apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Black toilet paper? Without being too graphic, ones observation of what is on TP is often a tip-off (and often the only tip-off) that one needs to visit a physician. So maybe black (or red) TP would do in a bar, or some non-home environment. But keep it white at home, folks. Your colon will thank you.

Pat, that is so disgusting, but also exactly what I was thinking. As Celine Dion once put it so elegantly "ze truth eez in ze poop". Amen sister.

Luxe designer TP must be the new frontier, I guess. Here's an article from a while back about the whole phenomenon. (Also included in the article is an image from Renova's sexy ad campaign.)

http://www.radaronline.com/magazine/the-goods/2005/08/royal-flush.php

This is the perfect opportunity to shoehorn in a joke I heard this morning:

Celine Dion walks into the bar, and the bartender asks, "Why the long face?"

-rimshot-

(I'll be here all week.)

Anne, that was awful.

And I loved it.

anne, you made me laugh out loud - as they say (or, actually, i think they say LOL)

black toilet paper? no. so, so wrong.

but that house looks gorg. i only wish there had been more pix in the article.

That article about men's getaway spaces didn't sit right with me, much in the same way that I'm not comfortable with basements that are turned into "man's land" full of sports memorabilia or whatnot that only appeals to him. I can somewhat understand this impulse if the rest of the house is bursting with florals and lace, but is that generally true anymore?

Space permitting, I'm all for people having their own private spaces that they can decorate as they wish, but it strikes me as quite one-sided in this article, that one partner gets a getaway where he can indulge in all kinds of goof-off leisure activities, while the other partner is doing ... what, exactly? I got the feeling that these men feel entitled to a place to unwind, while their partners are doing laundry or cleaning up in the rest of the house. I'm inferring that last part, but there's an uncomfortable subtext there.

I

I'm ashamed to say that it took me a moment to get the Dion joke. I'm getting old. (very funny, btw!)

Ze trooth eez een zee poop, 'tis true. I spend a lot of time around animals. Causes one to be rather...blunt.

At this demographic level, one that allows free space for things like meditating, is it possible that the women in these articles are... shopping? at the spa? getting their nails done? reading? at Pilates?

I'm sure that sounds outrageously sexist, and it's really not intended to be, but I don't get the impression the women partnered to these men are all that put-upon. Mainly, I just didn't get the same subtext takeaway that you did from this.

Black toilet paper: What all the uber-cool kids will be draping the suburban trees with next Halloween.

Hey patrick,

You're right, I might be reading something into the article that isn't there. Maybe I just felt defensive about the implication that many women create houses that their partners won't feel comfortable in, and the men subsequently get "edged out."

Long-married (to a man) female speaking here! The reason a married man wants his own space is that it's off-limits to nagging from da wife (moi). At least in theory. I'd be annoyed if my husband set up a dozen computers in the family room, but in his own space, who cares? Ditto with the car on axle stands in the garage. I just don't go in there.

Roundabout, your post came up after I'd posted. I don't think that my husband feels "edged out" of the rest of the house. He just has some (messy) hobbies that don't fit into the common space. The difference between him and me is that it wouldn't bother him if his computers were, in fact, smack in the middle of the common space. So it's a male/female division.

Luckily, I don't have one of those fellas that needs the guys-watching-sports-and-drinking-beer clubhouses.

BTW, I have my own space, too.

And P2, I wasn't going to take the bait, but after reading your b****y post in another thread, I don't care anymore. The women in that demographic are not at the spa, having their nails done, or doing Pilates. They are running foundations, sitting on corporate boards, working as doctors, lawyers, ceo's, designers, mothers, teachers, business owners, writers. They are intelligent and independent, and they have earned what they have. And if their husbands want hobby rooms of their own, why be nasty about the wives? Got a problem with women?

roundabout, pat, patrick,

that article also put me off. it suggested (to me) that men are individualistic, solitary, introspective and women are (as patrick put it) getting their nails done!"

i have my own space for woodworking, welding, general projects and i try to encourage my man to get some space for himself too!

ah well. nytimes didn't interview me.

