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"  Despite all the talk of &amp;quot;leaning in&amp;quot; and finally closing the wage gap between men and women, The Daily Beast insists in a new article that there is still one area where women will never feel comfortable breaking down all the walls at work: the bathroom. In fact, The Beast reports that women are filled with anxiety and shame about using the bathroom at work to do more than &amp;quot;go number one.&amp;quot; Even though the bathroom should probably feel like a &amp;quot;safe space&amp;quot; for female employees \u2014 after all, it is the only place their male counterparts aren&amp;#039;t allowed to go \u2014 many women struggle with the often less-than-pleasant aspects of doing their business at work. &amp;quot;The workplace still remains men&amp;#039;s space. Women may be more hypervigilant of not breaking rules of gender by monitoring their femininity even more,&amp;quot; sociology professor Samantha Kwan told The Daily Beast. This hypervigilance also includes gender-segregated areas. This issue extends beyond the workplace, too. As Sandberg notes in Lean In, little girls are supposed to be full of &amp;quot;sugar and spice and everything nice,&amp;quot; so when we must give into our most base instincts, our civilized selves are embarrassed about violating the &amp;quot;dainty female&amp;quot; gender construct. Many women have constructed elaborate techniques during times when it&amp;#039;s absolutely necessary to relieve themselves in a public restroom. One 27-year-old mentioned in the article makes sure to send an email from the toilet so she&amp;#039;ll have an alibi if anyone accuses her of having been there. In Japan, women carry small gadgets that make flushing sounds to cover up their own sounds. Listen, in the era of clean eating, juice cleanses, and fiber-consciousness, we really do need to eliminate (pun intended) this supposed &amp;quot;taboo.&amp;quot; On one hand, we&amp;#039;re congratulating ourselves and each other for perfecting our body&amp;#039;s efficiency and regularity through diet and exercise; yet on the other, we&amp;#039;re ashamed of what that actually entails? It&amp;#039;s pretty darn hypocritical if you think about it.  If you have to go at work, you have to go at work. As the famous children&amp;#039;s book says, Everyone Poops. Is it really more embarrassing for your coworkers to find out that you had to go, or that you actually sent an email while doing so? If they discovered the latter, they&amp;#039;d view your BlackBerry as &amp;quot;flagged,&amp;quot; to quote the famous Seinfeld episode. Instead of experiencing &amp;quot;anxiety and shame&amp;quot; about your body&amp;#039;s natural signal of effective digestion, let&amp;#039;s focus on the more important gender boundaries that need to be broken down and all agree to let other ladies go about their business as they need to. [Via The Daily Beast] "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/mom-kids/news/a15266/women-workplace-bathroom/?src=rss>