Our Bodies, Our Shits


I’m not a player, I just shit a lot.
Can someone please tell me what’s going on with women and poop lately? Seriously, it feels like every commercial I see is the sisterhood of the fucked up intestinal tract. Let me be clear. I have no problem with openness surrounding women and bodily functions – it’s certainly better than the sexist women-don’t-poop thing or the hilarity that dudes find in women shitting (because it means we’re like actual people). But I find commercials like these, well…hard to stomach.

Ladies’ insides = The Perfect Storm. I’m fairly sure that men have stomach-related problems, so why is nearly every shit-product marketed solely to women?
Take the most famous of crap-making yogurts, Activia. (Said much classier on the Activia website, which notes the yogurt will “reduce long intestinal transit time.”)

Or fellow poop-pusher, Yoplait:

And let’s not even get into laxatives.

Now, these commercials are clearly hilarious (as proven by Sarah Haskins in Target Women’s “Number Two” episode), but there’s something that bothers me beyond the eye-roll inducing stupidness of them: eating disorders.
I’ve known many women who use laxatives (and now yogurt?) as a way to lose weight. And I can’t help but think that maybe these companies know that. I mean, someone correct me if I’m wrong – but is there some nationwide scourge of constipated women that I don’t know about? Is there any reason that products like these would be marketed specifically to women? Perhaps I’m looking into it too much, but given the way that many women abuse their digestive systems – this trend just doesn’t sit right with me.
So please, yogurt makers and directors of commercials – lose the poop euphemisms and stormy-stomached visuals. I promise, someone will buy your shitty product anyway.

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