Why The Girl Who Put Her Poop in Her Handbag is the Feminist Hero We Need

One of the beautifully mortifying things about modern life is the speed we can share stories with the whole entire world, so by now we’ve all heard the story of the girl who put her poop in her purse while she was on a date.

If you read that sentence and were like, “whoah, whoah, wtf are you even talking about, Gab?”, then you have some catching up to do. I’ll make it easy for you by pointing you to the many resources on the internet that have retold this poor gal’s story.

Come back when you’ve had a chance to digest all of that.

I’m not here to retell Makela’s (her actual name) story, because by now, it’s made the internet rounds more than enough times. Her story is enough to make the boldest and most self-confident people flush with embarrassment and recoil in horror. But it’s also more than the modern-day nightmare told on 140 character soundbites that it appears to be.

While most of us have never had a turd stowaway in our handbags (and would hope to keep it that way), there’s something so completely relatable to Makela’s story.

We may not have had the extreme level of commitment that our Twitter Hero may have had, but no one can dare to deny that we’ve all had those, “oh, shit shit shit” moments in the most inopportune settings where some THING just won’t go down. Miranda July’s novel The First Bad Man has a scene where the main character goes through a similarly horrifying ordeal and I recall reading that passage thinking, “No no no no no, don’t do it, don’t do it… OMG she did it. OF COURSE IT WOULDN’T FLUSH.”

July’s book is far more relatable as an example, because in this case, the turd goes down on the second flush. I can 100% guarantee that everybody reading this article knows the feeling of triumphant relief of a successful second attempt flush. And if you don’t… well then you haven’t truly lived, have you? What makes Makela’s twitter story relatable is that so many us have been so uncomfortably close to this worst nightmare come to life, had it not been for the mercy of that second flush.

But here’s where it gets interesting and where Makela’s story becomes a part of a larger (bowel) movement of female empowerment. Because despite whatever disgust you may feel about this story, Makela is a hero for women.

Let’s start with the obvious, Makela the Pooper is a gorgeous woman. Her twitter is full of Kim Kardashian-level selfies and she could easily pass for a swimsuit model. She’s the LAST person you’d expect to hide a #2 in her handbag. Makela is like… Instagram-fitness-model-endorsing-booty-workouts level gorgeous. Part of the intrigue of her story is that no one believes someone SO HOT could do such a gross thing. But, like, if people saw a photo of me, and then I said I once had a piece of poo in my purse for about 45 minutes, people would be like, “yeah, that’s plausible, I guess”.

But why is that? Why do we assume someone is “too pretty” to put a poop in a purse?

Women have been socially conditioned to hide the fact that they have normal, functioning, human bodies. Anything that remotely enters the territory of “gross”, women are not supposed to do.

I remember being a teenager and my high school boyfriend saying something along the lines of, “Girls don’t poop. They just don’t. They’re too pretty.”

I roll my eyes at this line now and at the time I remember thinking, “Uhhh, yes we do, dummy.” BUT DID I SAY THAT TO HIM?

Of course not, because if I told him, “hey, no, pretty girls have to poo, we actually do poo, like… all people poo”, then MAYBE he wouldn’t have thought I was pretty anymore and as a 14 year old, what could be worse than your boyfriend not thinking you’re pretty?

I know, it’s him thinking you’re an ugly girl who poops.

When Makela published this story she caught the attention of the world. While men are asking, “why the f*ck would you ever resort to that scenario?”, I’m sure there are plenty of women out there who are saying, “Yeah, I can see how that could be a temporary solution.”

Think back on the last moment you did something terribly embarrassing. Now think back to a few seconds before you did the completely embarrassing thing. The immediate, vomit-inducing, pang of utter and complete dread is what Makela was feeling the entire time her purse sat on the floor with a piece of poo in it. To have the confidence to share that story and laugh about it, rather than let it disappear to a dusty, forgotten corner of shame in her memory, was a boldly feminist move.

Since the story came out and began circulating widely, Makela has expressed some disappointment, “All of the hard work I put into being a hot girl is tarnished by one teeny tiny poop story. Now I’m just the poop girl.”

In a world where men actually pretend to believe that women don’t have bowel movements, Makela made a splash. She’s not “the poop girl”, she’s a feminist hero for exposing one of our greatest fears and making it funny instead of shameful.

Thanks Makela. Keep doo-doing you.