I had a discussion a while back with a woman who strongly believed that it was impossible to reconcile raucous defecation with femininity. My argument was that prodigious bowel habits, while perhaps not meshing with an out-dated, unsophisticated view of femininity (a view that values subordination and silent conformity over empowerment and self-sufficiency), can and do provide women with an outlet to embrace their physicality and natural bodily functions while asserting their natural equality to men.
After all, everybody poops. I submit that pooping not only does not diminish a woman's femininity, but can actually re-assert it by reinforcing the paradigm of women as the giver-of life and the prime creative force in the history of humanity.
I thought it best to illustrate this view with a short story. The purpose of this story is to show how women empower themselves through their feces and can replace the stigma of large, greasy BMs with the realization of their own inner-power and their God-given right to shamelessly indulge in this most exquisite bodily function. In short, how to poop with pride.
Using a modified and truncated form of the classic "Heroes Journey" format, formulated by the late mythologist Joseph Campbell, I examine the fecular conflict between a fictional woman and her male adversary, and the internal struggle she must resolve if she is to emerge victorious. This is followed by an essay deciphering the motifs and symbolism of the story.
How Vera Got Her Groove Back
A tale of feminine empowerment
Luther tip-toed through the woods, gingerly stepping around the nettles and brambles in his path. The full moon was high in the mid-summer night sky, bathing the forest in a pale, purple glow and lighting his path to destiny. Luther's bowels rumbled in anticipation of battle. His nude body glistening, he began to run.
Vera stood at the kitchen window, searching for movement in the treeline. She was certain she had read the signs correctly, and that this was the night that would decide her fate. Her intestines twitched and rumbled gently. "Prepare yourselves," she whispered, patting her belly gently. "For tonight you must prove your worth."
Vera heard the snapping of twigs and the sound of footfalls approaching from the north-east. "It is time." she breathed.
Luther's pace quickened. He could see a woman's form silhouetted against the glow of the kitchen window through the tree branches. It was now or never. He leapt forward at a full sprint, bursting from the underbrush, flailing his arms wildly and unhinging his jaw in an insane battle-cry: "Ole!!!"
Vera hopped gingerly from the kitchen counter to the floor, her nude body jiggling with the fat reserves she had built-up during the previous five months of training. She was in top form. Months of consuming only pork 'n beans, egg nog, and Jimmy Dean's Breakfast Burritos had given her a jiggling, protective layer of fat as well as provided her bowels with just the right raw materials to craft a panopoly of viscous and meaty excreta. She was ready.
Suddenly, the kitchen window exploded inward, and a naked, greasy man cart-wheeled over the sink and onto the kitchen table, where he crouched on all fours, quivering in anticipation.
Vera stared squarely at the man who was about to challenge her, standing tall and joggling her ample rump to discourage and intimidate the intruder. "Luther!" she hissed, "I might have known! I could smell your weak, dry girly-farts from a mile away!"
Luther was not intimidated. "Your immature poop-tube is no match for my battle-hardened bowels!" he shouted, shivering with rage. "You cannot win!" With that, Luther grasped the sides of the kitchen table and began to strain.
"Ole!!!" shrieked Luther, trembling and clenching his bowels mightily, his face turning purple with effort, his eyes bulging. "Feel my skills!" he cried, as an enormous soft-serve dookie piped out of his roiling sphincter. Every muscle in Luther's naked, gleaming body quivered; and as he huffed and puffed, the dookie grew, coiling around itself five full times.
Luther's boggling eyes locked onto Vera's. "Observe and rejoice!" he commanded, spiraling his hips in a tight circle, leaving a perfect curly-cue atop the glorious, steaming mound.
Tears began to well in Vera's eyes. "Indeed, I have felt your skills," she whispered, falling to her knees, awestruck.
"Ole!!!" cried Luther again, triumphantly snapping his fingers. With a wink and a grin, he leapt from the kitchen table and out the window and into the night. The sculpted fecal mass sat glistening and steaming in the moonlight, mocking her; the only evidence that Vera had been in the presence of greatness just moments before.
Tears streamed down Vera's face as she sobbed loudly: "O, most high and glorious turd, fruit of the butt, bless me with thy bounty! Grant me the intestinal fortitude to launch from my quivering anus, a squeemy splurge worthy of this most terrible and righteous adversary!"
Vera's words drifted through the silent kitchen, with only the crickets to answer her. Suddenly, a grumbly gurgle slowly wound its way from Vera's stomach, through her quaking bowels and out the puckered ring of her flaring rectum. "Vai Victor!" gasped Vera, as a long, squeaking sigh erupted from her nether-regions. The squeak became a rumbling, rapid-fire staccato that burned her fluttering anus, and her eyes popped wide and her breath caught in her chest. She fell to all fours as her butt roared a sloppy, splattering battle-cry, rife with bravado and chunks of feces, which popped and sputtered from her butt and coated the refrigerator door in a fecal Rorschach test.
The air was filled with the sweet, sweet scent of rotting liverwurst. "O, blessed chunks! Harbinger of doom!" cried Vera fiercely, her quaking bowels purifying and purging themselves to pave the way for the miracle that was winding its way through her pulsing intestines. "Behold my wrath!"
