History Main / WondrousLadiesRoom

* ''Film/{{Number One|1976}}'': Gender-flipped. Sheer curiosit sends two kindergarten girls, Chrissy and Molly, into the boys' room. Molly has no idea what the odd objects mounted on the wall are. Chrissy correctly identifies them as urinals and knows that boys use them to pee, but isn't sure quite how.

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[[quoteright:350:[[WesternAnimation/TearAlongTheDottedLine https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/wlr_1.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:''[-[[Film/WillyWonkaAndTheChocolateFactory Come with me and you'll be\\
In a world of his imagination\\
Take a look and you'll see\\
It's actually meant for urination]]''-]]]

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* Played literally in ''Anime/TenchiMuyo''. Resident MadScientist Washu created a pocket dimension to house a complete spa for use as the women's bathroom. The men got stuck with the rather small ordinary bathroom.
** Funnily enough Tenchi is perfectly fine with this. One imagines he's just happy he doesn't have to share said small bathroom with five to six women.
** Also in the first series Tenchi ''was'' allowed to use the bath house and there was actually a small section set aside just for him.
*** In the second series, Tenchi was teleported into the spa prior to the dimension-hopping arc. Reactions from the bathing women was... mixed.

* Gender flipped in chapter sixteen of ''Manga/OmujoOmutsuJoshi,'' which features resident pervert Muni convincing male lead Shouta to let her sneak into the boys restroom for a thrill. Her wonder as she explores and comments on the urinals makes Shouta wonder just what she'd been expecting. Muni repays Shouta afterward by inviting him to explore the girls' restroom with her sometime. Shouta declines, stating that'd just get him arrested or, worse, expelled.

* In a Finnish newspaper comic ''B. Virtanen'', the main character is once again overworking and is the last person still in his office building. Thus, he thinks of all the things he could do. And chooses to peek into the ladies room. The reader doesn't get to see the room, but his comment makes it seem like he was expecting something more stylish.
* In a ''{{ComicStrip/Cathy}}'' strip, Irving realizes he is puzzled about how: Cathy is always complaining about finances, but he never sees her shopping; Cathy is always talking about the need to diet, but he never sees her eating, etc. Irving then concludes that everything happens inside the ladies' room. The last panel depicts the apparent interior of a ladies' room -- complete with snack vending machines, a shopping boutique, and so forth.
* One ''ComicStrip/AdventuresOfAaron'' comic strip had men wondering why women always took so long in the ladies room, and then cut to the mini-spa version with the women playing board games.
* In one series of strips from ''ComicStrip/ShermansLagoon'', the gang is at a restaurant and Sherman enters the women's bathroom by mistake. He discovers that it's less a bath room and more a huge, luxurious spa which employs masseurs and also includes surveillance cameras so that the women can spy on the tables they've left and find out what the men are talking about in their absence.

* In ''Film/ConeyIsland'', Creator/FattyArbuckle is chased out of the men's shower at the amusement park because [[ItMakesSenseInContext he's dressed in a woman's swimsuit]]. He winds up in the women's shower, which has tables, lounge chairs for relaxing, and full-length mirrors.
* If you watched only the first five minutes, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the 1976 version of ''Literature/{{Carrie}}'' were a softcore porno, given the way that Creator/BrianDePalma [[MaleGaze films]] the opening scene. Instead of being fancy, it's an adolescent boy's fantasy of what the girls' locker room at high school is like, with most of the film's female characters [[{{Fanservice}} frolicking in various states of undress]]. [[SubvertedTrope This only amplifies the shock to the viewer]] once the locker room quickly turns quite ''un''-wondrous for Carrie, who's [[FanDisservice subjected to a vicious prank by her peers when she has her period]]. Bet you're feeling guilty for ogling Creator/SissySpacek in the shower now, huh?

* In Louis Sachar's ''Literature/TheresABoyInTheGirlsBathroom'', Bradley assumes the girls' room is nicer than the boys', with colored water in the toilets and fountains, perhaps. When he does hide in one, he finds it's pretty much like the boys'.

* In ''[[Literature/TheVampireFiles Blood On The Water]]'', Jack overhears two gangsters searching a ladies' restroom for intruders. One of them voices surprise that the toilets look no different from those in men's rooms.

