Ask Amy:Wife wonders about siblings' bathroom habits

[cereta]

Dear Amy: I am a married woman. My husband and his younger sister are of a Mediterranean nationality. Family relationships are "closer" there, I think, than those in North America or Europe.

I was shocked to see my husband and his sister in our bathroom together. She was putting on makeup, he was brushing his teeth.

We were in a hurry to leave the house, but there was a half-bath downstairs that one of them could have used.

I have been in the bathroom with my own older brother, but it was to install new toilets -- something practical -- not to do something "intimate," that, in my opinion, is only for a husband and wife to share.

I felt very "strange" about this situation. Then it happened a second time. I have decided that if it happens again, I will join them in the bathroom and put on my makeup or brush my teeth with them to see if they understand that I'm disturbed by this situation.

-- Too Close!

Dear Too Close!: If brushing one's teeth or putting on makeup is considered an uncomfortably intimate act that only married partners should share, then we need to completely revamp sexual education in this country.

I don't think this is an ethnic thing or a national characteristic.

I think this is a "you" problem.

Taking your letter at face value, these two siblings were basically sharing a mirror.

Many siblings that grew up in close households and perhaps shared a bathroom with other family members throughout their childhoods wouldn't think twice about sharing their bathroom ablutions.

Because this bothers you so much, you should probably express your concern directly to these two, instead of passively trying to get your message across. But you should also anticipate some bewilderment on their part.

Comments

[cereta]

...

...

...

Yeah, I got nothing.

I mean, having shared one bathroom with spouse for seventeen years and child for ten, I admit that I have gotten ridiculously casual about bathroom privacy, to the point that I'm still a little puzzled when my kid wants privacy to brush her teeth (nothing else; just brushing her teeth), so I probably have a distorted view, but unless LW left out "in the nude," I am utterly perplexed. If I had a sister-in-law, and she applied make-up in the same bathroom at the same time as I was, I would probably just ask her where she had gotten that fabulous puce eye shadow.

[kutsuwamushi]

I really wonder where this LW got the idea that brushing your teeth and putting on makeup are "intimate." Is this a common hang-up?

[vass]

I'm still stuck on the part where the Mediterranean isn't part of Europe.

[mommy]

Perhaps her in-laws are from somewhere in northern Africa? That's the only other way I could read it.

[jadelennox]

Could mean the middle east or a lot of Africa. She probably wouldn't call Algeria or Ethiopia Mediterranean, but maybe she means Egypt or Israel.

[madripoor_rose]

....having been a parental caregiver, I'll just be over here laughing my ass off.

[lydiabell]

...wut.

[shirou]

I'm glad everyone else is as baffled by this letter as I am.

[longmagpieroads]

Woooow. I cannot even.

Like. It wasn't until college that I got a bathroom all to myself. I mean There's always someone else brushing teeth or putting on makeup or something (I'm one of four natural siblings and about 18 fictive siblings who floated in and out)

[watersword]

If I could find that Tumblr post that patches together all of Daveed-Diggs-as-Thomas-Hamilton's-whaaaaaaaaaaats, I would post it here, because WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT.

[redbird]

I can see someone thinking that one or both of those activities is personal enough that they wouldn't want to do it around other people. Maybe she thinks the process of tooth-brushing is unattractive, or associates it with not being entirely dressed (maybe her morning process is to take her clothes off, brush her teeth, and then shower, as I sometimes do). And there are people who don't think of themselves as properly dressed for the outside world, even to let the dog into the yard, without makeup.

I would understand either of those attitudes leading to "I don't want anyone to see me doing that," or to LW not wanting an in-law to see her applying her own makeup. But that's a shape of intimacy that has family inside and the rest of the world outside: she may not think of her sister-in-law as that kind of close family, but her husband of course is closer to his sister than LW is to her.

On the purely practical "advice for the letter writer" level, joining them in the bathroom and brushing her teeth would probably send the opposite message, namely that she does think sister-in-law is close enough to do personal grooming in front of. Doing something is not an effective way to signal "people shouldn't do this."

[xenacryst]

"Um, I wuff you thear, bud can you waith unthil one uff uth izh outta zha bashroom tchoo put on your makeup? Zhere'sh not mush shpashe here and I'm about tchoo elbow you in zhe jaw and zhdrivvle toofpaste on your shoezh. SHORRY SHIS!" :thump: "Ow."

[tielan]

This woman wouldn't survive my family. My grown sister and I still share a house and a bathroom and are very casual about walking in on bathroom activities with each other.

[lilysea]

I shudder at the thought of another person (even someone I'm dating!) being in the bathroom while I am brushing my teeth...

but if the brother and the sister are comfortable doing it, it's not intrinsically inappropriate.

It's between the brother and the sister, not the spouse...

[adrian_turtle]

I think there's something weirdly gendered going on here, though it's hard for me to tell exactly what. It's so common, so traditional, for women to put on makeup in women's spaces--places that aren't "intimate," but aren't public either. The counter of a communal women's bathroom, a beauty parlor, a slumber party for tween girls...There are a great many women who are uncomfortable doing personal grooming other than in private, in women's space, or with their husband in the room. (Little boys are allowed to be in women's space because motherhood would be impossible otherwise.) Some of them extend that discomfort to a kind of default belief that everybody else must feel similarly.

Considering the complete lack of self-awareness in her suggested response, I'm oddly impressed by the LW's recognition that her husband and sister-in-law feel none of her discomfort, and her attempt to figure out that it might be a cultural difference. Even if she gets it completely wrong in so many other ways--ie, there's nothing intrinsically inappropriate in what the brother and sister are doing, and joining them signals comfort not discomfort.