My body, my shame.
Modern life has become a funhouse mirror in which our selves are grotesquely reflected back, the more warped the closer we look. Cheekbones aren’t high enough, abs aren’t defined enough, skin isn’t lustrous enough.
Worse yet, our bodies just seem broken down if you trust what TV is telling you.
In 2007, if you don’t have restless legs or sleep apnea, then panic attacks or Chronic Fatigue are taking their toll on you. Even if you manage to dodge those bullets, who doesn’t exhibit symptoms of Social Anxiety Disorder? It’s a Cronenberg dystopia wherein even if our bodies aren’t actually medically failing us, we fear on some emotional level that they must be.
Enter the latest shame-based syndrome: SPS, Small Penis Syndrome.
Its street name is “the locker room syndrome”. Fitting that this disorder is rooted in childhood trauma since experts are positing that’s when men’s insecurity regarding their physical sexual identity begins.
Now the subject of a comprehensive UK-based research project conducted by urologists at the Hallamshire Hospital Porterback Clinic, we’re left to anticipate the potential profits the pharmaceutical industry can reap by targeting male insecurity on a whole new level.
Is it a foregone conclusion that drugs called Girthonex and Lengthocil will hit the market?
There’s already an established quack industry of creams, pills, and pumps that have exploited man’s longing for the inflated sense of self associated with size.
Modern medicine may opt for the route of making us feel secure with innovative meds that kick start whatever neurotransmitters aren’t firing fast enough. “Are you experiencing performance anxiety or embarrassment in the locker room? Ask your doctor about prescription-strength Axxeptitol. And finally learn to accept it all.” If you can’t alter the physical site of fixation, numb the mental distress associated with it.
The crux of this newest study, which combines data from fifty other previous inquiries conducted over sixty years, is that men and women want different things from the same organ.
Women apparently favor girth over length and are satisfied with their male partners’ endowments 85% of the time.
Men tend to fixate on length and are their own worst critics.
The review also debunks long-held myths, namely that there is a variance in size according to race and that the penis shrinks as men move into their elderly years.
Most intriguingly, SPS is most common in men with normal-sized anatomies (5.5 to 6.2 inches in length, 4.7 to 5.1 inches in girth), despite the fact that micropenises — a none-to-subtle term for penises with a non-erect length of less than 2.7 inches — are found in less than one percent of the male population.
Causes for why 45% of men feel inadequate are based on factors from without and not necessarily from within; many cited childhood dissimilarities to elder male family members and standards set by pornographic imagery as the sources of their preoccupation with size.
So what are the options for enlarging what you have naturally?
Pumps have a brief effect and at best offer users a placebo effect wherein they may feel bigger more so upstairs than down. Magical herbal panacea products are just that — futile supposed cure-alls designed to pick pockets. Pills won’t stimulate cell growth and contain ingredients that wouldn’t pass muster in a vitamin supplement.
Remember those inescapable commercials for Enzyte, the herbal male enhancement pill from a few years back featuring an inanely smiling pseudo-60s spokesmodel named Bob? There’s a reason they haven’t been making the broadcast rounds lately. The drug’s parent company is now embroiled in a class action suit wherein users allege deceptive advertising, misleading claims, unsubstantiated statistics, and a downright deceptive money back guarantee.
Exercises are just going to produce more agony than ecstasy. Extended massaging or pulling sessions to increase blood flow can lead to tearing of blood vessels. Thinking of something exotic? You could theoretically try suspending weights from your member as has been practiced in India, which sounds like the newest set piece from Saw 4.
Certain Brazilian tribes even voluntarily subject themselves to Mondo-style venomous snake bites for the purposes of inducing swelling. Nothing says mount up like a dick engorged with deadly toxins from the fangs of a South American pit viper.
The surgical route is a more clinical but just as, um, dicey an option to take.
Phalloplasty is a corrective procedure intended for men born with micropenises, those suffering from deformities or who have difficulty urinating or achieving sexual intercourse, and hermaphrodites. It’s a risky and complicated surgery involving skin transplantation.
Those just looking for a self-esteem boost should also tread lightly. Elective surgeries involve techniques like separating ligaments and fat injections, which carry the risk of loss sensation, infection, lumping around the injection site area, and even erectile dysfunction.
The most invasive procedure involves an incision to splay nearly the entire length of the member (shades of John Wayne Bobbitt in Frankenpenis) in order to insert a cartilage implant. Despite claims made by plastic surgeons, the reality is that the male anatomy is simply not as amenable to augmentation in the way that women’s breasts are. There is no medical consensus on the effectiveness or even the necessity of these operations in the medical community and the dangerous long-term effects have yet to be documented.