* During a segment of ''Series/NotNecessarilyTheNews'', Danny Breen is asked to check out a men's bathroom in a New York City subway, something he is disgusted by - it's not helped by the gunk on the doorknob. However, when he enters, he's greeted by a men's room attendant dressed as TheJeeves, with a palatial bathroom.
* ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' had a sketch wherein the ladies room was a Greek garden with a eunuch lyrist who sang softly to them while slave boys fed them fruit and wrapped them in silk.

* ''Series/TheDrewCareyShow'' had this, where Larry, feeling disoriented, passes out on the couch in the women's bathroom. When he comes to he wants to know why the women have a couch in their bathroom and the men don't. Drew asks him "If there was, would you want to lay on it?"
-->'''Larry''': "...No."
* A running gag in the high school years of ''Series/BoyMeetsWorld'' was boys becoming indignant on seeing that the girls had a couch.
--> '''Topanga''': Sometimes we need to lie down.
* Parodied in ''Series/NewsRadio'': When the male staff complains that the ladies room has a couch and demand something similar for the men's room, Jimmy ends up refurbishing the restroom into an exclusive lounge (to which Beth successfully applies for membership). Then Matthew ruins it by ''going to the bathroom'' in the bathroom.
* This was a running gag in ''Series/{{Cybill}}''. Ira commented on the potpourri and soap on women's bathroom. During a flashback episode set in the middle ages, the king went to the women's bathroom and was surprised with the stool (you know, the thing we sit on) and the curtain.
* In ''Series/{{Popular}}'', the girls' room (the Novak) has a ''tuffet'' and is the site of many important plot developments, though when a boy actually does go in there he doesn't seem to be too shocked either way.
* In ''Series/CornerGas'', Lacey replaces the "Men" and "Women" signs on the bathrooms shared by Corner Gas and the Ruby with "♂" and "♀" signs, but nobody except her knows what the symbols mean, causing everyone to use the wrong bathroom. The men praise the cleanliness of the women's room while the women are disgusted by the filth of the men's. After the original signs are put back, the men are outraged, demanding that Brent make the men's room just as clean as the women's. However, when Brent tries to clean the men's room, he's unable to stand the smell for even a second, so he keeps his promise by making the women's room ''dirtier'' instead.
* ''Series/{{Roseanne}}'' includes an episode with a dream sequence in which Roseanne crosses from her drab bedroom into a ridiculously elaborate bathroom, complete with jacuzzi tub, a fountain and two nearly naked male bath attendants.
* In ''Series/TheOfficeUS'', Michael takes all the women shopping, making Kevin very excited about getting to go inside the women's bathroom (he seems to have mixed it up with the popular women's locker room fantasy). Upon going inside his first words are "Oh... my... GOD!" Soon all the guys are hanging out in there, sitting on the couch and reading magazines. This annoys Creed, who has paid his female coworkers for the privilege.
-->'''Creed:''' I've been caught many times and paid dearly for it.
* ''Series/TheAdventuresOfPeteAndPete'' turned this trope completely on its head. In the episode "All-nighter", Pete (the younger) and two of his friends (Wayne and Monica) end up locked in the school overnight by accident. Naturally, [[HilarityEnsues hijinks ensue]] as all three take the opportunity to do all the things they would otherwise never be allowed to do on school grounds. Monica decides to go and check out the '''BOYS''' room, since she has never been inside one in her life, apparently. Upon entering she is utterly astounded by the presence of urinals and completely baffled as to their purpose. The two boys (who happened to be in the exact same bathroom for some reason) decide to have some fun by telling her the urinal is "a foot washer".
** A similar situation arises in ''Series/TheZackFiles.'' Gwen bursts in to the Boys' Room to yell at Zack, and has no idea what the urinals are. He tells her they are planters. For vegetables. She believes it.
* In an episode of ''Series/WeirdScience'', after entering the ladies room, a virus-afflicted Lisa zaps herself into a soap opera set in a seaport town. Trying to find her, Chett enters the ladies room and arrives in the soap opera, too. Observing his spacious and beautiful surroundings, Chett remarked that this why women spend so much time in the ladies room.
* Brazilian TV show ''TVPirata'' explained why women go in pairs to the bathroom - to play a round of table tennis.
* In ''Series/{{Community}}'' episode "[[Recap/CommunityS1E06FootballFeminismAndYou Football, Feminism and You]]" Shirley considers this a sacred space. Although the bathrooms themselves are not remarkable, which, given this is ''Community'', is actually sort of remarkable.
* Inverted on ''Series/JamesMaysManLab'', where [[Series/TopGearUK James May]] and the team turn a horrible bathroom into a veritable {{Arcadia}}n garden of contemplation, complete with a fountain, pot plants, and... rabbits. ('Course, in real life someone ''would'' piss in the fountain within about five minutes.)

