A Butt Expert Reveals The Single Biggest Mistake You're Making Down There After You Poop

When it comes to our butts, we want them to be as pristine as possible, right? And a major part of that is how we wipe and what we choose to wipe with.

Big Toilet Paper wants us to believe that we need the softest toilet paper ever — so it feels like we’re cleansing with clouds — but that can lead to the dreaded dingleberries (as those ridiculous Charmin toilet paper bears like to remind us every chance they get). But TP that’s too thin — like the wispy, cotton-candy-esque half-a-ply stuff our office restrooms offer — just doesn’t get the job done.

So, which toilet paper is the best choice for our precious backsides and how should we approach getting clean?

That’s what we — Raj Punjabi and Noah Michelson, hosts ofHuffPost’s “Am I Doing It Wrong?” podcast — asked the don of derrieres, the booty whisperer himself, Dr. Evan Goldstein, when he recently stopped by our studio to chat about how to keep our butts healthy.

Listen to the full episode by pressing “play”:

“It’s so multifactorial,” Goldstein, a nationally renowned anal surgeon and the author of “Butt Seriously: The Definitive Guide to Anal Health, Pleasure, and Everything In Between,” told us. “There are so many people’s holes that have different textures and consistencies.”

Basically, our butts are like snowflakes: Each one is unique, and their needs depend on a lot of different factors, from our gender to our age.

People who take estrogen or spironolactone — two hormone therapies often taken by cisgender women, transfeminine people and others ― might want to take special care with their butts. “What happens to the skin is that it becomes super thin and fragile,” Goldstein said, so that might make “cushy” TP a better choice.

Other people, he explained, have