Girls Pass Gas as Webb Telescope Scores Triumph

As NASA's James Webb Telescope sniffs out gases in the universe, Earth girls explore a potential windfall from the art of passing gas.

Image by Myriam Dreamer from Pixabay

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Cutting the cheese. Letting one fly. Releasing a squeaker. We all know what these words mean. But could there be more to the release of gas than meets the air?

NASA’s James Webb telescope, for instance, is currently sniffing around outer space for the presence of methane gas near exoplanets to find a possible habitable outpost for humans.

Not to be outdone by science, some female earthlings have hit on a fun new way to explore the benefits of their personal gases.

Will this new trend accelerate the need for an exit strategy from Mother Earth? On today’s Jazprose Diaries—Girls Breaking Wind: a quick nosedive into the evolving art of the tailwind.

Garrison Keillor’s Gas Attack

A few days ago, the famous radio host and author reported that the tasty hamburger he ate for dinner one night left him with gas the next morning, which required the pop-pop-fizz-fizz of an Alka-Seltzer to bring relief.

I don’t know Garrison personally. But I was a fan of his A Prairie Home Companion for many years and (kinda, sorta) feel like I know him. So when he wrote about his gas on Substack, I took advantage of the “Comment” feature to let him know about Beano, a little pill you swallow before eating so-called “problem” foods.

Exploding a myth

A few moments later, I heard from a reader named Jeannine, who describes herself as a vegetarian with IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). Jeannine added simethicone to the discussion, which many of us know by brand names like Gas-X, Imodium, and Mylanta. This, she said, solves the gas problem after you eat.

At an earlier stage in my life, Jeannine’s comment would have blown me over (so to speak). For a long time, I lived with the illusion that girls do not pass gas. I attended co-ed schools until I reached college, and never in all that time did I hear of a girl breaking wind.

Farting did not go with sugar and spice and everything nice. It did not go with blue jumpers and white blouses or pleated skirts and gray blazers. Farting did not go with the May Queen. Or who got to play Mary in the annual Christmas Pageant.

Later, while reading Breakfast at Tiffany’s, it occurred to me that perhaps girls did get gas when they were older. Maybe Holly Golightly took so many trips to the powder room because she couldn’t hold her gas any longer. Surely, she didn’t go there to snort cocaine in 1958. Or did she?

Boys, of course, farted all the time

We had nicknames and acronyms for the kinds of fart that could be produced on any given day. The worst was the dreaded S-B-D, which stood for Silent but Deadly. This was the kind of fart that cleared classrooms and auditoriums and made you think the Soviets had developed a new weapon.

These things are part of life

It may take a nudge from the campfire scene in Blazing Saddles or the one of Uncle Carl farting out the candles in Bergman’s Fanny & Alexander to get us there. But eventually we learn to accept flatulence no matter how rigidly we’ve been brought up.

The proof of this lies in the number of elderly folks who are as unabashed in their farting as they are about not lowering their voices in public places. I am not ready to become one of those people yet. This is why I have made a friend of Beano. It has become the American Express card of my daily diet. I don’t leave home (for a meal, at least) without it.

Still, even I was surprised to learn that today’s young women have begun to stake a claim for themselves in what used to be the male-dominated realm of the fart.

But before anyone gets judgmental about this, here’s a question: Is it possible that our attitude about flatulence depends on history, culture and circumstance—as well as gender? 

Blowing in the wind

In his book Consuming Culture, Jeremy McClancy describes a group from the Pira-Parana area of the North-West Amazon “where the men delight in farting loudly, and often modulate the noise with their fingers or cupped hands.”

Lest you write this off as the behavior of so called “primitives,” consider Joseph Pujol. In 19th-century France Joseph Pujol (Le Pétomane) was a professional flatulist who farted on stage for a living.

A century earlier, Founding Father Benjamin Franklin wrote a privately distributed pamphlet called “Fart Proudly.”

In our own time, a good portion of the world got to see the face of attorney Jenna Ellis when a fart-like sound emanated from Rudy Giuliani’s side of the witness table. That happened in December of 2020 during an elections-fraud hearing in Michigan. (When they sneak up on you in public like that, not even Gas-X will help.)

