets were off in the bathroom. My mother's house was chaste and straight-laced, but she had a dime-store print of Renoir's "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bathers_%28Renoir%29" in the bathroom. My grandparents were similarly conservative, but had "girls sitting on chamber pots", and a PG-13 (suggested) b&w nude, respectively. My classmates and extended family friends also had high rates of this. You'd go to use the restroom and almost always see something wildly out-of-line with the decor of the other public areas of the house. Who writes about this? What longitudinal studies exist about the shifting tastes involved in how people decorate their homes? Also: Is this (bathroom titillation exception) real and consistent across cultures? Or is it a midwestern, white protestant thing? Or is it not even a thing to that group, and instead just a confirmation bias I've constructed because of a small sample size of kooky acquaintances? Many thanks for your time and for your impressions.

  • Answer:

    I'm from New England and while the hippies around here are more than likely to have folksy signs that say "If it's yellow let it mellow," there's usually nothing titillating in middle class bathrooms. If there's anything at all related to the function of the bathroom it tends to be a tasteful photograph of the beach or something like that.

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New England upbringing here — yeah, mostly seashells, potpourri, and endless decorative trays filled with miniature skylines of old, dusty perfume bottles (Jean Naté, I'm looking at you!). On the other hand, I always loved https://www.google.com/search?q=washroom+breeding+bolsheviks+poster&safe=off&tbm=isch&tbo=u that friends have in their bathroom (Mid-Atlantic).

mon-ma-tron

Interesting theory, OP. Here's my data point: My paternal grandparents were exceedingly proper, upper-middle class WASPy types. All the artwork in their home was super-tasteful; things related to tall ships, old family portraits, New England scenery, that kind of thing. Except for the weird French print hanging in one bathroom, which was a cartoon of anthropomorphized dogs standing in line for a public urinal, in various states of distress. There's even a prostitute dog in the background! I loved this thing so much -- as it did suggest a naughty side to them, rarely if ever shown -- that it was the #1 item on my list of desired inherited objects, bypassing my parents and going straight to me. Obviously, it hangs in my bathroom.

credible hulk

Middle class Australian here and I don't think it was a particularly Midwestern US thing. My family had nudes in the bathroom when I was growing up in the 1970's. Supposed to be artistic shots of Victorian women bathing. My parents had them well into the late 1980's. They were replaced with a cat hanging off a branch with "Oh Shit" written underneath, which my mother thought was hysterical.

wwax

Ha, this is funny. I am not from here, but I live in the Midwest now and have this photo of a naked bike riding woman in my bathroom: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Cycles_gladiator.png It just feels like the bathroom is the appropriate place for nudity!

curtains

Come to think of it, it has been a long time since I saw a Alphonse Mucha or Maxfield Parrish print in a bathroom or anywhere else - I very much appreciated their sensitivity to the female form when I was a teenager. Are they out of fashion or have I just aged out of the demographic that has museum posters of Picasso, Matisse, and Modigliani nudes? The dogs waiting to pee must be https://www.google.com/search?q=boris+o%27klein+chacun+son+tour&safe=off&client=opera&tbm=isch&imgil=FSJd-jfoLM5S_M%253A%253Bhttps%253A%252F%252Fencrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com%252Fimages%253Fq%253Dtbn%253AANd9GcQM0G3Zi9e1r1AbOsy7VljwQ1DrKP9wum3XRNB5RRoRyk8ratDO%253B3907%253B2110%253BwM-21Zospq1LmM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fen.wikipedia.org%25252Fwiki%25252FBoris_O%27Klein&source=iu&usg=__DilLWK7A6wX8ytCP_I07EljPrwc%3D&sa=X&ei=lqXaU9mLCIG1yATRuIGgCw&ved=0CCkQ9QEwAg&biw=1600&bih=1092#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=FSJd-jfoLM5S_M%253A%3BwM-21Zospq1LmM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fupload.wikimedia.org%252Fwikipedia%252Fcommons%252F7%252F7d%252FChacun_son_tour.JPG%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fen.wikipedia.org%252Fwiki%252FBoris_O'Klein%3B3907%3B2110 by Boris O'Klein, which would have served an East Coast Anglophile of a certain disposition and generation as a marker of sophistication, being French and (very) mildly racy. As a young man I found myself in a few middle-class Midwestern houses with framed, explicitly scatological humor in the bathroom. This embarrassed and confused me, as I was a horrible prig.

jcrcarter

Wow, I'm as white/working-middle class/Midwestern as you get, and I've never seen anything like this anywhere. It's usually seashell prints, or candles on the counter, or something else so equally boring I wouldn't even register it. I vote confirmation bias.

jabes

It could be some confirmation bias, but I think people tend to relax the rules of decorum a little in the bathroom sometimes - because, let's face it, it's a room set aside for you to poop in, and is thus a bit less dignified as a result.

EmpressCallipygos

White Catholic midwesterner here and I have a lot of older relatives with things like this. Drawings of little boys peeing, little poems about .... peeing, stuff like that.

gerstle

Except for the weird French print hanging in one bathroom, which was a cartoon of anthropomorphized dogs standing in line for a public urinal, in various states of distress. There's even a prostitute dog in the background! I have seen this exact print in the bathroom of an exceedingly classy fine dining restaurant in wine country, here in Australia.

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