Restroom Anxiety Analysis

In this paragraph, Beck delineates that although bathroom anxiety is a condition that many people suffer through, it is also a common social insecurity that many others feel because they consider entering a public bathroom an unwilling relinquish of privacy. I personally related to the behaviors that Beck listed as I myself perform them when in a public restroom, such as “leaving space at urinals.” It is especially interesting to me that these behaviors have become ubiquitous throughout modern society because of our own personal prejudices for associating urination and excretion with filth and degradation. These behaviors cannot conceal the fact that urination and excretion are necessary to maintain good health and are imperative to survival.
In this passage, Beck implies that despite this unavoidable fact, many people desperately attempt to conceal these natural tendencies. Beck also reveals that these socially constructed needs for additional privacy beyond architectural partitions already provided in public bathrooms reveals the unrealistic standards that dictate society. Besides sanitary measures for overall health protection, the only thing that needs security in these situations is the fragile dignity of the modern mind. In a society that is focused on individuality, any potential threat to this idealistic identity becomes detrimental to our dignity. Since a public bathroom is open to anyone and does not filter out race, economic disparity, or occupation, everyone in that space serves one purpose. Behavior in public bathrooms are not only an effort to conceal personal insecurities, but to avoid the fact that regardless of our drastically different self-perceptions and personalities, our physical functions are the same.