Stand by Your Manhood (3 page)

Then again, at the opposite end of the scale, it’s hard to imagine there was also a time when men didn’t use a moisturiser – that the multi-million-pound industry fronted by some of Hollywood’s leading figures, including Gerard Butler and Clive Owen, once didn’t exist. My point? Things change. The parameters of what’s socially acceptable for men shift. Years ago, skincare was for girls, just like feminism. But, in a changing world, men have branded their own version of the same product and included it in their daily routine. The same is happening with man politics: the age of putting up and shutting up is dead.

Eventually, with regular use, this approach will change the face of men’s issues, which – whether you like it or not – are
your
issues: Should we fund the first date? Are we sexist if we enjoy pornography? Why are we still waiting for a male pill? And do women secretly hate us? Finally, the answers are all here, in this politically incorrect, yet
factually correct, compendium of no-bullshit masculinity for a modern age.

After all, we are brilliant. So let’s keep it that way.

NO MAN IS EVER BORN
with a sense of insecurity about his penis – ever. It’s something he’s taught.

Fortunately, once you understand this, you can ‘un-learn’ the toxic myth that size is king and finally be at peace with your penis. Not only is this psychologically healthy, but it also sets you free from a lifetime of put-downs, painful operations and expensive scams which never, ever work.

Best of all, it also makes you bulletproof in the face of size slurs, which are part of everyday life for all men, regardless of how big they actually are.

It hasn’t always been this way. In ancient Europe, less was considered more – see Michelangelo’s Renaissance masterpiece
David
if you need a visual aid. Today, however, it’s a little different – and not just in art. Now, men are rated, denigrated and humiliated by their penises in every facet of life.

For most of us, this a universal experience. One which every bloke, every boy, will have a memory of, neatly tucked away and rarely – if ever – referenced. But it sits there, smirking. I’ve seen it myself. In some of the most prolific media operations in the country, I’ve watched smart, clever women in positions of power sell out to stiletto sexism with a hooked little finger, even though any man would be fired if he claimed a female CEO was rude because she had a roomy vulva.

Thankfully, the unspoken truth is that every penis is perfectly fine exactly as it is – including yours. It does not need enlarging, pumping, piercing, widening, trimming, straightening or stiffening. You wouldn’t be loved more, better in bed or more popular if it were the size of a fire hose. You’d just be you – exactly who you are now, warts and all – with a few more centimetres. Besides, cock-mocking isn’t really about rating length
or girth, but about the power that can be gained simply by doing it.

Thankfully, your masculinity, your dignity, your credibility is bigger than that. Chances are, so is your penis. And, even if you think it isn’t, size doesn’t matter because your best sexual organ is your brain. Read that paragraph again.

In a world where belittling men’s bodies is often confused with women’s sexual literacy, this is important to remember. Currently, despite their life-creating brilliance, our dicks face regular ridicule in everything from song lyrics to government road safety campaigns. (No, really – thank Australia for that one. In 2007, Sydney’s Road and Traffic Authority ran the ‘Pinkie’ ad ‘Speeding: No One Thinks Big of You’, which showed women equating reckless driving with smaller genitalia.)

Here in Britain, we have Lily Allen doing it for them. She spends hours slagging off MailOnline for ‘judging’ women’s bodies and putting pressure on the sisterhood to be a certain size and shape (even though it’s mostly female journalists who write these articles, and female readers, including her, who consume them), but she doesn’t extend the same courtesy to lads.

First she released ‘Not Big’, in which she muses about her classy size demands by singing: ‘You’re not big, you’re not clever, No, you ain’t ya big brother. I’m gonna tell
the world you’re rubbish in bed. And that you’re small in the game.’ Lovely. Then, Goldicock’s second family-friendly offering was ‘Not Fair’, which sees her deride a boyfriend for not giving her an orgasm when, where and how she demands it. The lyrics are: ‘Oh, he treats me with respect, he says he loves me all the time … There’s just one thing that’s getting in the way. When we go up to bed, you’re just no good … It’s not fair and I think you’re really mean.’

Now, I don’t want to get into the nitty gritty of Lily’s sex life – in fact, I can’t think of anything worse – but wow: isn’t this the pot calling the kettle black? Here we have a prime example of a woman who says making people feel bad about their bodies is cruel and harmful, sexist even, yet she does exactly that. Unsurprisingly, when I call her out about this on Twitter it instantly hits a nerve. She responds within seconds, arguing that the songs are about ‘specific men, not all men’, so she’s ‘not a hypocrite’.

