I'm going to the little girl's room."

"I have to powder my nose, dear."

We've all heard these words uttered at one time or another . . . different ways women conceal the fact that (horrors!) they are susceptible to body functions such as defecation and urination.

Allow me to spell it out plainly: Women do poop and pee and burp and fart and sweat and lots of other things that people don't like to talk about at the dinner table.

And now, as you wrinkle your nose in disgust and wonder why I'm allowed to waste the space in this newspaper uttering things no one wants to talk about, much less read, bear with me. Because I don't really want to talk here about the acts of pooping and peeing and farting, etc. (though we all might find it enlightening). What I really want to talk about is why we've put certain aspects of our daily lives onto a list marked "Undiscussables."

Many would say that certain things just don't need to be discussed.

I don't buy it. It's not that simple. Most men have no problem articulating these "Undiscussables." I mean no one is surprised when Joe says, "Man, I got to take a piss." Or when Jim says, "I really need to take a dump."

Okay, so maybe these statements are slightly uncouth, but what they say is perplexing.

If an alien named Gismo arrived on Earth in a purple spaceship and listened to our conversations for a month, I'm certain his conclusion would be something like this: Human males excrete waste products but females do not. Human males expell excess gas in the form of belches and flatulence; females never do. The feet of human males smell after a long day of being stuffed inside a pair of shoes, but not those of females.

At the end of his month on Earth, Gismo would blast off with a totally inaccurate picture of life here. Because Gismo would have seen and heard only what we deem proper. And in the case of women, being proper means denying a part of themselves.

Air-brushed, touched-up, contrived photographs of women cover our magazines -- women who, according to society, never fart or poop or do any of the things that real people (men) do.

What does this mean to you? To me, it's striking evidence of the fact that society acknowledges only the parts of women that fit in with the conventional image of beauty and grace.

And if you ask me, conventionality sucks.

Because by only accepting the same old superficial things (blond hair, long legs, perfect figure) as beautiful, we're limiting women and missing the intimacy and understanding that occurs when people fully accept each other.

Let me try to relate a personal experience.

I have a friend, we'll call him Nobody, who lives his life strictly by the rule of "Undiscussables." I remember the first time Nobody came to visit my roommate and me in our room. We were just sitting around pretending to study, hanging out and whatnot. We both happened to be drinking sodas at the time.

Everything was fine until . . . I committed the ultimate sin . . . I burped. And then I burped again. And then my roommate burped.

I mean, three or four burps a night when you're drinking soda is not uncommon. Or is it?

You see, I forgot that women don't burp. And Nobody was no less than horrified, covering his ears and shaking his head each time a burp sounded that wasn't of his own making.

He said to me, "I do not like it when girls burp. Laura, girls shouldn't burp in public."

And my roommate and I were mad. First, it's not nice to be told that you can't burp in your own room. Second, it's a natural process to burp and, to us, it's not even noticeable. I mean, we are far from champion burpers. We can't even get through the alphabet once.

What ticked us off most, though, was the idea that we're supposed to be a certain way as women, and that is hard because it's not natural.

As the night continued, we committed one faux pas after another. Once I blatantly said, "I have to pee." And then we had the gall to discuss how if you fart in our room it hangs around like an old friend for weeks because there's absolutely no air circulation.

Poor Nobody could take it no longer after my roommate and I started a conversation about PMS. He got red, he gasped, and then he left. His view of college women was shot to hell, and I'm glad. I hope we jolted him back to reality.

I'm not making a case for crudeness and it's not like we're obsessed with body functions. I just believe people should be honest with each other. I want to feel like I can be me without offending anyone's idealistic, inaccurate views of women.

I just don't understand, I guess. Sometime long ago people stopped seeing women as humans and started seeing them as mannequins -- bodies which have pleasing shapes but none of that bad stuff that comes with being flesh and blood. It's so ironic to read romantic tales of gallant knights fighting for pure, sweet, beautiful queens. Women in the Middle Ages rarely bathed and probably smelled as musty as their castles.

But no one wrote about the reality, and so it's easy to see where we get our views of women. To cherish the ideal is not wrong. But to avoid reality is, especially when it limits the full understanding of a gender of people.

The scariest thing about our attitudes toward women doing the "Undiscussables" is that we deny women a complete existence.

So here's my challenge: Women of the world unite and express yourself. Take a big swig of a carbonated beverage and let loose.