For gay men, the most conspicuous element of the Hallamshire-Porterback study is this: Where do we fit into the equation — if indeed we do at all?
Published data makes no mention of the sexual orientation of participants and there’s a clear heterosexual bias to the report. Just like virtually every prescription ad, gays are phantom presences. The problem affects us, but we go unacknowledged. When is the last time anyone encountered a commercial for Viagra or Cialis that didn’t featured a babe-like middle-aged man lounging around with his wife or devilishly trailing after his coy younger girlfriend?
If anyone has a lofty Sex Factor to live up to, it’s us. The Gay Male form has become hyper-idealized in a mere thirty years. What we looked like in the 70s and what we look like now is the result of a cultural Darwinism; as our he-man dream selves become more and more bionic, we experience the angst of not being able to keep up, the dread of falling by the wayside.
The intense pressure to look like fitness models in the gym and porn stars in the sack daunts us. Compulsive exercise, steroid abuse, eating disorders, plastic surgery, fear of aging, youth obsession, and Herculean sexual prowess are increasingly ingrained into our lives.
The Size Quotient is the biggest monkey on our backs. Women have the fashion industry to emulate and resent and gays have our love/hate relationship with pornography, an impossibly flawless and mega-hung world where every man within is wildly desirable but we fear ultimately out of our league.
The SPS research findings conclude that all the mail order miracles and cosmetic tinkering are not the answers to our problems. As with other forms of body dismorphia, the underlying cause is mental and emotional. Snake oil remedies and self-maiming surgeries only exacerbate the issue.
For men with extreme SPS, psychological help is called for. For the rest of us, a daily dose of perspective will suffice. No man is an island…or a peninsula.
Nice article, Shawn. Yes, I think it’s completely shallow NOT to be obsessed by big dicks. I might qualify as a size queen. I do love porn flicks and huge endowments, but I do not suffer from a small dick syndrome. I’m ok with what I’ve got (about 7.5 inches, uncut, my boyfriend has about the same size, cut, nothing to complain about) and our other sex partners like it, too. Of course, I do get excited by really big dicks (about 9.5 inches is the biggest I’ve had so far), but smaller ones are great, too; the whole package is important, not only the dick of the guy. For me size IS important, but I think it’s not become an obsession of mine and I can enjoy smaller dicks, too. Porn is fiction (super sized sportsman crawling all over the place) and you can enjoy it as such always keeping in mind that reality is another cup of tea.
I have an ex that had about 10.5″. While some may envy that, buy a 10.5″ cucumber and try deep throating it without suffocating. Anal sex took LOTS of lube and patience. The guy I’m with now is average and I love sucking it all the way to the root without feeling like I’m going to pass out.
o, how i wish this fascinating posting would have been accompanied by some HOT photos of guys without humongous dicks. i appreciate the article mentioning that pornography plays a major role in creating a sense of inadequacy in men with average-sized penises, so they think they’re tiny. the reality is that people get their sense of what’s normal by what they see around them, and it’s astonishingly difficult to find pictures of guys with normal-sized or small dicks anywhere, in or out of porn. i have a lot of compassion for guys who sit around burning inside when people make jokes about big dicks as the be-all and end-all of male existence and little dicks being the most pathetic thing a man could possibly have. how ’bout it, guys? Nightcharm is visually hip and stylish — solicit and distribute pix of hot guys who don’t have porn-style jumbo dicks! love you, mean it!
Wow. I have a micropenis! I am also a grower not a shower. And I’ll tell ya bois, there’s a reason that’s the norm. If your willy’s too long, it might get caught on something you’re hopping over to avoid that saber tooth tiger.
Sure, I look back on the men in Ken Haak’s Summer Souveniers with an almost wistful nostalgia. They’re well developed, but they don’t look like Tom of Findland monstrosities. And I do remember when Dear Ol’ Tom’s work was considered COMPENSATING for the lack of masuculintity in so much of gay figurative porn. Even his early work had very fem looking men.
Now fem looking men are harder to find in porn than a small dick. Undressed, I present an odd picture. I have this very short phallus hanging over what look like disproportionately huge balls. Get me happy to see you and all of a sudden things switch. One of my ex’s said her proudest moment was watching it going from resting to roaring.
She didn’t complain. None of the men I’ve been with have complained (except the guy who somehow could get oxygen into his lungs with me jammed in his chest). And ALL of them have noted how small it is. ROFLMAO
I agree with the posters above who point out the difference between fantasy cocks and real ones. Looking at those pornstar poles is NOT the same as trying to squeeze one in. I for one would take a blow from Average Joe any day.
