It's a toss-up whether our culture's more obsessed with breasts or dicks, but we apply one maxim to both: the bigger, the better. While breasts are on display pretty much everywhere, cocks are usually kept under wraps, until recently seen mainly in locker rooms, bedrooms, artwork, nude beaches, and porn. Men rarely have the advantage of push-up bras; what you see is pretty much what you get, despite spam promising otherwise.
photo: Eugene Bussey
Take a walk on the long side: Scott Poulson-Bryant
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However, dicks are becoming more prominent, whether in magazines like Playgirl and Sweet Action or on sites like nycguys.com. Like Victoria's Secret, Canada's UnderU underwear company plays up the huge bulges of its well-packaged models. Men may compare their equipment to these out-and-proud cocks and feel like they've gotten the short end of the stick. Ultimately, it's to men's advantage to learn how to wield, not extend, their tools.
Almost all guys who are honest will admit to being curious about how their cocks measure up on the size spectrum. For straight guys, women's appraisal of their dicks is paramount. Kevin Keck, who relates his lifelong love affair with his cock in his essay collection Oedipus Wrecked (Cleis, 2005), has a firm opinion on the topic. "I care and I know it matters. I have a large penis, but it's not of mythical proportions. As a bald, thin white guy, I've had too many women say, 'Hey, I didn't expect your dick to be this big. You know, you're a slim dude.' It's nature's way of somehow balancing the scales."
You can't talk honestly about penis size without talking about race. The elephant in the underwear is the widespread belief that all black guys are huge. A white college friend likened her black lover's penis to a small water bottle as she moaned in mock pain. But, like all stereotypes, the extra-large black dick is not a given. The blogger known as The Assimilated Negro (theassimilatednegro.com) recently wrote a hilarious "Open Letter From a Black Guy to His Average-Sized Penis," making peace with his non-monster cock. Here's an excerpt: "I personally could care less about your size. If it were just me, smaller might be better, that way you wouldn't get in my way when I'm trying to scratch my balls. But ultimately, it's all about impressing the ladies." Guys of all races worry women will freak out if their cocks are not huge, or leave them for someone who's larger, while women, for the most part, are not standing over their lovers with rulers, judging every inch. Several men in my unscientific survey showed the not-so-subtle chips on their shoulders by saying, "No one's complained yet," as if size only matters when it's of the too small variety.
Having a non-giant black cock is the subject of Scott Poulson-Bryant's new book Hung: A Meditation on the Measure of Black Men in America (Doubleday, 2005), in which he covers everything from Hollywood's penises to black porn star Lexington Steele, but mostly details his own hang-ups about how he hangs. "I grew up being told that one wasn't a real black man if one didn't have a nine-inch dick," he tells me. "The myth of the big black dick endures because black men love it as much as other cultures. It's a way for black men to feel powerful and omnipotent and hyper-masculine, yet it also allows black men to become, in many ways, complicit in our own degradation," he expounds. In his powerful polemic, he interviews two guys with 10-inch cocks who are polar opposites when it comes to claiming their phallic legacy. One is the traditionally macho "swinging black dick," lording his enormity over everyone he meets. The other is embarrassed and feels fetishized and trapped by the myths surrounding his size. The discrepancy is telling, proving that even the one thing most men agree on as positive can still be a mixed blessing.
Hung led me to the-penis.com, which claims that guys are "always thinking about their penises" and has a pay site, imagesize.com, supposedly featuring 3,000 images of cocks ranging from the minuscule to the massive. The free section, showcasing several stunning examples, was enough to illustrate for me that cocks alone do little to turn me on. I can admire a particular specimen, but I would never fuck a guy just because I'd seen his big dick, or heard rumors of his prowess.
When I posted a penis size query on my blog, I got several rapid-fire responses. One astute reader proclaimed size important in several ways. "If a guy's embarrassed about the size of his dick, he's going to bring those hang-ups into the bedroom and it's going to affect the sex," he wrote. Of course size matters, but it's not all that matters. I have no right to tell guys not to care, because it seems almost innate for men to focus on, worry about, and obsess over their size. Another reader explained, "To say size doesn't matter is a lie. I've never known a woman to break up with a guy over a small size, but everything in life has a threshold. The women I've been with in their forties talk in no uncertain terms about their preference for larger cocks, and none have ever stated an opposite preference."