Quivering and throwing her head back, Vera thrust her hips into the air as she gritted her teeth, bore down and launched a solid log two-and-a-half feet long and five inches thick from her gaping anus. "LUUUTHERRR!" screamed Vera as the rancid log tumbled and pin-wheeled end over end through the night air, dancing in the moonlight and piercing the flaccid pile left on the kitchen table by Luther minutes before, standing straight and erect like a flagpole.
Vera's sweaty face blazed beet-red. Her hair, sticky and frosted with fresh fart-mist, flowed around her shoulders like a glorious mane. She breathed in deep through her flaring nostrils. "Ah, yes! A most pungent offering! What man can deny?" She gazed proudly upon her mighty butt-baby which had skewered its enemy, standing proud and tall in victory, and she wept.
From deep in the woods, Vera heard a keening, anguished cry that pierced the darkness like a silver needle; and then a rumbling, flatular groan that grew louder and louder, higher and higher, until it was a high-pitched squeal, buzzing and whistling. Vera rushed to the broken window just in time to see a bright flash from the woods, followed by a sizzling *POP* that echoed for miles. Moments later, fat, gooey drops of human manure rained down from the sky, and Vera knew that Luther's vanquished bowels had exploded in shame.
In the east, the sky was growing light, and the first birds began to chirp and stir. "It's going to be a beautiful day," thought Vera, wiping her butt on the tablecloth. "A beautiful day, indeed."
Deconstructing "How Vera Got Her Groove Back"
To make my point about defecation as a path to feminine empowerment, I needed to write about a self-actualized woman who is not only unashamed of her bowel habits, but is also a proud pooper and strong in the fecal arts. The story takes place in a woman's kitchen because that is traditionally a domain where women have historically ruled; and I felt that having Luther come crashing into that domain uninvited and dropping a deuce in the middle of the kitchen table represented a direct and unmistakable sign of disrespect and a challenge to Vera's authority and femininity. Vera?s adversary is male, which represents the battle between the sexes; conventional wisdom suggests that generally, the arena of combative defecation is dominated by men.
Luther's brazen comments and the fact that he leaves before Vera has a chance to retort symbolizes society's implicit belief that men are superior to women in, among other things, their leavings, both in size, odor and destructive capacity, and that women are relegated to shit quietly and shamefully in the background. Indeed, if a woman's bowel habits are regarded at all in contemporary western societies, it is often at the expense of their femininity. Luther's sexist mind assumes that there is no chance that Vera, a woman, could possibly produce a turd rivaling his own; so he leaves, certain of his innate superiority, without giving her a fair shake and the opportunity to demonstrate her talents.
When Vera struggles with her own self-consciousness and uncertainty after witnessing Luther's powerful attack on her self-worth, she is alone in her kitchen. This symbolizes the private struggle many women go through while trying to reconcile society's demands of femininity with the massive load they feel trying to escape their colon. Young girls are taught that feces-related comments and conversations are "un-ladylike." This can only result in shame in the act of pooping and a schism in the child's psyche.
Vera shatters this taboo and utterly destroys the schism by falling to her knees and wishing, out loud, for a hefty bowel-child to magically appear which will rival that left by her male adversary -- thereby challenging society to examine it's attitudes about women laying grim log. As her bowels sloppily spring into action, in her state of amazement, she cries: "O, blessed chunks, harbinger of doom!" This comment is a double-entendre: signifying both the now-imminent demise of her adversary, as well as the destruction of the old paradigm of women as inferior poopers. Her confidence has returned, and she is ready to give it her all, society be damned.
It seemed necessary to have the poops clash with one another, as they represent the stripped-down, symbolic id and collective unconsciousness of both parties. It had already been established that while Luther's poop was large and flashy, it was all style and no substance, ultimately flaccid, complete with a smart-ass curly-queue on top which says "fuck you." Vera's turd needed to be Large, Bold and Strong: a turd that favored righteous honesty and brute strength over clever spirals and sneaky viscosity.
It was also important that Vera's progeny destroyed its enemy with no extraneous help from Vera. The moment it leaves her O-ring, it is out of Vera's control, she has done all she can. It emerges from her poop-chute and sails, under no outside power other than that which was transferred to it by Vera's powerful bowels, symbolizing the timeless inner battle every mother must go through as her child grows and suddenly, one day is on his own. The mother must watch, helpless, hoping she has given the child the knowledge and strength to navigate the tumultuous waters of the real world.
Vera's offering proves itself to be ready for the challenge. It tumbles through the night air on its own and literally spears its enemy, thrusting majestically into it in a single stroke, standing tall and erect. This may evoke strong phallic imagery for some sensitive readers, but it unmistakably illustrates Vera's ultimate dominance over her adversary.
Vera's only acknowledgment of her handiwork is a single telling sentence: "Ah, yes! A most pungent offering! What man can deny?" Proudly admiring the stench and thereby owning it, Vera is unashamed, and challenging any other pretenders-to the-throne. She is now acutely aware of her power and strength, and Luther, though he has left the scene, suffers swift and severe retribution through a process I call "flash-sphincturization."
It then begins to rain poop, symbolizing the washing away of the old world in which women regard their bowel habits with silent shame. Vera has won, and a new day dawns.
