All Girls Poop.

New relationships are wonderful; both of you are madly in love, everything the other person says is somehow hilarious and you can’t possibly think of anything better to do than spend your every waking moment with the love of your life.

However, new relationships are almost always filled with at least a little bit of deception and façade, not in a malicious way or anything –  it’s just in our nature to be on our best behaviour in order to impress this lovely person we’ve newly acquired.

The first few months of living with each other or spending extended periods of time at one another’s houses is when it all begins; during this time, he’ll probably remember to put the toilet seat down and graciously clean up after himself and you’ll do your best to try to hide any bad habits you may have from your better half too.

And if you’re half as paranoid and anal as me, you might go all out and top up your already Hollywood waxed lady garden at the first sight of any morning stubble. At one point I had my then partner was genuinely under the impression that I suffered from some rare and curious form of vaginal alopecia.

Luckily enough, all that fallacy is soon put to bed when you both eventually develop that level of mutual trust and comfortability that all good relationships are founded on.

The kind of trust and sense of ease that gradually bestows you with a more laid-back and blasé attitude towards growing out your erm… ‘hedges’ is the same one that enables him to not only leave the toilet seat up but possibly even garnish it with a few accompanying drops of piss for you to clear up… lovely.

Throughout my life, I have been witness to a whole host of varying relationship dynamics. I’ve known girls in the past who are embarrassed to so much as eat in front of their boyfriends, whereas I have also seen friends who’ll quite happily poop with their other half in the room. The truth is, relationships are just as unique as the people in them and how much each of us is willing to share with our significant other varies entirely from couple to couple.

However, it does seem as though guys tend to get comfier, more quickly than girls do and start ‘letting themselves go’ a lot sooner. I’ve never heard of or personally witnessed any guys talking about feeling the need to keep up such appearances for their partner, that’s probably because there’s generally a lot less expectation placed on men to hide their bad habits or maintain the insane illusion that they have zero bodily functions, in order to be deemed attractive.

The media puts a lot of pressure on women to look and act a certain way and these pressures come in many forms, most we may not even notice and some we may even brush off as a harmless joke.

I’m sure we’ve all seen the female-targeted sportswear in shops with slogans like ‘I don’t sweat, I glow’ brandished across the chest, as well as all the various internet memes about how girls allegedly don’t poop and in the rare instance that they do – it’s most definitely glitter. It seems trivial but all these little things add up and contribute to how women are viewed and most importantly – how women view themselves.

Women and young girls especially, shouldn’t feel the need to adhere to unrealistic and sometimes downright dangerous standards of beauty and behaviour in order to be deemed attractive or even more absurdly – ladylike, especially in relationships.

Your partners love for you shouldn’t be dependent on how little you sweat, how bad your farts smell or how loudly you snore in bed.  Relationships are meant to be a safe space, a place of security and acceptance for you and your other half. In the company of your partner should be the one place where you don’t feel compelled to keep up the senseless and unreasonable standards placed upon you by the outside world.

After all, we all have our flaws, regardless of how hard many of us try to maintain the illusion that we don’t. We all have our hang-up’s and insecurities – all girls sweat, all girls grow body hair and ALL girls poop.

Get over it.

Originally written for LAPP – read it here