Continuing on in Dave Praeger’s Poop Culture - How America is Shaped by Its Grossest National Product.

“Angela Riccelli teaches at Stanford University’s School of Medicine.  In addition to her private practice, she consults with numerous medical facilities as a specialist in encopresis, a PSYCHOLOGICAL disorder that leaves children unable to control their bowels...For these children, their continually messy pants and the associated social and parental condemnation create a vicious circle: the more stressful pooping is, the more the child tries to hold it in; the more the child holds it in, the messier the outcome.

“It’s a serious problem, and widespread.  One children’s health site reports that 25% of ALL visits to pediatric gastroenterologists are due to chronic constipation and encopresis (holding it in; can’t hold it in)....The parents wonder what they’re doing wrong, and the children lose confidence and self-esteem.  Riccelli knows how important her work is.  Nevertheless, it was a shock...to be greeted by a new 5-year-old patient with the words, ‘Are you the poop lady?’  ‘The question took me aback,' said Riccelli, ‘Am I?  Do I even want to be?’

“This is the problem with poop: even in the most innocent of circumstances, it’s negative image can overwhelm all else (even a medical doctor)...Riccelli...still has to worry about being contaminated by proximity to poop (congrats to Riccelli for calling her essay Memoirs of a ‘Poop Lady’)...Anything... that invokes poop...passes through a set of filters [including all media] based on their interpretations of society’s mandates for fecal denial....they want to figure out WHERE it belongs.  They want to know where contamination lies, so as to avoid it.”

Your reaction to this site, to this blog, to the Packit Toilet kit, to the material from Dave’s book, may make you a little queasy.  But, as Dave writes, “at least you have an opinion.”  Dr. Riccelli, although working at the purely altruistic level of helping small children try and overcome these very difficult problems (which too often persist throughout one's entire life), still must suffer on a number of levels of her life because of her association with poop.

“But what happens when you want to invoke poop without invoking the stigma that goes with it?  Maybe you’re a company selling toilets (like Ultralight Wilderness Toilet)...you don’t want controversy.”  Like Dave and his publisher, we too also “try to balance humor and scholarship, sensationalism and civility, marketability and integrity...It’s extremely difficult to know what crosses the line.  As such, few people or organizations that need to invoke poop want to explore the limits.”

And that’s what we’re learning in our fledgling company's brief history.  Although we’ve gotten out and had accepted a number of press releases, the media hasn’t even responded with a single phone followup.  This may explain why “despite the successes of Duchamp, Manzoni, and Delyoye, relatively few artists have even included poop in their work.”  They came to understand the consequences of presenting a subject the majority of the world denies even exists.

We knew going in with the Packit Toilet kit that we would have a difficult time getting the media to pick up on the idea and help us broadcast it to those who might be interested: those who frequent the wild places and hate to squat.  We also knew the depth of poop denial, especially in the Anglo-American cultures.  But we also had hoped that at least some of the more liberal media would pick up on the toilet kit's practical aspects.  Alas, even the backpack and gear community mags have chosen not to publish our press release.

Of all the books ever written, few have a single character going to the bathroom, even to pee.  Pooping and peeing are not done by literary characters.  John Huston has a Puerto Rican fighter peeing blood in Fat City.  Many distributors wanted that scene cut.  Houston agreed to shorten it to a few seconds.  Authors and critics continue to worry that “a single bathroom scene will contaminate the rest of their work.”

Like the millions of children who either hold it in, or can’t hold it in, this enigmatic revulsion to our own body wastes - continues into the 21st century.  Countless millions of people throughout the world poop and pee in their own drinking water and die like flies eating poison.  The madness of man: his inability to face himself and the realities around him.  Two and a half billion people have NO sanitation.  Yet when you try and approach them about why they’re dying from their behavior, they’re too embarrassed to talk about it.  Many say that the deaths are due to something else - like ‘evil spirits’ in the water.

In Europe and America, millions of people want absolutely nothing to do with anything having to do with poop.  They’re in complete fecal denial.  And many of those people head up media conglomerates.  They want to go into the wild places but won’t go because they can’t stand the thought of experiencing a mess from their own poop.  We come along with a no mess, no hassle, solution, but because they want nothing to do with poop, period, they won't even read about a solution that would open to them the very wild places they covet.  Much like the child who can’t hold it in, and the child who holds it in out of fear, we’re a specie more and more in denial of our own existence.