* ''Series/TheAmandaShow'' had a sketch titled "The Girls' Room" featuring a FourGirlEnsemble hosting a talk show in a high school girls' bathroom. Whenever a male came in, he always expressed the same astonishment. The trope was inverted in one episode where the girls' bathroom was flooded so they had to host it in the boys' bathroom. [[TheDitz Debbie]] thought the urinals were a "water machine".

[[folder:Music Videos]]
* The video clip for No Doubt's "Just A Girl" is a good example.
* The video for Garbage's "Androgyny". The ladies room is a clean space with multiple seating areas and unique light fixtures. The men's room is visually bland (but full of men and women engaging in various acts of debauchery).
[[/folder]]

* The video game ''VideoGame/Prey2006'' averts this trope in the first few seconds, with the ladies' room being just as grimy as the men's. The player character [[LampshadeHanging points this out]] with the smart-ass comment "Sugar and spice, my ass!"

* In ''VideoGame/DeadRising'', saving a security guard from the MonsterClown mini-boss will convince him to reveal a secret passage in the Ladies Room that allows you to skip the [[ThatOneBoss Convicts in the park.]] Why the security guards needed a secret passage into the ladies room is not explained, but [[AllMenArePerverts doesn't really need to be.]]
* The new Normandy in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' has both a men's and a women's bathroom. Both are identical, but entering the opposite sex bathroom gets a snippy response from EDI. And in ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'' Shepard is prohibited from entering the opposite-sex bathroom altogether.

* In a weird inversion, ''VideoGame/MetroidOtherM'' has a couple times where Samus has to enter the lady's room, and it's a little fancy but nothing special. In both cases, you can't enter the ''men's'' room - one has collapsed and the other is just closed off.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Persona 4}}'', you can prompt your character to try and peek inside the girl's bathroom, but the game claims you lack the Courage (as in, the skillset "Courage") to do so. If you raise Courage to the maximum level, the message changes to reflect how fearless you are... but you still can't bring yourself to go in.

* In ''VideoGame/MetalGear2SolidSnake'', Snake finds Gustava Heffner in the women's room, which, unlike the men's room, has ''an elevator''.

* [[http://www.jaynaylor.com/betterdays/archives/2005/10/chapter-13-thic-4.html This strip]] of ''Webcomic/BetterDays'' uses the "much cleaner" variant. The state of the men's room is on the previous page, though "gross" doesn't begin to describe it.

* ''Webcomic/SuicideForHire'' [[http://suicideforhire.comicgenesis.com/d/20050330.html declares one "clean enough for neurosurgery", among other things.]]
* ''Webcomic/{{Minus}}'' manages to... well, make this into a beautifully heartwrenching story arc about war and sacrifice, ''somehow'', starting with [[http://www.kiwisbybeat.com/minus72.html this strip]].

* Amusingly inverted in ''Webcomic/GirlsOfTheWild'': Wild's High hasn't had a men's locker room up to this point, due to being an all-girls school until this year. After a few of the inevitable embarrassing mishaps [[spoiler:and as an indirect way of appealing to Jae Gu]], Queen hires contractors to build a bathroom that is up to her usual (read: astronomically high) standards, with this result.
* Ryan Pagelow's dark-humored strip ''Webcomic/{{Buni}}'' has him entering a ladies' room imagining a wonderland with unicorns, fountains, a couch... and finding a bunch of smoking women gambling on a cockfight.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' takes this trope and applies it to the two halves of a gender segregated school.
** There's also an episode where Homer gets the key to the executive bathroom at the nuclear plant; it's enormous and has a fountain and live musicians playing.
** Moe has set up an office in the ladies' room at his bar, since no women ever come in.
* This comes up in the ''WesternAnimation/{{Fillmore}}'' episode "To Mar a Stall". While investigating vandalism in the girls washroom, O'Farrell starts going on about how much nicer it is than the boys and that it has air freshener. He then starts trying to identify the scent. (Much funnier than it sounds.)
* A series of cartoon shorts run during the ''Series/{{Psych}}'' commercials show the ladies' room as being an all-female Mount Olympus.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Superjail}}'' episode "Superbar", the titular establishment's men's room is dirty and occupied by a naked Twister orgy. By comparison, the women's room is completely empty and pristine, with robotic Warden heads urging the user to wipe afterwards. However, seeing as how there's only one woman in Superjail, and the Warden has a crush on her, this was most likely done to impress her more than anything else.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Stoked}}!'': In "Surf Surf Revolution", Johnny and Broseph are being chased and lose their pursuers by running through the ladies room. Afterwards, Broseph comments on how much nicer the ladies room is than the mens room.

