by Lindsay Goldwert, Fast Company
At the beginning of my career as a journalist, I worked in womenâs magazines, where the very intake of food was fraught with self-hatred and high-stakes personal bargaining. In my days as a freelance and full-time employee at Marie Claire, Redbook and Glamour magazines, I can tell you with absolute certainty that I never once heard a woman execute a bowel movement while I was in the bathroom with her. At the time, I believe I associated this with extreme will-power.
These women who wore Botega Venetta bags that matched their highlights simply did not ingest anything with enough calories to result in something so base and common as fecal matter. Now I realize that those women were most certainly cowering in their stalls, waiting for me to leave so that they could go in peace. We all have our tricks to avoid having to excrete at work.
Friends and colleagues have admitted using the restroom on other floors, running to the Starbucks across the street (oh, the irony), fleeing the bathroom if someone comes in and throwing toilet paper into the bowl first to muffle any grotesque sounds. Others will sit on the toilet, drenched in sweat, unable relieve themselves until theyâre sure thereâs no one else around. Our most basic functions reveal us to be human and therefore fallible and ultimately vulnerable to disgust and humiliation.
[Photo: Flickr user Orin Zebest]