I can only imagine how comforting that is for her ex-boyfriends, not to mention her son who, in case she hasn’t noticed, has a penis.

But what would happen if a singer like Ed Sheeran or Paolo Nutini released a track about the equivalent – a specific woman, an ex, who needed to do more Kegel exercises at the bus stop? Or a former lover dumped because it was like throwing a sausage down
Oxford Street? We all enjoy a bit of good-natured, self-deprecating humour – after all, none of us are perfect and the human form exerts a fascination with all its quirks – but it wouldn’t get airplay and it certainly wouldn’t be considered funny. Christ, it wouldn’t even get released. So what’s the difference?

See, whilst dick-dissing is portrayed as good fun for girls, the reality is considerably darker because, actually, Ms Allen is spot on. All this negativity
does
coalesce in peoples’ minds and, if they’re not thick-skinned enough to handle it, it can damage them. It sparks a chain reaction. Boys start worrying about their dicks, then start acting like dicks. They strap on ‘elongating’ devices which promise to stretch them if they wear it for ten hours every day of the year at the bargain price of £1,000. Or they try the Middle Eastern technique ‘jelqing’, which can only be described as trying to stretch a jumper after you’ve put it in the dryer.

Not only does this make me wince with sympathy pains, but I dread to think what happens when these guys invest all their time and money, but see absolutely no difference at the end of it. One thing’s for sure, they wouldn’t get any sympathy from the outside world: we’re fair game.

When Jude Law was photographed naked on holiday at his mother’s private villa in France, the media couldn’t
resist printing the shots, with the suggestion that every redeeming quality about him – his talent, his good looks, his success, his intelligence, his skills as a father – had all been deleted because in his trousers was an utterly NORMAL penis.

In an article entitled ‘Nude Jude’s Not A Huge Issue’, the
New York Post
wrote: ‘In snapshots that recall George Costanza’s infamous “shrinkage” episode on
Seinfeld,
the love-rat actor’s meager manhood is on full display as he changes into a swimsuit outside his mother Maggie Law’s house in Vaudelnay, France.’ Meanwhile, Gawker (check out the hypocrisy of their strict moral code in the Sex Isn’t Sexist chapter) chimed in: ‘Photos of Jude Law’s peniwinkle have been circulating. It’d be cruel for us not to share them with you. So, make sure your boss isn’t looking, click here to see the itty bitty fella, roll eyes, take [a] shower [and] get circumcising.’

Then again, should we really be surprised? Even Napoleon’s penis wasn’t sacred. Removed during his autopsy, it later went on display in a New York exhibition, where
Time
magazine said it resembled a ‘shriveled eel’. Half a century later and the staff at
Elle
– who collectively couldn’t achieve half of what he did, even with the advantage of everything men have created since – are still banging on about his alleged ‘tiny scepter’.

Yet when Kate Middleton was papped sunbathing
topless, everyone was furious. Violation! Sexist! Rude! I wanted to weep. Not because of Jude’s genitals, which were perfectly fine, but because our private parts are forever ridiculed in a way women’s aren’t. OK, breasts adorn page three, but at least they’re celebrated. They’re not put up to be laughed at. Ours are. Even multinational companies like Pepsi, who sell their soft drinks to children, for God’s sake, use slogans such as ‘Size Does Matter’, which isn’t just offensive, but really shit copywriting. I can do better on the back of a fag packet. Drunk.

Most people justify this by saying it only affects arrogant men, who somehow deserve it. On the contrary, I’d bet a small fortune the blokes taking the biggest blows are those battling a depressing size neurosis. Once, a seventeen-year-old boy emailed me via my website. He’d quit his rugby team, stopped going out and refused to date girls – all because he thought his penis wasn’t ‘good enough’. He also refused to use urinals, only ever cubicles, because the risk of being seen was too daunting. This boy (who actually had nothing to worry about – then again, none of us do) had been conditioned to hate his body from everything he’d seen and heard over the years. Yet the issue wasn’t his penis, it was his perspective.

