Critics get no satisfaction from Rolling Stones museum men’s room

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REPORTING FROM BERLIN -- For 50 years, the Rolling Stones have offended the sensibilities of squeamish types around the world. Next stop on the culture-clash tour: the small northern German town of Luechow.

The city’s new Rolling Stones Fan Museum hasn’t even opened, but it’s already attracted controversy because of fixtures in its men’s room -- specifically, mouth-shaped urinals.

The urinals are based on the band’s famous logo, a pair of luscious open red lips with a tongue hanging out. The logo, created in 1971 by art designer John Pasche, was modeled after lead singer Mick Jagger’s famously rubbery mouth.

But critics say the urinals convey a misogynistic message.

‘There’s been an outcry among the people -- about a dozen women have complained to me alone,’ Marianne Joensson-Olm, equal-opportunities officer in Luechow, told NDR, a Hamburg-based broadcast network.

‘It’s discrimination against women,’ said Roda Armbruster, a local feminist. If the urinals sported a tongue, ‘it would have been acceptable,’ because the identification with the band and Jagger would have been unmistakable, she said. Without it, ‘it’s a woman’s mouth, not a man’s mouth.’

The museum’s founder, Ulrich Schroeder, denies that the fixtures represent a man’s mouth or a woman’s mouth or anyone’s mouth.

‘It’s art,’ he told the German daily Die Welt. ‘It’s staying.’

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-- Aaron Wiener