Bathroom Grafiti

Two weeks ago, I was camping and about to lose my ever-loving mind when I walked into a bathroom stall and saw two words etched into the wall in front of the porcelain latrine:

YOU’RE PRETTY.

It immediately changed my mood. Not because I suddenly thought, You know what? I AM pretty. It was because someone had put something positive on a bathroom stall instead of something cruel. Of all the places to find a little kindness that changed my whole day, there it was.

I took a picture and ended up writing an entire Instagram post about those two words. That’s how much they affected me.

Then last week, I was in Wisconsin for my brother-in-law’s wedding, and after the ceremony we ended up at a bar. I don’t go to bars very often, and if you had asked me where I expected to have a meaningful experience that weekend, the women’s bathroom of a Wisconsin bar would have been pretty far down the list.

When I walked in, the walls were covered in graffiti, but every message I read was kind.

Women had written encouraging notes to other women! Some funny, some hysterical, some only a few words, some profound, and all of them were postive. I started taking pictures and somehow spent thirty minutes in that bathroom reading the walls.

I remember what girls used to write on bathroom stalls, and it was not this.

When I was in middle school and high school, the girls’ bathroom could be brutal. Actual first and last names were carved into stalls next to rumors, slurs and horrible things about girls we knew. You couldn’t avoid reading them. They were six inches from your face while you peed.

Even when your name wasn’t there, you knew it could be. And guess what? I was one of the girls who etched a mean word to add to it. In seventh grade, I etched the B-word into a bathroom stall.

It wasn’t directed at anyone. There was no name next to it. Just the word. I have no idea why I did it. Maybe I wanted to know what it felt like to do something bad. Apparently thirteen-year-old Abi’s version of hard-core rebellion was carving one swear word into school property. Turns out I was NOT cut out for a life of crime.

I regretted it almost immediately, but I hadn’t written it in pencil. I had etched it into the stall with a barette. There was no taking it back. So I stopped using that stall and eventually started avoiding the bathroom altogether.

I also remember the day my mom came to school for parent-teacher conferences and she went into that bathroom stall. I thought my heart was going to drop out of my body. She didn’t say anything about the words in that bathroom to me. And boy was I grateful she had no idea who had carved that word into the wall. The guilt consumed me. 

Isn’t it funny what stays with us? I don’t remember what I wore to school that day. I don’t remember what I ate for lunch, although it was probably a Snapple and a pink cookie, tbh. But I remember that word, and I remember wishing I could take it back. I still do.

Not because I wrote it about someone. I didn’t. But because I added one more ugly word to a place already full of them. Some girl could have walked into that stall on the worst day of seventh grade and read it. And the truth is, they probably did cause the chips are almost always down in middle school.

Maybe that’s why, almost thirty years later, I found myself standing in a bathroom in Wisconsin taking picture after picture of the walls.

I know almost nothing about the women who wrote those messages. I don’t know their names, what they believe, what their lives look like, or whether we would have anything in common besides the fact that at some point we all needed to pee in the same bar in Wisconsin.

But today I want to thank them, look at what they left behind!? With their anonymity, they chose to leave something uplifting, beautiful and kind. 

Clearly these graffiti’s bathrooms have a lesson that is telling me something deeper and I think it’s because the closest thing to this is how the internet is. The internet feels like one enormous bathroom stall. We’re all still writing on the walls. Now we just carry the wall around in our pockets.

We can type something about another person, hit send, close the app and go make dinner. We don’t have to see her face when she reads it. We don’t know if she forgets it immediately or carries it for years. We can post anonymously or straight up with little to no consequences at all. 

I’ve spent much of the last ten years online, and I know words can stay because I still remember some of them. Most comments roll right off. Some are so ridiculous they make me laugh. But every once in a while, someone hits the exact tender spot I was hoping nobody else could see.

The strange part is that the person who wrote it might forget about it by dinner, while the person who read it can still remember the exact words years later.

I wish I could tell you I’ve only ever been on the receiving end of that, but seventh-grade me and her bathroom stall won’t let me.

I’ve gossiped. I’ve judged people without knowing the whole story. I’ve said something because it was funny when maybe it wasn’t mine to say. I’ve put words into the world that I wouldn’t choose today. I think most of us have. And we don’t get to go backward and grab the Sharpie out of our own hand, we just get another wall.

Words are so powerful. They don’t have to be long or particularly profound to leave something behind. Sometimes it’s a rumor with a girl’s first and last name. Sometimes it’s one stupid word carved by a seventh grader. Sometimes it’s two words—YOU’RE PRETTY—waiting for a woman having a terrible day.

The two bathrooms are completely different vibes- one I avoided going in while the other I hung out in for 30 minutes reading and taking pictures. What kinds of things are you writing on the wall? 

There are a lot of things going wrong in the world right now, but twice in one month, I walked into a bathroom and found women leaving something good for the woman coming after them.

That’s one win I refuse to ignore.

I can’t do anything about what thirteen-year-old me left on that wall.

But I get another wall today and I’m determined to lift and inspire as much as I can!