French Women Pee Standing Up

No Wonder They’re so Confident, I thought

Shefali O'Hara
3 min readNov 12, 2019
Photo by Park Street on Unsplash

French women. The phrase connotes images of sophistication, savoir faire and understated beauty. They don’t wear tons of makeup or baubles. They smoke and eat fatty cheese. They talk in husky voices like Edith Piaf. Whatever they do, they are sexy.

Those are all stereotypes, of course. I’ve been to France. I know not every French woman is a goddess. But I still envied them.

You see, I’d heard a rumor about French women. They can pee standing up. I am not sure how I discovered this. I didn’t try too hard to verify it. It was too aspirational.

After all, I thought to myself, what basic equipment did French women have that I did not? Assuming they weren’t born with gold plated vaginas, I had the same basic parts. Maybe I could learn to pee standing up.

Whole vistas opened before me.

I remembered hiking trips in Colorado. Male friends casually turned their backs to pee and, a few seconds later, rejoined the group. We women needed to find a bush to hide behind while we exposed our asses to the elements. Plus there was always the worry we’d drip on our hiking boots.

Boats were another place where being able to pee like a man would have been an advantage. I pictured myself casually…

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Shefali O'Hara

Cancer survivor, writer, engineer. BSEE from MIT, MSEE, and MA in history. Love nature, animals, books, art, and interesting discussions.