National Toilet Paper Day is August 26th
Psychology professor Nick Haslam says we acquired our squeamishness about the act of defecating when our parents toilet-trained us because we felt scrutinized, judged, corrected, and criticized when we did it wrong, leaving us embarrassed and ashamed. For some the shame is so intense that they develop parcopresis, a fear of defecating in front of others.
Euphemisms are words that are substituted for others deemed to be embarrassing or unpleasant
Americans are comfortable with using the word toilet when talking about the porcelain fixtures found in most homes and offices in the US. But they avoid using the word toilet to describe the special rooms where toilets are located. The term most commonly used as a euphemism for toilets is bathroom.
Why do we ask where the bathroom is when we want to use the toilet?
When in polite company, we hear many different terms for the room with the toilet, such terms as john, loo, necessary, throne, powder room, potty, lavatory, bathroom, washroom, restroom, and little boys’ and little girls’ rooms. The de-gendering trend favored by young moderns hasn’t gotten around to changing the names of ladies’ room and men’s room to their room and their room. When unsure of the toilet’s location, I tend to ask where the facilities are. In the military, you ask for the head (Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard) or latrine (Army and Air Force).
Many Americans don’t say toilet paper
Over time, to avoid embarrassment, toilet paper became toilet tissue and then bath tissue. Have you ever used tissues in a tub? Have you ever rested in a restroom?
Toilet paper was invented in the U.S. in 1857
Before that, people cleaned their posteriors with what was available. Depending upon where they lived, people used grass, leaves, hay, moss, wood shavings, rags, wool, rice, seaweed, seashells, orange peels, banana skins, dried corncobs, and the old Sears Catalogs, which came with pre-drilled holes so you could hang them on a nail in your privvy (outhouse).
The Romans and the Chinese each had their own versions of the same stick-based hygiene tool
The Romans tied sponges to the ends of their sticks. The Chinese wrapped cloth on the ends of theirs. The hygiene sticks used in China 2,000 years ago were bamboo sticks wrapped in cloth. The Japanese used a similar tool to clean the outside and the inside of the anus.
As one story goes
A 1st-century gladiator committed suicide by shoving a well-used tersorium (a communal sponge-tipped stick) down his own throat to escape being torn apart by lions in the arena.
Good reasons to take a closer look at statistics
When it comes to toilet paper statistics, if you take a closer look, you will find there are a lot of different figures reported. Numbers vary relative to such factors as the size of the sheets, the weight of the sheets, the thickness of the sheets, and the number of sheets on a roll.
Factoids according to dozens of sources
Like everything else online, not all are true.
- Americans are reported to use an average of one roll a week per person or two or even three rolls a week. When you come across multiple answers like this, you could average them (two rolls a week) or choose which you consider to be the most trustworthy source. For example, the weight-per-roll numbers cited by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology convert to 56 rolls per year per person, or about one roll of toilet paper a week.
- Another source doubles that, saying the average person uses 100 rolls per year, or about two rolls each week..
Here are a couple of head-scratchers:
- One site says that on average, one roll of toilet paper lasts for about 70 visits per person. At the rate of one visit per day, that’s not quite six rolls a year. Several sources, including National Geographic, say 15 million trees each year are cut down to make toilet paper, which equates to cutting down 27,000 trees every day. If the 15 million trees each year is accurate, then 41,000 are cut down every day. But if the 27,000 trees a day is accurate, then it’s 9.8 million trees per year.
- Americans use 30 million rolls a day. Multiply 30 million rolls by 365 days and you get 11 billion rolls a year.
- Estimates of what proportion of the world’s eight billion people use toilet paper vary from one-fourth to one-half.
- Americans, who make up only 4% of the world’s population, use 20% of the world’s toilet paper.
- Two-thirds of Americans hang their toilet paper so the loose end drapes over the roll.
- Greeks, Turks, Egyptians, and Moroccans put used toilet paper in special receptacles instead of flushing it.
- Chimpanzees use leaves to clean themselves after defecating, just like some people. There is no word on who taught the other, but I’d put a modest wager on the chimps.
