Comedian Steph Tolev wants women to feel comfortable farting in front of people

22:59Steph Tolev wants to make farting less shameful for women

Steph Tolev has a gross sense of humour, but her raunchy jokes about sex and bodily functions are also very real.

The Toronto-born comedian says there isn't anything in her first Netflix special, Filth Queen, that didn't actually happen to her.

"A lot of weird, gross things normally happen to me, especially in my like sex life," she tells Q guest host Talia Schlanger in an interview. "Like I got choked in a basement. I fooled around with a 65-year-old man. Nothing is made up."

For the past 23 years, Tolev has built her career on tackling subjects that others might find embarrassing or shameful. She's out to prove that it's OK for people, especially women, to talk about their bodies openly.

"I think when women are together with themselves, they are like this," she says. "I'm just trying to give a voice to people so they can feel more comfortable. And I'm not saying anything that people don't normally say or do. Like, I'm just talking out loud about bodily functions that we all do every day."

In one case, Tolev asked a woman in the audience when the last time she farted in front of her husband was. The woman said it had been 50 years. "I was like, 'What is happening? How can you live like this?'" Tolev recalls.

But even Tolev feels self-conscious sometimes. She says internet trolls can be particularly cruel to female comedians.

"Personally, I'm not that confident," she tells Schlanger. "I still read the comments and sometimes I cry because they're so mean…. But I think when I am on stage, I just feel this, I don't know, this different power, and I feel like I don't feel self-conscious when I'm up there. But the second I get off, I'm still a normal gal."

When it comes to her own comedy and crowd work, Tolev is wild but never mean.

"I never make fun of anyone's physical appearance because I don't find that funny," she says. "If you've seen a clip of me where I'm coming at somebody kind of hard, it's because they've done something, like they've heckled [or] they've been rude to other comedians. I don't want to upset anybody…. I'm demented in lots of ways, but I'm not mean."

The full interview with Steph Tolev is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. She also talks about how she developed her niche and why she had to leave Canada to get her big break. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Steph Tolev produced by Vanessa Nigro.