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We’ve Been Pooping Wrong All Along
‘I think the United States is ass-backwards, always.’
Among the unforeseen effects of the coronavirus pandemic, bidet sales in the U.S. have skyrocketed as people face toilet paper shortages across the nation.
But even prior to the pandemic, alternative toilets were entering the conversation in the name of wellness. Inspired by our ancestors and international neighbors, “innovations” like the Squatty Potty and bidet toilet attachments alter and supposedly optimize the way we poop.
“I think the United States is ass-backwards, always,” says Dr. Evan Goldstein, a proctologist and anal surgeon at his own New York and Los Angeles practice, Bespoke Surgical. “When you look at Europe, you look at the trends of bidets and appropriate hygiene from an anal perspective, the U.S. has always lagged behind.”
“I think the United States is ass-backwards, always.”
In colonial America, going to the bathroom was a seated affair. Privy pits — circular brick-lined wells — and outhouses with round holes cut from wood planks serving as a seat were precursors to the modern toilet. Elsewhere in the world, like China, squat toilets were commonplace, requiring a user to squat to floor level to reach the toilet opening. Just as popular outside Western culture were bidets, a basin for washing the nether regions.
Only recently did these previously foreign aspects of bathroom tradition trickle into American homes. In 2011, a Utah man and his parents debuted the Squatty Potty, a seven-inch footstool meant to replicate the experience of squatting while using the toilet. Marketed as a device that straightens out a kink where the rectum meets the anus, called the anorectal angle, allowing for a more productive and less strainful poop, the Squatty Potty quickly became a pop culture fixture and has inspired a number of similarly designed competitor stools.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, bidets never really managed to crack the American market. When American soldiers witnessed their use in European brothels during World War II, the basin was long associated with debauchery. Though Americans first combined a bidet with a toilet seat in the 1960s, these attachments are still…
