GO! Girls Outdoors

Over the past few months I’ve tested out a few different female urinating devices (FUD’s) and I’ve come a long way to learning how to pee standing up.  I am now happy to pull aside my trousers and let fly, wherever I am in the world, and I have mastered not one but three different peeing devices.  My boyfriend Dave and I have been discussing the pros and cons of installing a urinal, the lemon tree in the backyard is flourishing from its added “attention” and hardly a day goes by when there isn’t a neat row of various shaped funnels and tubes in the dishwasher.  Actually, that last sentence is a blatant lie - I don’t think the landlord would appreciate a urinal (we have a shower, after all) and we don’t actually have a dishwasher.  Nevertheless, I’ve come a long way.  I’ve progressed past the excitable “Dave, Dave, look at me, I’m standing up” stage to the “supreme bladder control and expert hip rotation” stage, where I can make groovy sounds, miss the toilet seat and even draw patterns in the toilet water.

This article is about the P-Style, a device that was supplied to me by Krista at Krista’s Cups, a business that supplies the P-Style and The Diva Cup (a reusable device for use while menstruating).  Krista says that both these products don’t currently enjoy mainstream acceptance, but that they should!    She says that anyone who is female can benefit from one or both products, and that they’ve had customers ranging in age from 4 to 84.  Krista is based in the US but sells these products through her Krista’s Cups website.

Safe in the knowledge that people can use the P-Style at the age of 4 and 84, I decided to dispense with the trial run in the shower.  I do have to stress how extremely brave this was - one of my previous experiences resulted in me having to do an emergency bathroom clean and impromptu load of washing.  Also, the P-Style is a particularly intriguing shape - not really funnel-like, more scoop-like.  For those who are interested in these kind of things, the P-Style comes in six different colours (one is pink, of course) and mine is an earthy dark green, which I like.

So, off I went to the bathroom and had my first go of the P-Style.  And I’m pleased to report complete success!  No problems at all.  The device is not only light and compact, it’s also easy to use.  The absolute best thing - which is a real benefit to this device - is it’s wiping capability.  When I’m hiking or paddling, there’s nothing I like more than finding a “business” spot with a good view and a light breeze - the breeze, of course, to dispense with the toilet paper.  There’s also nothing worse than going to a frequently-hiked spot and finding ugly gobs of toilet paper nestling in the pine needles.  The clever shape of the P-Style helps you get rid of any drips and I’m hoping it will catch on so our native animals won’t have to put up with festering toilet paper in the wilderness any longer.  When you’re done wiping, you just rinse off the P-Style and go on your way.

After my extremely successful first attempt it was time for a trial run in the great outdoors.  I ran my eye over the “Outdoor Recreation Product Uses” in the P-Style literature and saw that both hiking and kayaking were included in the list, so I decided to have a go at both of those.  Also, because of the groovy name (P-Style), I decided that I should do these activities in Style (with a capital S), and that I should also take a photograph to mark the event.

First - hiking.  It was a little snowy and cold so I put on my stylish stripy leggings, my shorts with the enormous hole in the butt, my stripy (clashing) thermal top, puffy jacket and pom-pom beanie hat.  And so decked out, off I went for my hike.  And of course, as soon as I’d set up the camera on self timer, grabbed the P-Style, got into peeing position and turned to the camera with a goofy smile on, someone walked past.  There’s something incredibly embarrassing about getting sprung acting like an idiot when you’re on your own, and I resisted the urge to shout “no, no, no, this is funny, I’m writing about this later, see, look at my P-Style”.  Of course I just blushed and smiled and said hi, and giggled to myself when they’d moved on.

Second - kayaking.  Peeing effectively in the kayak is something I’ve never mastered, and I’m beginning to think that perhaps it’s impossible in my boat.  I inevitably end up sitting in pee-sodden shorts because there’s some mysterious rule of gravity or anatomy that directs urine straight into the seat rather than the cockpit of the Southern Raider sea kayak.  I bet Isaac Newton would have come up with the answer, had he been a woman interested in kayaking, rather than a man interested in apples.  Cockpit pee I can handle (I have a good pump) but seat pee is just gross, especially when it’s going to be a while before landing, or if it’s a multi-day trip.  Anyway, I decided to try out the P-Style in the kayak, despite my misgivings and my wealth of previous, pee-ridden experience - and of course, in reverence to the P-Style, I did it in Style.

That is, I decided to have my trial run on a windless day in the middle of a bay that is one of Tasmania’s prime tourist destinations.  Being the first warm and sunny day in months, every man and his wife, two kids and dog were out fishing - and everyone was a bit intrigued by my excessive drinking, wriggling, organising, de-shorting, P-Styling and fair-weather pumping.  Unfortunately (alas) the P-Style wasn’t able to overcome Newton’s Fourth Law of Boat Gravity and I ended up with pee-sodden shorts, again.  It will take a truly mighty device to overcome this issue - or perhaps I’ll just have to learn to deal with it.

Overall I have to rate the P-Style as a grand success, particularly for its wiping ability and its groovy colour that isn’t pink.  You can also picture a host of native marsupials cheering and casting their vote for the P-Style as well, in order to reduce the amount of toilet paper littering their lounge rooms - if you’re not in Australia, substitute your native animal for the marsupials.  As for the Style, my use of the device certainly seemed to attract attention wherever I went, which I’ll take to mean that I succeeded at peeing in Style.  The moral of the story seems to be this: if you want to pee in Style, get a P-Style.  Thanks Krista (that's her in the photo, selling her P-Styles)!

If you’d like a P-Style, contact Krista at Krista’s Cups or search her website for a retailer near you - they go for the very reasonable price of $12 US each.  There are also special deals if you want a Diva Cup as well.

If you're interested in other stand-to-pee devices, you should read A Little Bit of Equipment Envy and the GoGirl and Shewee reviews.