You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos (9 page)

Despite this Victorian shame, excretion would still not become a private activity until the twentieth century. Although the concept of the modern toilet dates to 1596, when Sir John Harrington made one for his godmother, the aforementioned Queen Elizabeth,
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they did not come into general use among the wealthy until the late 1800s.

In America, indoor flush toilets would not become popular outside of wealthy urban neighborhoods until after World War I, when soldiers returned from Europe raving about them.
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Until then America’s largely rural population depended on outhouses and the age-old chamber pot. Although outhouses could offer privacy, they often did not. They came with as many as six seats, complete with different sized holes for different sized posteriors, and it was common for family members to use the unpartitioned seats simultaneously. Not until the 1920s’ housing boom did bathrooms become common, cementing excretion as a private affair.
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Another twentieth-century development that allowed the taboo to reach its zenith was mass communication. The early 1900s saw the development of the record player, the radio, movies, and television. Mass communication could be censored much more easily than locally-performed live entertainment, and it was.

The fledgling movie industry was regulated by the Hays Office.
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The Hays Office expunged any intimations of excretion in movies. In 1936 it sent a letter to United Artists about Charlie Chaplin’s
Modern Times
, urging it to eliminate “the business of the stomach rumbling on the part of the minister’s wife and Charlie.”
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In 1941 the Hays Office warned Universal Pictures about using the words “stinker” and “stinkeroo” in a W.C. Fields movie.

In 1968 the Hays Office was disbanded by the motion picture industry after several state courts declared its censorship unconstitutional. The Hays Office was then replaced by the current rating system (for example G, PG-13, R). Despite this change, it was not until 1974 that flatus first appeared on screen, in
Blazing Saddles
.

Blazing Saddles
had a scene that lampooned cowboy westerns for always showing cowboys eating beans without showing the results. The scene showed the results and was widely criticized. One
New York Times
editorial that lambasted the movie began, “Every society has its unspoken taboos. They linger in the twilight of public consciousness until something called bad taste brings them into the open.”
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Television was slower to accept flatus freedom. In fact, the television version of
Blazing Saddles
to this day has the cowboys’ farting overdubbed with horses whinnying. The word “fart” was first said on the little screen during a critique of the word’s use on radio. On an NBC news program in 1982, a segment on X-rated radio went like this:

This treatment is a strong contrast to the relative freedom that flatulence currently receives in the media. Even the family entertainment bastion Walt Disney embraced its comedic value in its G-rated hit movie
The Lion King
(1994), with its farting warthog character, Pumbaa. This media exposure is loosening the excrement taboo’s hold on society and returning it to the more natural attitude that has prevailed throughout human history.

The excrement taboo has stifled talk about excrement, its handling, and the body parts from which it is expelled. The resulting ignorance has had multiple ramifications.

First, the taboo about excrement has influenced the quality of our bathrooms. Technology has transformed all aspects of our lives. Ovens, refrigerators, and blow dryers have all undergone amazing changes in the last fifty years. Toilets have hardly changed since the late 1800s.
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The advantages of not having as strong an excrement taboo can be seen in Japan. Many modern Japanese homes have electronic toilets that can heat the seat at preprogrammed times, such as when you wake up in the morning. These toilet marvels also have hydraulic jets for anal or genital cleansing, hot air dryers, and can make sounds to hide any embarrassing ones created by your body. Some of these toilets can even check a person’s temperature, blood pressure, and blood sugar and transmit the data to a medical professional.

Yet the most consequential problem with Western toilets is not that they lack these frills but that they are horribly designed.
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Western toilets make one sit. Sitting is an unnatural position.
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Evolution has designed human beings to squat when defecating. Most of the world’s population squats. Squatting straightens the rectoanal junction allowing an unimpeded path to the anus,
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and spreads the buttocks allowing for a cleaner and quieter release. In addition, when squatting the thighs exert pressure on the stomach aiding in expulsion. Squatting has a hygienic advantage as well because the rear does not come in contact with anything.

A drawback to squatting is that it takes more energy and older Americans who are new to it may have difficulty. This is not a problem for older people who have been squatting all their lives because their squatting muscles, the upper leg muscles and abdominals, have been developed. These muscles are the same muscles used in
expelling excrement and one of the reasons American elderly have constipation is because these muscles have atrophied.
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The seated defecation posture’s effect on regularity has been known for a long time. One author wrote in 1924 “the adoption of the squatting attitude would . . . help in no small measure to remedy the greatest physical vice of the white race, the constipation that has become a contentment.”
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The unnatural defecation position that Western toilets require may have graver ramifications than merely constipation. There are reasons to believe that the seated posture contributes to a range of bowel problems—appendicitis, Crohn’s disease, colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, colon cancer, incontinence, hemorrhoids,
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diverticulosis,
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and heart attacks on the toilet.
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These afflictions are significantly rarer in Asia and Africa, where the squatting method of defecation is predominant. For the past century doctors have tried to attribute this to diet—particularly lack of fiber. However, diet has not fully explained the difference.
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The rationale behind these theories, briefly, is that (1) the sitting method does not promote full evacuation. The leftover fecal material stagnates and can lodge in the appendix, where it causes appendicitis, and to the walls of the lower digestive tract, where it can contribute to Crohn’s disease, colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, and colon cancer.

