We’re in Katz's Delicatessen, and Sally (of Rob Reiner's When Harry Met Sally) has faked her orgasm. She sits, impressed with herself, in front of a sandwich stacked with cold cuts and a bowl of coleslaw. The action—a forced bout of huffing, puffing, and screaming—shocks those around her. As a spectator, you are embarrassed, but for whom? Sally is okay with it; she plucks away at her coleslaw immediately after “climaxing.” You are impressed, as is Harry. 

The female orgasm is a bodily response seen time and time again on screen, albeit in a different setting. But, what if another bodily response were to—not take its place in Sally's case, because I would never dare suggest such a thing—succeed it. What I have in mind is one shared by most women: stomach pain, indigestion, and other symptoms akin to those of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).

Despite its ubiquity, IBS is rarely sincerely represented on screen among femme characters. Its symptoms lend themselves to either crude humor, like in the famous food poisoning sequence in Bridesmaids, or overt avoidance. 

Daryn Snijdewind, a 19-year-old Visual and Media Arts student, started to exhibit symptoms of IBS when she was 11. 

She calls diarrhea glitching and prefers to keep bowel-talk to herself. She noted that gross-out humor usually stands in for any thoughtful course of approachment. 

She, however, understands the inherent comedy of the situation. 

“It's something people find to be gross, so if you make it into a joke, people will laugh at it,” Snijdewind says. “But no one ever approaches it like it's a serious health problem because it's hard to think of it as serious because, you know, it involves poop, of all things.”

It's true. Characters in South Park regularly fart on or near their friends. Terrance (Matt Stone) and Phillip (Trey Parker) make a living out of fart gags. 

In the film Brooklyn (2015), glitching is approached with sincerity. While immigrating across the Atlantic Ocean, Eilis, portrayed by Saoirse Ronan, experiences seasickness and has to run to the nearest available wooden bucket.

Josiah Hughes of Exclaim called it “one of those rare occasions where an on-camera bowel evacuation actually added a layer of depth to a film.” Still, though, it was under the jurisdiction of a period film, and by extension the conditions by which its characters existed under. In Eilis’s case, a rocking, glitch-inducing boat ride.

Charley Rose Czajkowski, a Business of Creative Enterprises student, began exhibiting symptoms in middle school. Since then, she has become more comfortable talking about her experience.

“I've been pretty open about it because we all, like, shit and piss,” she says. 

The hesitancy to include this aspect of a woman's world may stem from a larger hesitancy to adequately build the internal worlds of femme characters on screen. While men are quite literally allowed to talk shit and fart as they please, women are not. 

“I don't need to see an entire screenplay about a girl with IBS, but so many people suffer from it and experience it, so I feel like there should just be less stigma around it,” Czajkowski says. 

What if Ronan, in her subsequent star-turning vehicle Lady Bird (2017), expressed discomfort in her lower abdominal region after eating notably unconsecrated communion wafers. A remark would do: My stomach kind of hurts. I think I have to shit. Beanie Feldstein could laugh, nod, or do all of the above.

Clare Fairtlough, another Emerson College student, first started feeling the symptoms of IBS in middle school when fettuccine alfredo put her in the fetal position. A particular point of contention for her on the issue are the Gilmore girls (of the eponymous show), for whom she has an affinity for, but who also have the ability to “eat and eat and eat.”

“Their stomach never hurts," Fairtlough laughs. "They will have two pints of ice cream, fried chicken, and Chinese food, and then be like, okay. I can go run a marathon now. It's just so inaccurate.”

Fairtlough also noted the increasing prevalence of girls on social media talking about their problems with digestion and food sensitivity. 

“I've seen tweets that are like, Hot girls with stomach issues,” says Fairtlough.

Film and television have a long way to go in terms of representation, and girls with stomach issues are probably, and rightfully, last on the list. Marginalized groups need to be at the forefront of this discussion about representation. However, I hope girls off-screen can one day see their experience—one that is talked about in bathrooms and behind closed bedroom doors, in hushed tones and covert text messages—on screen.