She has a-crap-nophobia.
A UK model with an irrational fear of pooping claims she once fainted during a photoshoot after not using the bathroom for two weeks. She detailed her poo-phobia on the Channel 4 program “Know Your S–t: Inside Our Guts,” which covers people’s bizarre dietary afflictions.
“I don’t like using other people’s toilets, I’m poo shy,” Emmerald Barwise, 36, said while describing her self-imposed constipation, the Daily Post reported. “Sometimes I don’t go for a poo for two weeks, and then I get bloated, I get gassy.”
The Wales resident, who’s been doing fetish and vintage modeling for eight years, says her career has been hampered by her aversion to going number two.
She often suffers from extreme bowel pain on set and will refrain from eating before a shoot to avoid looking bloated.
“If you are in a thong and booby tassels, looking like you are pregnant, it’s not the best one,” lamented Barwise, who compares the feeling to being “constipated” or “swollen.”
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However, the Brit admits sometimes she slips and eats a “whole pizza” or a “bit of a milkshake, which results in “meltdown central,” the Daily Mail reported.
Barwise’s fecal phobia has made her social life uncomfortable, to say the least.
“When I have dated people in the past it’s been really hard to make excuses to go to the toilet,” rued the excretion abstainer, who claims her girlfriend called her out for not pooping for weeks on end.
“My girlfriend [said] ‘How are you hiding going to the toilet from me?'” the mortified model recalled. “‘You are not a unicorn, you do poo.’ “
Aside from feeling extremely awkward, Barwise worried about potentially inflicting “lasting damage” by keeping things bottled up inside.
“This has been my whole life, so I’d like to get it sorted,” declared Barwise, who saw dietician Sophie Medlin with the hopes of preventing a gastrointestinal log jam. The fecal fearer was subsequently given a muffin infused with blue food coloring to gauge her excrement’s “transit time” through her intestine. It reportedly 60 hours to pass – around double the healthy time.
Meanwhile, subsequent testing on her stool samples revealed a microbial association with anxiety, low mood and ADHD, which Barwise had reportedly experienced in spades up to this point.
Medline also discovered that the backed-up bombshell had an affinity for garlic, which is known to cause bloating — a revelation that didn’t sit well with Barwise. “Oh no!” she protested. “I put garlic in everything, I can’t live my life without garlic.”
Medlin claimed that her condition could’ve also stemmed from the societal stigma against women dropping a deuce, especially in the modeling industry. “We find that constipation is much more of a female-dominant condition,” the dietician described. “One of the reasons is that women and girls are taught to be delicate, not to be smelly, not to have a poo.”
Thankfully, by relaxing and jettisoning garlic from her diet, Barwise was able to experience bowel movements three times a week. She also adopted more “optimal toilet sitting positions,” with her knees slightly raised to avoid straining on the bowl. Barwise even brings a toilet stool with her whenever she hits the road to ensure proper pooping posture.
Of course, Barwise has her limits on how far she’s willing to go in the name of dropping a deuce. She notably balked at a suggestion to time her poops using marker foods such as sweet corn, explaining: “I don’t really want to be rooting through my poo. I know we’re progressing, but come on now!”
In a similar saga in April, a 19-year-old barista’s appendix burst after she refused to fart around her boyfriend for two years.