Worryingly, it’s a view shared by millions of men everywhere. It hides in teenage bedrooms up and down the country, regularly reinforced by pop culture of every form
and calibre. Even a recent production of
King Lear
at the National Theatre featured three – yes, THREE – references to men’s ‘small’ dicks. Integral to the plot and tastefully done? I think not. Together, this feeds a multi-million-pound juggernaut of fear, which invades every spam inbox on a daily basis with the promise of lotions, potions and perspex pumps which do more harm than good. Worse of all, it also becomes acceptable. The new normal.

When I first started writing at the
Mail
, I saw a man on
This Morning
discussing his decision to undergo a penis enlargement operation. A conversation which brought a tear to my eye (for all the right reasons). Chatting to Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby in a pre-recorded segment to protect his identity, the nine-minute feature peaked when before-and-after photos flashed up on screen, no doubt to cackles of laughter in the production office and across the country.

Yet, although he certainly got his money’s worth, I was more amazed that this brave chap coined a phrase which nailed our obsession with size: penile dysmorphia. Borrowing terminology from body dysmorphia, which sees patients clinically preoccupied with non-existent physical faults in themselves, this bloke summed up an endemic problem with just two words. It was this – not the gory footage of the operation – which brought a tear to my eye.

See, he hadn’t undergone surgery for vanity or to outdo his mates in the changing room. Why would he? None of them really care. Nor had he done it to correct a medical problem which was blighting his life (one that wouldn’t have been taken seriously, even if he had). Instead, he was simply trying to undo years of taunts from women and the media which had left him psychologically scarred. The very messages which affect all males, from young boys and teenagers to war veterans. So I track down his surgeon, Dr Roberto Viel, to get an idea of what motivates his patients – and if there’s a trend.

‘I started doing penoplastys in 1991 after a woman asked me if we’d operate on her boyfriend, who was getting very depressed about his size,’ he says from his Harley Street office, wearing day-glo scrubs. ‘She’d heard about a doctor in America who did the procedure and wondered if it was available here. We investigated and, after realising it was safe, trialled it here. That was twenty-three years ago.’

Now, he says, it’s their biggest seller. ‘Liposuction is common and so is gynocomastia [surgery to correct ‘man boobs’] but penis enlargement tops the lot. I do at least two or three cases each week. Even when the recession hit and people stopped spending money, the demand for every other procedure suffered a dip – except the penoplasty.’

Big business indeed. So, come on, how many of his patients are genuinely small? And by that I mean medically defined small. ‘It’s very, very rare to see a real micropenis, which affects less than 1 per cent of the male population,’ he asserts.

This all sounds very philanthropic (although the surgeries cost about £7,000 combined), but surely all this added size also improves sex, right? Not quite. ‘Length isn’t important,’ he says. ‘It all relative when combined with
the size of the vagina. Increasing numbers of women are having surgeries to tighten the vaginal wall [commonly referred to as ‘designer vaginas’] because they consider themselves too big, especially after childbirth.’

Which brings me to my next point. Because, if size does matter – as women often say it does – then surely it matters on them too. After all, friction is friction and their bits vary as much as ours. It reminds me of an episode from US television show
Curb Your Enthusiasm
called ‘Big Vagina’. In it, the show’s protagonist, Larry David, meets a nurse, Lisa, who claims she stopped dating his best friend, Jeff, because he has a small penis. When Larry later confronts him about this, it transpires it’s her who has the anatomical anomaly – not him. I won’t ruin the punchline, but I will say that it’s better than ten years of therapy. Not least because the moral of the story is this: if she thinks you’re too small, chances are it’s because she’s too big. After all, men can put a master key in a door, but if the lock’s too big then it won’t open. And that’s not our fault.

A 2006 study by Barnhart, Izquierdo & Pretorius for the Kinsey Institute found the average vagina measures 62.7 mm with a relatively large range (40.8–95 mm). The position of the cervix, marking the end of the vagina, can also vary at different points in a woman’s cycle, making them all shapes and sizes.

The difference between this and penis size variation? Young lads are forever told size matters, whilst girls are told they’re beautiful regardless of their physical attributes. That’s the irony. Women scorn the fashion industry for putting pressure on them, but – whilst I sympathise – it’s these women who trash a guy because his body isn’t to their liking. Even though his body is his, not theirs. Rarely is a penis respected for simply being the amazing, life-creating body part it actually is.