* Gender Flipped in ''WesternAnimation/AsToldByGinger''. The girls' bathroom is fairly mundane. The boys' bathroom in Lucky Jr High however is like a flea market, complete with under-world-esque trading of school projects.
* An inversion in the "Bathroom Blues" episode of ''WesternAnimation/AngelaAnaconda'' where Angela is determined to discover the mystery of the boys' room since the boys are in and out in moments while there is always a huge line outside the girls room. When she manages to sneak in, she mistakes the urinals for drinking fountains and thinks the reason the boys are so fast is because they are only in to get a drink.

[[caption-width-right:350:'[-'[[Film/WillyWonkaAndTheChocolateFactory Come with me and you'll be\\

* Subverted in ''Strappare lungo i bordi'' by ''Creator/{{Zerocalcare}}''. In the first episode Zero laughs at Sarah when the latter suggests that he can simply change his pants in the restroom, saying that while the women's bathroom is a place of courtesy and cleanliness (and he pictures it in his mind like some sort of ballroom)) the men's one is an unclean place where everyone has to fend for himself. Sarah replies that a) no matter how dirty it is, men can always empty their bladders by standing up, while as a woman she has to squat if she doesn't want to touch the thing and b) if another male accidentally opens the door of an occupied stall he just sees another man with his back turned on him, while as a woman you are caught from the front "like a deer in the headlights."

[[quoteright:350:[[Theatre/TheWomen https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_women_17_powder_room1.jpeg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Apparently, this was what passed for a powder/cloak room in 1939.]]

* ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid 1'' and 2 had women's bathrooms, they're just like the men's. In both you can call your MissionControl while in them, and get some hilarious remarks.

* In ''VideoGame/MetalGear2'', Snake finds Gustava Heffner in the women's room, which, unlike the men's room, has ''an elevator''.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WoDn2V-pFA One episode]] of [[WebVideo/YogscastMinecraftSeries YogLabs]] had Simon and Lewis investigating a complaint about a "dimensional rip" in the ladies' restroom. They go into the men's room first, which is just a small cramped space with a single-basin sink, a shower stall, and a "urinal" made of a two-by-one hole in the floor full of water (which Simon had always mistaken for "where you soak your feet"). Then they go into the women's room, which is not only much larger but contains an L-couch, a stocked bookcase, a fireplace, and a pizza dispenser. And a portal to another dimension in one of the stalls, but that's not supposed to be there.

The general assumption seems to be that the ladies' room is in fact a mini-Shangri-La full of wondrous things. In extreme cases the ladies' room is portrayed as a mini-spa, complete with fountains and musicians, while in more realistic cases it's simply shown as being much cleaner and nicer looking than the male facilities. While more extreme portrayals of this are ''not'' TruthInTelevision, as women are just as capable of making total messes as men, paid maintenance personnel tend to be much faster about dealing with them, since the perception (accurate or not) is women are much more likely to care about such things.

While most ladies' rooms are fairly similar to men's rooms, it is not uncommon for a nice one to include a small anteroom before the restroom itself. This room may contain a couch, often will contain chairs, and possibly a lit vanity. This room is designed to make it easy for women to fix their hair or make-up without blocking access to sinks. It is also useful because lines for ladies' rooms tend to be longer than for men's rooms since women generally don't use urinals (which ladies' rooms lack anyway), do have to deal with menstruation, often visit the bathroom in groups, and often have young children of either sex with them who need assistance. Having a nicer room to wait in helps to balance this out a little. This is very rare in any men's room, which does provide more truth for the trope (and as stated on ''Series/TheDrewCareyShow'', if the men's room had a couch would you ''[[{{Squick}} want]]'' to sit on it?). The couches in the ante-bathroom may be placed there for the convenience of nursing mothers or women with cramps, or it may be a holdover from the days of fainting couches.

