Does Size Matter?

The quick answer is “yes.”

I assume that your dirty little mind went “there” immediately… mine generally does.

I am what is affectionately called a “crotch watcher,” as it is the first place my eyes go when I see an attractive guy… who am I kidding – any guy. I am also drawn to noses, arms and cheekbones, but invariably the first thing I do is check out your package. It doesn’t make a lot of sense but it is true. I don’t really care how big your penis is, I just want to make sure it looks good in a pair of jeans.

Some men are “showers” and some men are “growers” so appearances can be deceiving.  A “shower” (rhymes with blower) is a guy whose penis appears at - or close to - actual size. A “grower” is a guy whose penis needs to come with a caution label - “objects may be larger than they appear.” Other factors, including the type of underwear you are wearing, the size of your testicles and temperature may also distort the findings.

The average size of a male penis is just below 6 inches. This may surprise you because most men appear to measure from half way inside their assholes, skewing the data for all of us “normal” guys.

But why does this issue exist at all? Why when we ask, “does size matter?” is it generally assumed we are talking about penis size?

Young men learn quite early on that it does matter. Our earliest comparisons are either from our dads, our older brothers or the other boys in gym class. The guy in the locker room with the “biggest junk” is somehow “better than” the rest of us – it’s self worth measured by impractical standards right from the start. Another early association (cue the angry letters) is from porn, where we only see men with massive meat and wonder, “what happened to me?”  Because “men don’t talk about these sort of things” it is impossible to not feel inadequate until we hit puberty and things begin to change.

The myth that “bigger is better” is a male misconception, not limited by sexual orientation. Gay men are just as brutal with each other as our straight counterparts.  The only major difference is that straight men may tend to suffer from fears of inadequacy a little more than gay men do because they have less opportunity for comparison.

And what role do/should women play in this discussion? Statistics bear out that women do not care about the size of your dick as much as you think they do. Women want to orgasm, full stop. If you are taking them to the Promised Land with your average sized penis, there’s bound to be few complaints. More commonly, women complain about the larger ones. As a good friend recently explained, “there is nothing remotely sexy about a big cock banging against my uterus.” She eloquently added, “that shit hurts!”

Shouldn’t we change the conversation to the things that really matter? What about the size of your heart or your compassion for your fellow man? What about talking about the size of the debt we are leaving for our children or the holes in the ozone layer? When we limit the conversation to the size of our naughty bits we do ourselves a disservice. It is distraction of the worst possible kind. Big Dicks with big dicks already get enough attention.

As we grow up and begin to understand the things that really matter in life – friends, relationships, mortgage payments – our focus on the size of our penis tends to diminish.    

If I ever do stumble across that elusive genie’s bottle, I will no longer waste one of my three wishes on such trivial things.