Record-breaking gas

But amidst all this history, only one man stands out as champ. The Guinness Book of World Records reports that Bernard Clemmens of London once passed gas for two minutes and 42 seconds, a record that remains to this day.

It was only a matter of time then that women would wedge their way into this atmosphere.

In January of this year, Stephanie Matto was reported to have earned $200 thousand selling her personal gases in a jar.

Prior to this financial windfall, she had made her name as a provider of adult content and as contestant on 90-Day Fiance. That’s the reality TV show which matches Americans with potential foreign-born suitors hoping to secure a K-1 visa and become legal American citizens.

$1,000 a pop

Although Ms. Matto is no longer on the reality show, now in its 9th season, she was able to use the notoriety to promote her intestinal gas on social media at the inflated price of $1,000 a jar. In recent months, however, she has slashed the price of her gas to $500 a pop. But still.

Naturally, this enterprising idea, which had actually begun a few years earlier, was too lucrative not to be copied by others. As of this writing, there are currently only 52 active Ebay listings for “farts in a jar,” ranging in price from $4.48 to $100 each. But back in 2017, there were as many as 206 such listings.

One woman’s listing shows a side view of her exposed lifted leg and a jar held up to where the sun don’t shine. She’s sold two jars of her stuff for just under $50 apiece. Of the 21 sold listings, only one fetched the top price of a hundred bucks. Barely enough to put gas in your car these days.

Even Ms. Matto admits that selling her winid is basically a sex thing. Her clientele includes subscribers to OnlyFans, where she posts photos of herself wearing sexy lingerie.

No doubt the audience for this kink includes the online community of involuntary celibates, aka incels, for whom Ms. Matto’s gastronomic essences may be the closest they’ll ever come to the Scent of a Woman. (Hoo-ah!)

In the words of Elton John, “It’s a sad, sad situation, and it’s getting more and more absurd.”

As one woman said on Buzzfeed after buying two farts in a jar for $20 and $28, respectively: “I regret every life choice that has led up to this moment.” You can see her video here.

But at least she didn’t wind up in the emergency room. After consuming the necessary foods to produce $200 thousand dollars worth of intestinal gas, Ms. Matto thought she was having a heart attack. But when she got to the hospital, it turned out to be nothing more than you know what. The doctor told her to change her diet.

There is no Nobel prize for passing gas

But I recently came across a quote by Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata, which reminded me of the passing of time — what we do with it, what it does to us.

“Time runs the same way for all human beings, but every human being floats through time in a different way.”

Kawabata spent much of his life writing powerful serialized novels. In works like Snow Country, A Thousand Cranes, and The Old Capital, he concerned himself with aesthetic arrest, the transcendent impact of beauty on the psyche. Even during times of great unrest.

The Webb Telescope’s Message from the Universe

Surely recent images from the Webb Telescope generate a similar feeling of awe. As it scouts for gases that may make it possible for humans to survive somewhere other than our home planet, perhaps we can look closer to home for the significance of our renewed interest in intestinal gas.

We don’t know if humankind will ever find another place to live. But we do know that the soul will eventually leave the body. We can’t see it or smell it when it happens. But we know that transition is inevitable.

Most of us don’t like to think about that. We’re too busy. Or too scared. Which may be why the passing of gas is a useful metaphor for the passing of time and our passing journey through the Universe.

It’s a gentle reminder born of broccoli and Brussel sprouts, of kale and onions, chili beans, beer, and sauerkraut — that everything is in motion all the time, changing form and reemerging in an entirely different way. Even when we can’t see it.

So here’s to smelling the roses—instead of the farts—and remembering our transitory gas-like passage through time and the Universe. The full comprehension of which is beyond our imagination and the power of our newest orbiting telescope.

While some will undoubtedly continue to sell their personal gases online, others will reach for the Beano as they fire up the grill and kick back to enjoy a few hamburgers on this pale blue dot we can still call home. For now.

©2022 Andrew Jazprose Hill

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