astronaut
Explanation
The Joke
A young girl stands between her two parents, passionately explaining: "It's just that's what they have to do in outer space and I wanted to be like Sally Ride and Eileen Collins and Svetlana Savitskaya!" She is clearly making an impassioned case for something she did, invoking famous female astronauts as her role models.
The bottom of the comic delivers the punchline as a "Life Pro Tip": "If you play your cards right, once per childhood, you can get away with pooping in the vacuum." The child has apparently defecated into the household vacuum cleaner and is now justifying it by claiming that astronauts use vacuum-based toilet systems in space. She has even researched specific female astronauts to bolster her defense.
The Humor
The joke works on multiple levels. First, there is the absurdity of a child pooping in a vacuum cleaner and then constructing an elaborate, well-researched defense citing real astronauts. The fact that she specifically names Sally Ride, Eileen Collins, and Svetlana Savitskaya -- all real pioneering female space travelers -- shows she put genuine effort into her alibi. The "Life Pro Tip" framing at the bottom elevates it further by suggesting this is actionable advice, and the qualifier "once per childhood" implies that this gambit has a single-use success rate: the parents will be so stunned by the combination of destruction and research that they cannot bring themselves to punish the child, but they will certainly not fall for it twice.
References
Sally Ride was the first American woman in space (1983). Eileen Collins was the first female Space Shuttle pilot (1995) and commander (1999). Svetlana Savitskaya was the second woman in space (1982) and the first woman to perform a spacewalk (1984). Astronauts on the International Space Station do indeed use vacuum-based toilet systems to handle waste in microgravity.