Bananas and peaches? The weird world of novelty toilet signs

I’m in a pub in Greenwich, south-east London, and I’ve just given an Academy Award-worthy performance as a “paying customer”. It’s a familiar bit of improv in which I walk around and act as though I’m looking for friends when, really, I’m about to make a run for the toilet because I’m bursting for a pee. On the way out, I’ll briefly reprise the role before disappearing forever. “Cut!” the director yells. Hollywood, I’m waiting for your call.

This time, though, my performance is interrupted. I expected to know instantly which door to go into, because of a familiar “M” and “F” sign, “Ladies” and “Gents” or the classic cartoon stick figures. But instead, a sign between the doors reads: “Men To The Left . . . Because Women Are Always Right!” I roll my eyes so hard they nearly disappear into the back of my skull for good, and then almost forget my left and right in a urination-induced panic.

Walking into the wrong toilet is one of life’s miniature mortifications, but that is nothing compared to the inventive signs a lot of hospitality venues now use, which somehow make using the toilet feel even less dignified. I once went to a bar where a cartoon pint of beer and a Martini glass were used to signify which door to go through. On the internet, where lists of niche things thrive, I found more examples of creative bathroom signage. At one place, there’s a sign with a toilet seat up and the other with a toilet seat down. At another, “XX” and “XY”. The list goes on, and the signs get even more obscure. “Eggs” and “Sausages”; “Batman” and “Wonder Woman”; “Sheilas” and “Blokes” (vital Aussie representation); a cartoon bra and pair of boxer-briefs. One sign used bananas and peaches, while another on the list was “Birds” and “Bird Magnets” (which is a little confusing for those of us who are neither).

Novelty toilet signs are what, as a gay person, I’d semi-ironically describe as “straight culture”, in the sense that they feel designed to broadcast straight norms to the widest possible audience. The focus on bodily euphemisms means it’s about cisgender culture, too. These signs make the type of basic joke I imagine people would giggle over at a gender-reveal party.

The growing popularity of custom toilet signs has been facilitated by the likes of VistaPrint, a global company that manufactures a range of customised products. “Our signage category has been particularly strong, growing at double-digit rates for nearly two years,” says Javier Adán, director of EU category experience. He declines to provide more specific figures, but assures me that the desire for businesses to stand out on social media was a game-changer. He thinks that the uptick could also be an effect of the Covid-19 pandemic, when many venues adopted new signage to inform customers of safety precautions. As those businesses welcomed more customers back, they learnt to “embrace” signage in other areas.

This type of joke isn’t found across the world. Clara Greed, emerita professor of urban planning at UWE Bristol and author of the 2003 book Inclusive Urban Design: Public Toilets, tells me that British squeamishness towards the loo simply doesn’t exist in some places she has visited. “In Britain, and in America to some extent, but also in countries like Australia and New Zealand that were colonies of the British empire, there is this sort of Anglo-Saxon toilet humour and sense of shame,” she says. “In a lot of other countries, they don’t have this at all. They’re much more open and it doesn’t bother them.” Japan, home of the world’s snazziest loos, doesn’t share the UK’s passion for toilet jokes to quite the same degree. In fact, on a visit there some years ago, Greed says she witnessed people thanking Kawaya-no-kami, the toilet god.

What fascinates me about the new wave of bizarre signs in the UK is that some of them actually lean further into gendered stereotypes than the classic skirt- and trouser-wearing stick figures. Some, like those that riff on the idea that men drink beer and women drink cocktails, are standardly regressive. Others are plainly misogynistic, such as the one I saw online that shows a toilet door with “Blah” scrawled across it in blue and another with “Blah blah blah blah blah blah . . . ” written in pink.

