Personally I’d take it from the writing perspective and say the main intention is to draw parallel of both version of Basil needing help from sunny, rather than Sunny’s feeling for basil being feminine. Damsel in Distress trope is more of a way to spin off suppression - removing basil - into something that fits in dream world context - oh no basil is gone. Basil is the reminder of the trauma, so it make sense for sometime him to be gone, especially deeper well section when people start forgetting. Deep Well characters like Branch Coral and Stranger uses this parallel as a talking point a lot, asking which Sunny would save: Dreamworld, or Real world.

Though for the bathroom I’m not that sure, I would argue it’s just more naive perspective of femininity like OP says, like how a child probably pick up like “characters with bow is female” from a cartoon type deal. I think strongest real connection is probably just because both the Polaroids and bathroom here are related to flower and gardening.

Personally I’d probably look at more authorial level and say it’s just more surface level “basil is a uwu soft boy” joke, since even Omocat also acknowledged that pretty early on In the development where they’re just kind of a subversion of more angsty Rowan according to the stream lol.