The Fart Chronicles

Someone in the office has been lighting it up all morning. Everyone ignored the stench the first couple of times although I’d assume everyone else’s nose hairs were also one gas bomb away from bursting into flames. Finally, the filterless guy in the cubicle adjacent to my own shouts: “okay, who keeps farting.” Whispered laughter follows like juvenile snickers during a middle school sex-ed class. Twitchy, trying to be funny, goes “Well we know it wasn’t Alex… girls don’t fart.” Now, I’m not a feminist, but I don’t deal with testosterone driven ignorant digs at my gender. And while I normally I’d consider this piracy of someone else’s labors; I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to elicit discomfort among coworkers.

“Actually it was me. Sorry.”

The culprit currently shitting themself must be thanking their lucky stars that the intern took the fall for their post-Mexican night fart fiesta.

“Girls don’t fart!” Filterless Fred shouts and everyone laughs other than my gay BFF and me. Now that’s complete bull… the one time I take the fall for someone else’s flatulence and no one believes me. Fine you go ahead and attribute the fart storm to fatty down the hall.

I don’t understand the necessity men feel to convince themselves that girls don’t fart, burp, poop, pee or pick our noses... even at a young age. I think my brothers are still convinced that girls don’t fart; they’ve just boiled it down to their unwavering conviction that their sister is merely a lesbian that engages in completely heterosexual behavior. I’ve met girls that can burp louder than a fog horn and smelled female farts bordering on chemical warfare. As a matter of fact, I’m often filled with so much escaped carbonation that I’m surprised my dress doesn’t double as a hot air balloon and send me floating into the sky above. And I sincerely hope every macho dude reading this is either choking back vomit or going to experience a vast amount of uneasiness the next time he runs into me in a public arena. Yes fellas, girls fart and burp and dig through our nostrils for giant boogers that we’d totally wipe on your arm if we weren’t afraid of driving you to the verge of tears. We don’t live in a gingerbread fairyland where we pretend that you don’t spend hours assaulting your aardvark to online photos and videos of skinnier girls with way bigger boobs than us. So don’t pretend that a burrito won’t spark the same response from our delicate flower bowels that it would from your own “I only eat red meat because chicken has the word chick in it” digestive organs.

Now women don’t have to go around farting in boys’ faces as an act of feminist defiance… that will do nothing but ensure your presence in a sperm bank in the upcoming years. But men should have enough respect for the fact that we limit our fanny burping to occasions when you are not present—unless accidental—and you should follow suit. However, I have zero issue with burping in front of guys. Farting I can hold back, but I feel my belch abilities warrant the involvement of others. In the words of the Jim the high school Athletic Trainer: “it’s better to burp and taste it than fart and waste it.” Since then, I’ve held onto those powerful words as a religious doctrine of natural gas expulsion and never looked back. It’s unfair for the male species to draw an imaginary line between what women are “expected” to do and what we’re “allowed” to do. I don’t expect you to take nightly candlelit baths, but I would allow you to enjoy the occasional bubble bath without relentlessly mocking your sexuality. My little brother went through a bubble bath phase in high school. He would fill my parents’ Jacuzzi tub, light 47 candles and deposit half a bottle of lavender bubble bath… then God only knows. At the time, I called him a pansy and convinced the family that he was a Liza Minelli album away from his closet departure. But today, I realize that those bubble baths were as cathartic for him as burping in public is for me… not to mention he has a long-term girlfriend now and the only person’s interest I’ve captivated operates buses . And given my brother’s enraged demeanor at the time, I’m pretty sure the candlelit soaks served as the one thing keeping him from beating the sarcasm out of me during one of my daily verbal torture sessions.

Now if you’re a girl and still maintain that you don’t burp, flatulate, pick your nose or poop, you undoubtedly also wear Lilly Pulitzer, own monogrammed bath accessories and your professional title fits under the category of Submissive Sandwich Maker. Even more than I hate a man telling me it’s gross when I engage in natural fume dismissals, I hate when women advise me that burping isn’t “ladylike.” Just for that, I’m coming to your next junior league meeting, using the wrong fork AND wiping boogers on each of the centerpieces. You keep telling me I’ll never find a husband if I keep “doing that” but I’m certain that if my future marriage fails because my husband is offended by my burptastic interpretation of Rappers Delight, we had bigger issues to start with. I live in a free society, so I will continue to take full advantage of the fact that I can drink a can of sodapop and make it rain belches without having my esophagus removed by the resident witchdoctor. And if I stay single a little longer than planned, so be it. I’ll come to your wedding stag, pretend to be happy for you and Jarad the Subway guy and post up by the open bar. And if you don’t have an open bar, I will decline invitation by way of fake root canal. Always the bridesmaid, never the open bar.