Charlotte McCarthy, head of interiors at design and architecture firm Heatherwick Studio, tells me that bathrooms have become more of a focus in the design process in recent years. Clients are now more likely to take a “holistic” approach, where the toilet is an extension of the customer experience. She says that, in Europe at least, the more high-end the establishment, the more likely it is that there will be a contrast between how the women’s and men’s toilets look. (Although unisex toilets are becoming more popular.) Clients often consider cool tones to be masculine, whereas warmer tones are perceived as feminine. Luxury spaces might use these colour schemes to cater to a more traditional clientele. Take Annabel’s, for example, the private members’ club in Mayfair that has opulent toilets designed by Martin Brudnizki. For her? Pink, floral and sparkly. And for him: a dark-green colourway and a jungle theme. It’s a grown-up, eye-wateringly expensive version of the costumes that girls and boys would wear to birthday parties when I was a child: the princess and the explorer. (Except for me; I was always a princess.)

Beyond signage, social mores have long dictated the direction of toilet design. A few weeks ago I was at a pub in Hackney, in east London, where the walls in the men’s loos were covered in pictures of nude women. These Ye Olde Nuts magazine pictures obviously weren’t aimed at me, but they seemed like a visual extension of the performance of masculinity that some men feel they have to put on in a pub. A 2010 study, fabulously titled “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche”, found that when given time to choose, men tend to go for the safer, “masculine” drink option, such as whisky or beer. When their first instinct was to order something else, they change their mind when considering how it might reflect on their masculinity. (Maybe the cocktail- and beer-glass toilet sign wasn’t a total lie.)

It’s not in line with traditional gender stereotypes for men to be vulnerable, particularly around each other, which is why it often goes hand in hand with shame and embarrassment. Five years ago, I wrote an article for Vice exploring the reasons why some men, including myself, have a fear of urinals and prefer not to use them. I still get emails out of the blue from men from all walks of life thanking me for it. It might sound silly, but for cisgender men, something like using a urinal — and peeing standing up — are basic expectations. Germans have a fantastically German word for men who sit down to pee, which demonstrates this point perfectly: sitzpinkler. Rough translation: wuss.

Vogue dating columnist Annie Lord, author of the memoir Notes on Heartbreak, tells me the opposite is often true of women’s toilets. For her, the toilet is backstage, a place for a break behind the curtain. Lord says that, if she’s on a first date and pops to the loo, she sometimes brings it up with the women she encounters in the toilet, who might be fixing their make-up or taking a breather from a date themselves. “In women’s toilets, it’s not unusual for someone to ask to borrow make-up or maybe a tampon,” she says. “Those are all quite vulnerable things, aren’t they?”

At one east London pub, the walls in the men’s were covered in pictures of nude women

If the ladies’ loo is a space where women can be vulnerable around each other, then perhaps these bizarre signs are attempting to use some of the most basic and corny feminine stereotypes to underline that. And if the gents’ is a place where some men feel insecure, then the design of toilets — right down to the signs — might be a way of subtly reaffirming their masculinity. When I saw the “women are always right” sign in Greenwich, or the naked women over the walls of the pub toilet in Hackney, I had the same feeling I often get in barber shops. Here, the interior design usually feels similarly blokey and masculine in order to compensate for the vulnerability some men might feel when looking in the mirror or being touched by a stranger.

While it feels like these stereotypical gendered signs are becoming more popular, unisex toilets are also on the rise. You might assume that this might make toilet signage much less confusing. Well, sorry to disappoint, but they open up a new realm of baffling signs. Some feature mermaids and centaurs. (No, I don’t get it either.) My favourite is the classic: the sign where the standard “man” and “woman” cartoons have been sliced vertically in half and stitched together, creating an asymmetrical figure whose outfit is somehow part trouser and part skirt. Finally, I thought, a toilet specifically for the fabulously dressed art students at Central Saint Martins.

The American philosopher and sociologist Lewis Mumford once said: “You can judge the quality of a civilisation by the way it disposes of its waste.” I wonder what he would have thought about how our civilisation signposts its waste disposal. Looking for examples of new-wave signs, I saw images of a stag and a hen on toilet doors. At another bar, I found it funny that a cockerel — a virtually identical silhouette — was used to mean the opposite gender when it was paired with a cat. At that bewildering moment, Mumford might have thought something similar to me: wow, that’s really taking the piss.

Louis Staples is a writer based in London

Follow @FTMag on Twitter to find out about our latest stories first