(2) When in the seated position, people perform the Valsalva maneuver to evacuate. The Valsalva maneuver requires a pushing down with the diaphragm while holding one’s breath. This unnatural straining can cause heart attacks in the weak and the repeated stress on the lower digestive system over a lifetime leads to incontinence, hemorrhoids, and diverticulosis.

While hundreds of studies have been done trying to connect varying diets to the above problems, the sitting-squatting hypothesis has been practically unexplored.
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The taboo interferes with Americans’ use of facilities as well. Men urinate standing up. This would be acceptable if men aimed at the water in the bowl. However, because they are embarrassed by the sound that is produced from peeing into the
water, many men instead aim for the bowl’s side walls. This is a smaller target and porcelain is harder than water, ergo, larger backsplashes are created. Just how far urine aimed in this manner can backsplash is known to those who clean bathrooms.

Backsplash is less of a problem with urinals because the urine is usually falling a shorter distance, but even America’s urinals are poorly designed to minimize backsplash. When urine leaves the penis, it moves in a tight rotating sheet for the first several inches, after which it breaks into a continually widening spray.
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A well-shaped urinal would be more like a funnel, trapping this widening spray and directing the backsplash inward.
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American women, on the other hand, are not even aware they have the ability to stand and urinate accurately just like men. A woman simply has to make a “v” with her first and second finger, spreading the inside of her labia minora, and lift to the desired angle.
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The standing method is still popular in rural areas of India and the Philippines, and up until a hundred years ago it was common practice for Western females as well.

For a while, the standing method was making an underground comeback, with the technique spread on a website.
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One woman was quoted on the website as writing,

Another woman wrote that she improved her technique until she could pee her name in the snow, and complained “My, what our mothers never taught us!!”
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One ramification of this technique being buried is that women must stand in arduously long lines at public events waiting to use the restrooms as men fly in and out of their facilities.
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Ironically most of these women are waiting to use toilets they won’t touch anyway. Instead they will acrobatically hover over them.

The topic of hovering leads to a modern marvel of futility—the public restroom. One American survey found that nearly thirty percent of Americans avoid public restrooms altogether and that sixty percent of the people who do use public toilets hover.
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Women appear to be more apt to hover than men, with one British study showing that eighty-five percent of women hover.
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Hovering stems from a fear of coming in contact with toilet seats soiled by other peoples’ rear ends. This may appear rational until you consider that a 2002 study found that the average office toilet seat contained forty-nine germs per square inch, while office desktops had roughly 21,000 germs per square inch and office phones had 25,000.
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In addition, at home many of these hoverers do not shut the toilet lid after flushing, meaning that fecal matter is regularly sprayed on their toothbrush.
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The problem with hoverers is that they often miss the hole and leave a pile of their feces sitting on the seat, effectively putting the toilet out of commission for everyone else. Westerners find the Asian squat toilet inappropriate, and yet on any toilet but their own many of them squat and hover, leaving behind foul messes.
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Another area in which the excrement taboo hampers progress is cleaning. Here in America toilet paper is used to clean after defecation. But polls show that even among Americans, there is no consensus on how to use the toilet paper. Since it is never talked about most people do not realize they are all using different methods. Most people wipe from front to back from the back. The second most popular method is from back to front from the front.
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Roughly half the population folds their toilet paper and the other half crumple.
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The average total of squares of toilet paper used is eighteen.
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The first problem with this is that females who wipe from back to front are risking vaginal infections. The second problem is that there are people who are inefficient wipers. Folding is the most efficient method. Crumplers are wasting considerable amounts of toilet paper. If one surmises that half of the population is using twice as much toilet paper as necessary, it is evident that vast forests are needlessly being flushed down America’s commodes.

Toilet paper is not used in many parts of the world. One alternative is using the
left hand to wash with water, as in Arab countries and India. While many Americans may find this repulsive, the feeling is mutual. Hand wipers do not understand how Americans can expect to get clean with a dry paper wipe.

Their criticism is valid because dry paper leaves residue, particularly on those with an abundance of hair surrounding the anus.
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In 1964 Dr. J.A. Cameron surveyed the underwear of 940 men in Oxfordshire, England, and found contamination in almost half of them, ranging from “wasp-colored stains” to “frank massive feces.”
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Incomplete cleaning can lead to odors, chafing, and infections.
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Some Americans may dislike the need to wash one’s hands after a wet hand wipe, but for proper hygiene one should be cleaning one’s hands after the paper method as well. This rule even applies to crumplers who use half a roll of toilet paper.