The first of many times I went to Southeast Asia
I was shocked to see Okinawans squatting in the gutters along the street, defecating as people passed them on the sidewalk without a glance. This social convention is called civil inattention, the term introduced by sociologist Erving Goffman to describe a privacy-granting mechanism used in public places.
An article in the Guardian says America’s love of toilet paper is destroying Canadian forests
The issues are stewardship and the conflict between profit and responsibility. Pines, firs, and spruces (softwoods) are the trees most commonly used to make toilet paper and the primary source of the best type of softwood is Canada. The call is to switch to recycled products and away from virgin forests that are the breeding grounds of most of America’s songbirds.
Stand.earth said activists outside Proctor & Gamble’s (makers of Charmin) annual shareholder meeting called upon the company to “Stop flushing our forests down the toilet.” As shareholders passed them on their way into the meeting, the protesters handed out 100% recycled toilet paper rolls printed with “Who Gives A Crap?”
Some societies think Americans are foolish and unsophisticated for using toilet paper
These are people who clean their nether regions with water from a bidet. Bidet makers say their products don’t deplete forests. Sure, going from toilet paper to bidets is good for the forests, but what does it do to the water supply?
The first person to package and sell toilet paper is said to be a man named Joseph Gayetty
Because he believed his product had therapeutic qualities (or at least he wanted his customers to think so), he called it Medicated Paper. The papers were sheets of manila hemp infused with aloe and printed with his name on them. Gayetty claimed his “Greatest necessity of the age” prevented hemorrhoids.
In 1879, the Scott brothers introduced toilet paper on rolls
Walter Alcock one-upped them by perforating the roll to make individual sheets. As is the case with many consumer products, the size of individual sheets continues to shrink.
Back in those days, the texture of the paper was rough, with woody bits and splinters throughout
Along came the Northern Tissue Company, the first to sell splinter-free toilet paper. People liked the softness and a toilet paper arms race was underway. Charmin air-dried and squeezed their toilet paper, making it softer than what their competitors were selling. The St. Andrews Paper mill introduced the first two-ply (two-layer) toilet paper in 1942. Just as razors went from one blade to two to three, all the way up to five blades, toilet papers these days have as many as four plies.
America leads the world in concerns about toilet paper texture and softness
Part of this honor goes to decades of toilet paper marketing, including 21 years of Mr. Whipple squeezing the Charmin. I found this item on Charmin’s website: “Toilet paper isn’t just great for getting a clean behind. They also make pretty great cheap, chic, toilet paper wedding dresses.”
Charmin and Quilted Northern sponsor the Cheap Chic Weddings Toilet Paper Dress Contest
This year 1,500 women competed for the top prize of $10,000. The winner in the Fan Favorite category gets a one-year supply of Charmin Ultra Soft and Ultra Strong toilet paper. Have you noticed how Charmin does not use the word toilet paper on its packaging?
Gag toilet papers on Amazon
- You can buy rolls of toilet paper printed with Just Married, Happy Birthday, Happy Anniversary, Happy Valentine’s Day, Happy Father’s Day, Mother’s DayHalloween, Easter, Christmas, and the Fourth of July.
- Rolls come printed with the symbols of American political parties, the faces of current and past presidents, and the American flag.
- You can amuse yourself while relieving yourself with toilet paper printed with jokes, riddles, Tic-Tac-Toe, and Sudoku.
- Two very popular toilet papers are those printed with the image of $100 bills, and those personalized with your choice of text or image ($60).
- Some toilet paper is printed with AK-47 rifles, ammunition, and bullet holes. There is even toilet paper made to look like crime scene tape.
Bonus
A group of friends gathered for a weekend at the rented home of a University of Mississippi professor. It was a big old house out in the sticks. He took us into a room (call it whatever suits you) with a sink, bathtub, shower, and two toilets. Two toilets is odd enough, but these matching toilets were mounted side-by-side in front of an enormous picture window with a view of a clearing and the woods beyond. Our host told us that the original occupants built another home out in the country with three toilets side-by-side-by-side when their son became old enough to join in the family ritual.
Thanks for stopping by
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