Some people become famous after developing a life-saving vaccine or writing an awe-inspiring novel. I, too, have tasted fame. Unfortunately, it was the fleeting kind that results not from genius, but from craven necessity. Close friends will know that I’m referring to a brief period of notoriety I enjoyed in college after popularizing a trick I called the Spread-’N’-Rip-It. The Spread-’N’-Rip-It is a tactic best employed when spooning with a love interest, and it involves pulling your butt cheeks apart so your impending fart can’t vibrate off your flesh (or theirs). It’s a trick that spread like gassy wildlife through my tiny college campus. Actually, I know for a fact some of my friends still use it today.
I invented the Spread-’N’-Rip-It after sleepily farting into a handsome soccer player’s big spoon, an act that got me blackballed from varsity parties for a solid month. But while my time in the limelight was satisfying, it wasn’t particularly profitable. That’s why I was so pleased to find an entire subset of the population turning their intestinal exhaust into serious cabbage via pay-to-play fart videos on OnlyFans. There’s Beth, otherwise known as Black Soul, who films herself ripping gurgling farts in the bathtub. Kiera, who goes by Goddess Fart, specializes in tidy, airy farts with the occasional foamy chugger. FartingGirll posts compilation videos celebrating the week’s most impressive flatulence. It’s all standard procedure for members of a niche OnlyFans community catering to one very specific fetish: eproctophilia, or sexual arousal inspired by farting.
For performers like 23-year-old Kiera, fart content was a quick and easy way to gather a following in a crowded market. It also comes pretty naturally. “I eat lots of veg and protein generally, so they come naturally with my normal diet,” she writes over Twitter DM. “I also enjoy creating the content as the people who have approached me have been very friendly.” That includes the patrons who hire her to create custom content, which usually involves her farting on camera while dishing out verbal degradation. Her videos involve very little nudity, usually with the camera focused on her tush while she’s clad in leggings or casual undies. While she initially had her hesitations (for example, the fact that she, herself, doesn’t have a fart fetish), she realizes that she provides a popular service — one that’s nothing to be ashamed about. “There is a stigma associated with any fetish that isn’t mainstream,” she says. “[But] I realized how popular this fetish is, and it isn’t anything to be ashamed of at all.”
Stigma aside, the gassy queens of OnlyFans are undeniably fun to watch. They churn out relatively innocuous, mostly clothed content that centers on a diverse buffet of ass acoustics. Fart porn off OnlyFans features much of the same — websites like Fartdom.com specialize in gassy content, while videos like this one garner hundreds of thousands of views from budding fetishists. Reddit’s r/fartfetish has more than a million members, and Pornhub’s “fart” category boasts more than 15,000 videos. A wide variety of porn performers specialize in fart content, including Peteuse, Bunny Ratchet, Chastity, Addison Lynne, Mufasa, Emma Ink, Pauline Maxx, XO Bunny, Kinky Kristi, Love Rachelle and Gassy Jassy. As such, demand for fart content is truly off the sharts.
P.H., a cis Gen X-er who splits his time between coasts, says he’s had a fart fetish for as long as he can remember. “I noticed it as soon as I hit puberty,” he writes over email. “I’ve had a lot of experiences as a kid with girls and adult women farting around me, and didn’t understand the impact until I finally learned what being horny is.” But though other fetishists like redditor FoetidDreamer69 enjoy the occasional digital duck call, the in-person experience is tough to beat. “I would say the most important element of a good fart is the smell,” he writes over Reddit DM. “I have a pretty sensitive nose, so I enjoy trying to pick up on the subtleties of a partner’s farts, such as trying to guess what foods they’ve been eating, whether they need to go to the toilet or figuring out how long they’ve been holding them in.”
P.H. also explains that, just like the dulcet tones of various farts, the fetish itself is widely varied. “In this small community, this fetish has a lot of different avenues to it,” he says. “Some people won’t get off unless [the performers] are naked, or wearing a specific fabric. Me, I like it either way — as long as they enjoy farting.”
Most researchers see eproctophilia as a subset of olfactophilia, a fetish in which an individual “derives sexual pleasure from smells and odors.” But that classification doesn’t explain the success of performers like Kiera, who rake in the cash despite 2020’s disappointing lack of Smell-O-Vision technology (she declined to say how much she makes). Unfortunately, I found zero academic or clinical research specifically geared toward eproctophilia — but members of the community have their own theories as to the festish’s appeal. “Aside from these obvious physical aspects of the fetish, there’s a fairly significant psychological and emotional element to it as well, at least in my case,” FoetidDreamer69 writes over DM. “Farting, like so many other natural bodily functions, has a great deal of shame and taboo attached to it, especially for women, so I find the experience of breaking that stigma and allowing a girl to be totally un-self conscious about her body in my presence extremely exhilarating.”
P.H. agrees, although the fetish’s unavoidable stigma occasionally complicates matters in his own life. “I could never tell my friends about my fetish, even the close ones, because they wouldn’t relate,” he explains. “I’ve done a few tests on friends I was maybe suspicious about, but the boxes didn’t check, so I moved on.” The stigma can also put a bit of a damper on in-person encounters. “The [partners] who couldn’t perform: I’d let them down easy with a bit of empathy,” he writes. “It wasn’t their fault, but we just weren’t compatible.”
With those experiences in mind, P.H. works to dismantle the stigma in his own way — as a fart fetish content producer for sites like ClipsforSale. “I lean more toward the candid farts — girls who do it because they enjoy it themselves,” he explains. “Not so much [with] a fetish vibe — more that they just enjoy farting for relief, or they find it humorous. Just fart whenever they feel one, and have fun with it.”
He manages about 75 farting performers, editing their fart videos with club music and flashy effects. It’s both extremely funny and extremely charming. Maybe it is the freedom of the act, like P.H. describes: “Farts are universal with humor — but everyone does it, even though there are still social taboos. Imagine not only being allowed to fart in front of your significant other — but it spices up the bedroom. You can eat whatever and not worry about the consequences. In fact, those foods that you would avoid because of body disagreement turn into an aphrodisiac.”
Perhaps most endearing is the shame-free girlfriend experience the fetish provides. After all, ripping a sizzler in front of a sexual partner is about as comfortable as it gets. “I love the feeling of putting aside all social norms and just succumbing to my deepest desires and enjoying the intimate sounds, smells and tastes of another person’s body, free from judgement or shame,” FoetidDreamer69 says.
Ultimately, the fetish is fascinating for anyone who comes from a long line of gastric distress-stricken individuals (my sister and I actually have a name for the peculiar brand of fart that plagues my family — “the chugs,” after the locomotive secretions that tumble out once you really get going). Spread-’N’-Rip-It notwithstanding, farts have a place in some of my most cherished memories, like the time I sharted at a German Christmas market. Or the time I sharted in a rental car. Or the time I sharted during high school swim practice.
Given my experience with both intentional and catastrophic gaseous events, this lightly self-effacing community has undeniable appeal. And while I don’t think I’ll indulge in a sensual squeaker any time soon, my research into flatulism might just be enough to make me ignore my dad’s age-old advice: “Never trust a fart.”
Lillian Stone
Lillian Stone is a freelance humor writer and reporter. She has two thoughtless little dogs and writes jokes from her Chicago apartment where the theme is Grey Gardens, But Sexy.
