Jennifer Lawrence has clarified she does wash her hands after using the toilet. Thank God for that

We’ve seen this sort of hysteria before, earlier in the year when it was ‘revealed’ that four out of five women don’t shower every day. Women, not people. Because men are allowed to be gross

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Stop what you're doing. Stop it, stop it now. I have news. Big, important news. Ready? Here it is. Jennifer Lawrence, of acting and Normal Person fame, has claimed in jest that she doesn’t wash her hands after going to the loo.

This startling revelation came out during her press tour for the latest Hunger Games film, Mockingjay: Part 2. Speaking to MTV, Lawrence claimed that her “most disgusting secret” was going to the toilet without washing her hands afterwards. A follow-up Facebook video then showed her using a bidet, which she says is normal in her household. So massive was the outrage after her initial hand-washing claim that she made a rare Facebook appearance to upload that video, attempting to stem the flow of horrified words emanating from the bowels of every gossip writer in the western world.

Take a second to let this sink in. Imagine a woman going to the toilet – sorry, bidet – going about her business, and then just leaving. No final step. No hand-washing. This is big, right? This is society-changing stuff. In fact, it's not just big – it's huge.

For one thing, I have to worry about her Hunger Games character, Katniss Everdeen. Now, I’m no expert, but how many bidets can there really be in District 12? And if she’s fighting for her life in a warzone, I can’t imagine hand sanitiser comes particularly high up on her list of priorities. No wonder Katniss gets such a hard time from President Snow. She’s hardly uploading the stringent standards of hygiene we expect from modern day humans – sorry, women.

But back to real-life Jennifer Lawrence. The woman is clearly, by all accounts, a monster. A grubby-handed, foul-breathed, devil-may-care MONSTER (probably). But it must, at least, surely be a relief for all of us to find out now that our beloved Jennifer is actually a poor excuse for a woman – or at least someone who finds it OK to brazenly joke about it. Better now than later, when we were even further down the line of Lawrence-loving. Gross old Jen has actually done us a favour, when you really, really (really) think about it.

Maybe she is simply that disgusting. Or maybe the entire general public has clubbed together, in secret (sneaky things), and forked out for a collective sense-of-humour-otomy. Because the outrage that has ruled the internet since Lawrence made the comments – CLEARLY IN JEST, might I emphasise – would be enough to make anyone think she had confessed to a triple homicide.

We’ve seen this sort of hysteria before, earlier in the year when it was ‘revealed’ that four out of five women don’t shower every day. Women, not people. Because men are allowed to be gross – Kristoff in Frozen goes so far as to suggest that ‘all men’ pick their nose and eat what they find – but skip bathing for a day as a member of the girls’ team and you’d better brace yourself for the impact of an outrage bomb.

Since it’s clear that we can’t even joke about “disgusting secrets” any more (perhaps they were hoping for something titillating from the gals, and the real revulsion to be provided by the guys?) , I’ll retire back into my perfumed cupboard with my powder puffs now. But what J-Law has said won’t be forgotten too easily. Women: our secret is nearly out. The media is dangerously close to finding out we might actually be human after all.