This touches upon the broader issues of how men and boys are socialised, where from school masculinity is about rejecting ‘the other’, the feminine, within which looking at or talking about penis matters may be seen as being ‘gay’, and indeed any such anxieties around that area seen as weakness. Who are you going to discuss your ‘manhood’ anxieties with? Your friends, a doctor, your girlfriend even? No chance.Īnd for straight men, when do you get a good look at other men’s real penises? It’s not the done thing to have a butcher’s in the locker room (apart from rugby teams, obvs). The fact that penis anxiety is a taboo only adds to the effects on men’s mental health. Girl killed herself when bullies shared fake nudes of her Read More Stories He says: ‘I was painfully shy and definitely didn’t want anybody to see me naked, which was difficult at school with its ancient communal changing rooms for physical education, but was much worse later when life was so much about “the dating game”. More to the point, if you do have a smaller penis, why should that mean you don’t feel like a true man? Researchers say 0.6% of men have a micropenis, which would mean 200,000 of men in the UK potentially feeling this way, on top of the men for whom average just doesn’t look big enough.Īnt Smith, the author of the Small Penis Bible, who will also be appearing at our event, says his worries started when he was young. The NHS says most men’s penises are around 3.75in when not erect, and 5 to 7in when erect – a far cry from most online mega-dongs. This means that if you have a small penis, you are therefore less of a man.īut guess what? The idea of what is the ‘correct’ size is distorted anyway. Laura, who will be speaking about her work at our Penis Gallery, told me the she called her book about men in her Bare Reality series ‘Manhood’, because men often see the organ as the very heart of their masculinity. Laura Dodsworth, whose excellent documentary 100 Vaginas screened last week, previously produced a book where she photographed penises and spoke to their owner’s about their anxieties. The problem is, for a man, your penis is often felt to be the very root of your manliness. Hims recorded $1 million dollar sales in its first week less than two years ago – there was huge need out there. It has brought erectile dysfunction pills and baldness treatments to millennials by marketing to them in a youthful, relatable way which focuses on wellbeing and self-confidence, more like a GOOP for men – they also provide a service for notoriously doctor-averse men to get their hands on this stuff without having to have an awkward chat with a GP or pharmacist. This can be shown with the rise of companies coming into the market after Viagra’s patent ran out in 2018, most notably the ground-breaking site hims, which has just launched over here after having been valued in the US at over $1 billion. Cosmetic surgery firms in the UK last year reported a 70-fold rise in enquiries about penis ‘fillers’, which are essentially like lip filler injections for men, with fluid injected into the shaft to boost its girth and presumably remove wrinkles.įormerly, erectile dysfunction pills were the preserve of older men needing some artery assistance but now it’s very much a young man’s game. And guess what? The problem is growing.Ī recent YouGov survey found 42% of 18-24 year old British men would like their penises to be bigger, with only 36% saying they were happy with their size. Well of course, despite all the DM-ing (or because of?) penis anxiety is still the number one anxiety we have from boys to men. Until the Russians came in, unzipped, we were struggling, but I found that interesting in itself. Perhaps for the straight men out there the usual dynamic was off – they were sending their pics to strange men who may not immediately invite them for no strings sex, as I’m sure most women usually do. Despite 4 in 10 young women reportedly having received unsolicited dicks pics, men were quite shy in sending them into us. The message that this wasn’t about bragging initially seemed to take hold. The exhibition is about sex only in that we’re using it as way to talk about sexual dysfunction and how penis anxiety can affect you as a man in general. Sex sells, but all of my messaging around this event has been that this is not porn – indeed the stipulations for photo submissions were we wanted FLACCID penises only, which not everyone abided by (yes, we know what a semi looks like, you’re not fooling anyone).
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