POTTY MOUTH

Potty mouth!
Airline smacked, kisses off urinals planned for JFK

By MICHAEL SAUL
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU


Plan to install arty urinal above, designed to look like a woman's mouth, at Virgin Atlantic's JFK terminal has generated a lotta lip.


Councilmen John Liu (below l.) and Philip Reed joined women's group NOW to pan the provocative pissoir as disgusting and sexist.

Gee whiz.Virgin Atlantic's provocative urinals - shaped like a woman's open mouth - just got the royal flush.The airline announced yesterday it would not install the urinals in the men's room of its new clubhouse in Kennedy Airport's Terminal 4 because of public criticism."We apologize to people we offended. No offense was intended," said John Riordan, the airline's vice president of customer services. "Any piece of art, by its nature, has its critics and its fans."At a news conference at City Hall yesterday, Councilman Philip Reed (D-Manhattan) called the urinals inappropriate, disgusting and sexist.In short, he didn't like them. And he wasn't alone."There's something wrong with someone who thinks that urinating symbolically into the mouth of a woman is quirky and fun," said Rita Haley, president of the city's chapter of the National Organization for Women."It displays a horrendous lack of social consciousness," Haley added. "The [urinals] are disgusting, degrading and humiliating to women and they encourage the abuse of women."Councilman John Liu (D-Queens) suggested designing urinals in the shape of the face of Virgin Atlantic founder, Sir Richard Branson. "They should not have any problems with their own face being on these urinals," Liu said.The airline hasn't chosen a replacement, but Riordan said it will be a novelty design.Meike van Schijndel, a 30-year-old woman from the Netherlands who designed the "Kisses" urinal, told the Daily News that her designs are supposed to create a "fantasy world" in the bathroom."The thought that this urinal only represents a man peeing in a woman's mouth never even occurred to me while making it," she wrote in an E-mail."Lighten up," she added. "[It's] just a cartoonish looking mouth. There are worse things in the world to get all worked up about."

Originally published on March 20, 2004