Pat, i didn't Ptoo say that's the impression he got from that article, like Vanessa?

ps
make sure to check out the "forms of design portfolio" (the pic feat. in the spouse vetoes article), beautiful work, all of it; the "downtown apartment", genius!

sorry, Ps to everyone that is

Pat--

I was talking about what the women *potentially* would be doing in their *spare* time, as I am assuming the men are escaping in *their* spare time... not during (either gender's) working hours.

All I was saying was that I did not get the subtext that was referred to by the previous poster, and was offering an alternate explanation/interpretation.

And Vanessa misinterpreted my point too, so apparently I wasn't very clear.

But, sheez.

And no... not ALL women.

Roundabout, perhaps the wives read that article in the same section about decorating around your spouse's taste, with tactful suggestions on how to convince someone that he didn't actually see a lamp he once vetoed and how to sneak in large purchases by paying most of the bill in cash.

Not nice, that.

The thing I wonder about the black toilet paper is... didn't manufacturers stop making colored or printed papers because of the dyes being bad for the environment after they're flushed? I wonder if that is a factor here? I'll stick with white for all disposable paper products, thanks.

I think that article about men having their own spaces was written in a way to incite opinions and argument. It could have been written with a completely different tone.

I'm so used to translating husband-wife to partner-partner that I didn't read the hubby hole that way at all
and I think personal space is an issue for lots of couples, and has little to do with a gender divide

hi, I'm post-gay
nice to meet you!

I didn't make it past the jump on the hubby hole, so maybe that's why I didn't get the sexism implied. But perhaps the variation of the same issue is better addressed in the Q and A
"My Spouse Vetoes My Decor Ideas"

what I really love love loved was the Ft Greene house built for pocket park
I worship anyone in Bklyn who is not building for maximum sq footage these days!

Re: A space of his own, I thought it was interesting that it gave a little bit of a historical prespective. Historically men (and women too) used to carve out gender-specific niches for themselves. I don't see it as a bad thing. Look at a lot of societies around the world, even today, men and women often tend to be with "their own kind" (said with a wink). The difference is that nowadays, in this culture at least, it's more likely to happen in a garage or a shed out back instead of a masonic lodge. I thought it was just a fun riff on that, nothing more, nothing less. It was, after all, in the Style section.

Oh and Patrick, I generally think your comments are good, but puh-lease. Shopping, getting their nails done, at the SPA? Sorry, but if you have to put in the disclaimer "I'm sure that sounds outrageously sexist," then it probably is.

maybe the men don't notice all the lamps the women are sneaking in the house because they're too busy in their little hideouts?

ana-

You took my comments out of context, but apologies for any offense taken.

My other point about that, which seems to have been lost, was that there *do* exist some places where women socialize outside the home (in their spare time), different from those that men do. Like it or not, malls and Pilates classes are some of those places, cliche or gender stereotyped or not. Some other places are indeed museum boards and PTAs and community service, etc.

Again, my comments were originally directed back to roundabout's assumption that the women in the article *must* be slaving away in the background on laundry and child-rearing while the men-folk cracked open their beers and scratched their asses. I did not get that impression from the article at all, and was providing an extreme example of another thing that the article may also have been implying.

Sorry, again, to offend.

Ana, thank you. I thought the article was so funny that I e-mailed the link to my hidey-hole husband. I laughted out loud when I read the description of that old guy's novel-in-the-works. It was the sudden addition of "and cannibalism" that got me.

But I have a sense of humor about life, and men. Most men, that is.

I thought the author was poking a bit of fun at men for finding their inner treehouses.

And in my spare time, my dears, I volunteer.

And what is "post-gay"? Not gay anymore?

So volunteerism is ONE thing we share.

At least there is that, P2. Good on ya!

yes, GOOD JOB to you too

post-gay - as in post-90s-style identity politics. i think that's what she means.

please excuse my hyperbole.
i just love that wall with the small protruding lamps.
has anyone seen that before, or is it an orginal idea?