* Tedd [[http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2003-05-29 thought this]] about the ladies room in ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'', and [[http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2003-05-31 was disappointed]] when he finally saw the real thing while body-swapped with Grace. [[http://egscomics.com/?date=2008-06-23 In a later strip]] recent GenderBender Ellen complains about Nanase's choice of the bathroom as a meeting spot with "I've long since abandoned the notion that ladies' rooms are clean, wonderful places."
%%** [[http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2010-02-19 Perpetual pillow fight]]

FancyToiletAwe is when the the toilet unit itself is fancy, or the luxurious bathroom is either unisex (or the rare particularly posh men's rooms). See also BathroomStallOfOverheardInsults, WomensMysteries, DisgustingPublicToilet, MysteriousTeachersLounge. Compare GirlsBehindBars, another women-only setting that suffers from the same misconstructions.

See also BathroomStallOfOverheardInsults, WomensMysteries, DisgustingPublicToilet, MysteriousTeachersLounge. Compare GirlsBehindBars, another women-only setting that suffers from the same misconstructions.

* One episode of ''LightNovel/{{R 15}}'' has Raika ''invite'' Taketo into the girls' room so he could have a perverted reaction she could properly film, but he says there's no point if there's no-one inside. So she starts removing her pants...

-->-- ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'', "''Film/OverdrawnAtTheMemoryBank''"

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WoDn2V-pFA One episode]] of [[Machinima/YogscastMinecraftSeries YogLabs]] had Simon and Lewis investigating a complaint about a "dimensional rip" in the ladies' restroom. They go into the men's room first, which is just a small cramped space with a single-basin sink, a shower stall, and a "urinal" made of a two-by-one hole in the floor full of water (which Simon had always mistaken for "where you soak your feet"). Then they go into the women's room, which is not only much larger but contains an L-couch, a stocked bookcase, a fireplace, and a pizza dispenser. And a portal to another dimension in one of the stalls, but that's not supposed to be there.

* The new Normandy in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' has both a men's and a women's bathroom. Both are identical, but entering the opposite sex bathroom gets a snippy response from EDI.
** And in ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'' Shepard is prohibited from entering the opposite-sex bathroom altogether.
* ''VideoGame/NoMoreHeroes'': Before Travis has to fight a boss, he saves by...taking a nap on the can. Most places he goes have a simple bathroom for him to use. Meanwhile, whenever [[VideoGame/NoMoreHeroes2DesperateStruggle Shinobu]] needs to save, she...takes a shower. In an immaculate bathroom. Which just happened to have a sterling tub and shower. Even in an abandoned movie studio...

--> '''Tapanga''': Sometimes we need to lie down.

** Used a similar joke as above, with a similar answer.

* [[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/sports/baseball/13potty.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 In New York City]] and other jurisdictions, there are laws requiring that public places (like stadiums and theaters) have a 2:1 ratio of female to male toilet fixtures. So there are typically larger, though not necessarily nicer, bathrooms for women. This is mainly because, on average, women take twice as long as men to use the bathroom. While men can just unzip their fly and use the urinal, women have to lower their pants or skirt and sit down or squat no matter what. Men also don't have to worry about tampons or pads, and are less likely to be watching over and changing the diapers of small children (though the latter is changing). While men's rooms can easily serve large numbers of men quickly, the same number of women using a bathroom the same size will typically produce a line and overcrowd it. As a result, many women, when pressed, will often opt to duck into the (single stall) men's rooms if there's a line in front of the ladies' room. Such laws are designed to prevent this from happening.

* Most people who work as janitors, regardless of gender, will tell you that actual use of the facilities in real life tends to invert this trope no matter what the amenities. Women habitually leave public restrooms much more of a mess than men, and in so many different ways -- toilet paper everywhere (American women are the world's biggest consumers of TP by country and gender, statistically), puddles of urine around toilets because so many women think they'll get [=STDs=] from the seat and refuse to actually sit on them while doing their business, feminine hygiene products and diapers inadequately disposed of, puke in the sinks, etc. The real ladies' room is far from wondrous.

* The highly-underrated Nickelodeon show ''Series/TheAdventuresOfPeteAndPete'' turned this trope completely on its head. In the episode "All-nighter", Pete (the younger) and two of his friends (Wayne and Monica) end up locked in the school overnight by accident. Naturally, [[HilarityEnsues hijinks ensue]] as all three take the opportunity to do all the things they would otherwise never be allowed to do on school grounds. Monica decides to go and check out the '''BOYS''' room, since she has never been inside one in her life, apparently. Upon entering she is utterly astounded by the presence of urinals and completely baffled as to their purpose. The two boys (who happened to be in the exact same bathroom for some reason) decide to have some fun by telling her the urinal is "a foot washer".