As for my own sense of security, I haven’t had any problems since about the age of 14. I’m neither large nor small, and I’m very happy with what I have. I was lucky enough to have a (straight) best friend in my teens who I would often jerk off with. (No, I never got to reach over.) He was huge, I was not, but he always made me feel as if I had a great cock. It wasn’t idle flattery, but I suspect there was a degree of “fluffing,” if you will. I mean, it is pretty nice, but when you’re hung like him, 7 inches can’t be all that impressive.
That got me off to a good start, but as I got more and more experienced, I SAW the truth of the matter. Most guys really AREN’T that big! I think we all begin to see that cock size is a very democratic fact of life, and I for one have become more comfortable with it–in myself and in others–the more (real) men I have the pleasure of seeing.
So yes, we as a group are more prone to unrealistic expectations of the male form, but we are also more uniquely equipped to find out that it’s actually all bullshit.
I agree that there’s a big difference between reality and fantasy. Sexual fantasy can include monstrous huge cocks as well as lots of other stuff unrelated to the real world that gets us off. As long as you understand the difference between fantasy and reality, it’s fine.
As for the size issue in real life, a man’s sexiness is much more related to the whole package for me, and a big cock can’t make up for what’s lacking elsewhere. Big dick can be like the cherry on top, so to speak, but only if the guy it’s hanging off of is hot to begin with.
And frankly, I don’t think size is as important as aesthetics when it comes to what makes a penis sexy. I think a lot of guys might be like me in this respect without having articulated it to themselves. There are big ones that I find really unattractive (the monster in the second illustration down from the top in this article doesn’t do much for me, for example), and there are medium-to-small ones that are devastatingly hot. There was I guy I was with a number of years ago whose cock was definitely small, but it was one of the hottest ones I’ve seen. Got super-hard like the smaller ones often do, curved up charmingly when it got hard, dark head that got so hard it felt like it was gonna pop. Dense black bush. I still think about it sometimes when I jack off, and it was very likely under 5 inches.
The guys who’ve posted so far are quite typical in my experience. Giz needs to pass his ex’s 10.5 this way. I have yet to choke or gag, and I’ve had bigger than that. The rest of you are whiners. The politically correct thing to say is that size doesn’t matter. But, what if it matters to me??? What if *I* want a huge cock in my throat? Can’t I have my sexual fantasy, too? Does a fantasy need to be with an Asian kid or a bodybuilder who has shaved off all his body hair in order to be accetable in gay life these days? I miss the 1970s when porn featured guys who looked real, but who had HUGE schlongs for us to fantacize over. That’s the point of porn anyway, right? To give us a fantasy come-to-life?
Me? I practically invented being a Size Queen. If not, then I definitely re-invented it. I don’t care WHAT the guy looks or acts like; if he’s got a huge cock, I’m in love. That’s the whole point of the fetish - obesession with the man muscle to the point of exclusion of all other characteristics.
Personally, I like the ones that are REALLY thick, and hang out and down (like Jeff Stryker’s). In fact, I think I’ll go over to the city (SF) and find one now. Latah!
Great article!!! And I agree with Dave O.
Everytime I measure my dick I get a diffrent length
feel soooo lucky that i have a 20cm dick.
I think all males are beutiful no matter what there size. It’s the person inside that counts. Every penis is unique in its own way, so is the person behind it.
I am only 6 x 5.5 Cut I feel so inadequate.
i’ve got a whopping 4.5 inch hard on. life really sux. been living in asia for the past 2 years so compared with the majority of my trade i’ve been on an even keel but am dreading going home again (despite the findings of the study quoted above, i think those generalisations about race and cock size are true). there are worse things in life of course like getting in a car accident and losing a limb. and in my more reasonable moments i can credit myself for the guys who enjoyed having my dick inside them but as a (caucasian) top, i feel at times like i’m not capable of being a man. timmy u, i envy you and your 6 inch cock. you’re average- like most guys out there. be happy with what you’ve got and spare a thought for the less than 1% of us with ‘micropenises’!
i’d like to read some posts from caucasian bottoms- do most of you prefer big guys? i once heard that bottoms find small cocks more painful than big ones because, being harder, they jab and poke rather than rub. is it true?
i have a massive penis measureing at 10.5 wen floppy and 12.5 wen erect. its more a bad thing than a good thing it gets in the way most of the time and stuggle to have anal sex. i hate having a huge penis and size doesnt matter.
I love big dicks. i had the opportunity to reseve anal from a 12 in monster and i loved it!
i love hugeeeeee cocks
r those reel pictures, i have to wack off just looking at them, those guys r hung, like to suck on 1 of them