An interesting column in The Daily Tar Heel at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is pushing for greater dialogue about “the brown elephant in the room”: poop. The call for increased fecal matter chatter is not simply about bettering our physical health, but also getting past “certain assumptions about genders.”
–
DTH columnist Jagir Patel calls its “poop stigma.” Apparently, the lack of discussion surrounding our regular #2 activity has led to a societal belief that “[w]omen and poop are supposed to be strangers to maintain an ideal of feminine perfection.”
–
–
A portion of Patel’s piece, headlined “Dumping on Taboos“: “My friend recently said her long-term boyfriend gets awkward when she alludes to the fact that she poops. He gets upset, she says, when she talks about her bowel movements. She still doesn’t feel comfortable farting around him, even though he frequently farts around her, and his friends often joke about poops and toots within their bro gang.”
–
I’ve read Patel with increasing interest this semester. He’s tackled personal issues including being gay and Indian (or what he calls “finding brown in the rainbow,“ instead of “the brown elephant in the room”) and has published pushes for greater dialogue on subjects such as sex and self-pleasure. His view about that: “Perhaps if we chatted more about our penises, vaginas and anuses, as well as how they can most responsibly be pleased, we would have less STDs and more orgasms.”
–
–
Related
Best Student Press Column of All Time?: ‘Poop Bandit on the Loose’
Student Press Headlines That Make Me Giggle: Poop and Mold Edition
Campus Restroom Graffiti Deserves a Fresh Report
–
–
