Let's jump on the euphemism train to Shit-town!

I wasn’t raised to be ashamed of natural bodily functions. When I discovered that other high-school girls from the Southern Baptist church of my youth were unable to get their bowel movements on in the bathrooms of our day-camp-cabins and mission-trip bunking quarters, I was aghast. For some, it was just a matter of getting to a nearby Wal-Mart water closet, away from the cohort. For others, apparently, the thought of pooping in a bathroom where others might know that they were doing (or had done) doodoo was enough to stop them up for a week. Meanwhile, our gentlemanly counterparts -- if rumor proved true -- were being more creative with their waste than the Marquis de Sade (according to Quills, anyway).

Nothing could be less feminine, it seemed, than taking a shit.

Of course, ads and ladymags have been teaching us to hide our non-goddess-like (but necessary) activities for years. (Keep those tampons hidden, girls!) At least two of Sex and the City’s BFFs confessed to hesitance -- if not downright refusal -- to poop in a boyfriend’s apartment. (I believe “the act” was referred to as some derivation of “the number two.”) Way to reinforce that shame!

While my dear, sweet, teenaged baby sister was buying into the whole “excretion that dare not speak its name” thing, thanks to SATC, I was living with -- at least based on a small informal survey of my friends -- the most extraordinarily well-adjusted fella on earth. Seriously, if it seemed I had spent and extended period of time in the bathroom, he would pop in momentarily to hand me the latest copy of West Elm or some other catalog, holding his nose playfully, exclaiming “Cute!”

TMI? That’s just how much I don’t care. Nor does the hilarious Sarah Haskins, if we are to glean anything from her latest “Target Women” segment for Current TV’s InfoMania, wherein she teases out the various codes for poop in TV advertising aimed at women.