Boys' and Girls' Bathroom Graffiti Comparison - Research Paper Example

INTRODUCTION To understand the reasons why men and women vandalize, this research focused on observing bathroom graffiti art in both, men’s and women’s bathroom, after which there will be a comparison between women and men graffiti. It is the hypothesis of this experiment that there are inherent differences in the content of the graffiti and the tendency to vandalize between men and women. Specifically, women, because they were historically more repressed in expression than men, may vandalize less often. They also tend to vandalize to express what they cannot say normally. METHODOLOGY After getting the required permission, bathrooms in the Athens’ Pyramids Hookah Bar, Pub bar and the C.I bar were personally visited from May 12th to May 20th. The graffiti were written down verbatim, and the places they were seen as well as the date of collection were also noted. In conducting this research, there were two problems encountered. First, it was challenging to request permission to visit the women’s bathrooms. Second, some of the writings were quite offensive. DATA PAGES All in all, 35 graffiti were collected, 20 from males’ bathrooms and 15 from females’. After data collection, recordings were organized based on the place they were recorded from (men’s or women’s bathrooms?), and the themes they belonged to (either religious, humor, current condition, command/request, life inspirational/motivating or political). Current condition graffiti Table 1. Summary of current condition graffiti recorded from males’ and females’ bathrooms male female 1 I hate my mom. (Pub bar, Athens. May 20th) 2 I’ll always be dancing. (The C.I bar, Athens. May 17th) 3 Life sucks. (The C.I bar, Athens. May 17th) 4 I’m pregnant. (Pub bar, Athens. May 20th) Table 1 summarizes the current condition graffiti written in the walls of visited bathroom. Current condition graffiti is defined in this study as the expression of feelings or current status that a writer was in. As seen from the table, all such graffiti was written by females, probably because they are historically refrained from comfortably expressing themselves in common conversations. Religious graffiti Table 2. Summary of religious graffiti recorded from male and female bathrooms male female 1 Jesus did not kill his enemies. He loved them. (Hookah Bar, Athens. May 13) Jesus loves you. (Pub bar, Athens. May 20th) 2 God is dead. (Hookah Bar, Athens. May13th) Jesus was black. (Pub bar, Athens. May 20th) Table 2, on the other hand, summarizes religious graffiti. In this paper, religious graffiti is defined as any vandalism containing religious items such as Gods and saints. Males and females seem to write religious graffiti at the same rate, as opposed to what the hypothesis assumed at the start of this experiment. In addition, most, if not all, were about Jesus. This may imply that most of those that write religious graffiti are Christians or Catholics. Political graffiti Table 3. Political graffiti recorded from male and female bathrooms male female 1 Obama? Sounds like Osama. (Pub bar, Athens. May 20th) 2 I hate liberals. (Jackie os’ bar, Athens. May 27th) 3 America is Godless. (Jackie os’ bar, Athens. May 27th) religious Response: YOU are godless. 4 If voting could really change things, it would be illegal. (Pub bar, Athens. May 20th): On the other hand, the summary of political graffiti sample during this experiment can be seen on Table 3. Political graffiti is defined as any vandalism that contains political figures or concepts such as the president, voting, and political parties. In the data, most of the political graffiti pertains to the local political atmosphere. As expected, most of the political graffiti recorded are found in male bathrooms. Probably, it is because more men are exposed to political issues Life inspirational/motivating graffiti Table 4. Motto graffiti recorded from male and female bathrooms male female 1 Time is your enemy. (Speedway Gas Station, Athens. May 18th) 2 To have peace, you must have war (Pub bar, Athens. May 20th) 3 Love your enemies. (Jackie os’ bar, Athens. May 27th) 4 Pee hard, pee fast. (Hookah Bar, Athens. May 13th) Life inspirational/motivating graffiti pertains to vandalisms that gives encouraging messages to the reader. According to Table 4, all life inspirational/motivational graffiti recorded were written by males. This is unexpected, as more serious messages written on walls are expected to come from females, as they may choose to write such graffiti instead of the more obscene humor graffiti. However, the overall frequency, which is greater in males, may have resulted to this discrepancy. Command/Request graffiti Table 4. Summary of command/request graffiti recorded from male and female bathrooms male female 1 Be like a brother and lift the seat. (Casa Cantina bar, Athens. May 13th) 2 Please, can you just see when you pee? (Hookah Bar, Athens. May 13th) 3 Get High. (Jackie os’ bar, Athens. May 27th) command/request Command/request graffiti, which are vandalisms containing messages that asks the reader to do something, recorded through this study are, similar to life inspirational/motivational graffiti, all written by males. This may be due to the authoritarian nature of males, developed throughout history of discrimination against females (Table 4). Humor graffiti Table 5. Humor graffiti recorded from male and female bathrooms male female 1 Don’t look here. The joke is in you hand. (Hookah Bar, Athens. May 13th) Go home mom, you’re drunk. (Pub bar, Athens. May 20th) 2 See! We all stink. (Jackie os’ bar, Athens. May 27th) Everyone poops. (Pub bar, Athens. May 20th) 3 You’re wasting your time. Go back to drinking. (The C.I bar, Athens. May 17th) 4 19) Don’t do drugs, cuz if you do drugs, you will go to jail. And drugs are really expensive in jail. (The C.I bar, Athens. May 17th) Humor graffiti, summarized in Table 5, is defined as vandalisms meant to make the readers laugh. As expected more humor graffiti came from males than females. This implies that females are more restrained towards expressing obscene or formal messages. Aside from those mentioned above, there are also graffiti commenting on the condition of the place. In male bathrooms, “addicted to this bar” and “worst bathroom ever” were seen. On the other hand, females write graffiti that instigate conversation (“you’re too good for him”), express opinion (“end of the world is a lie”), and graffiti with vague category such as “stars don’t shine, they twinkle” and “a kiss is two questions answered at once”. Conclusion In general, most of the writings on the bathrooms’ walls are funny and expressive. Some people love to practice this type of graffiti and they see it as a way to express their feelings about some issues. As seen from the results, there are indeed inherent differences among the vandalizing behavior of males and females. Compared to females, males tend to write more political, command/requests, life inspirational and motivational, and humor graffiti. This is probably due to the seemingly natural tendency of males to freely express and command. Read More