Thirteen centimetres and 2mm. That’s about the length of an average pen. It’s also the length of soccer poster boy David Beckham’s penis. Well it’s what we’d like to believe anyway. This smugly prurient revelation appeared in the media after some mean-spirited journalist discovered the SizeHimUp website. A British condom manufacturer’s marketing gimmick, it calculates an expected schlong size on the basis of hand, nose and shoe sizes. By plugging in Beck’s button nose, girlie hands and size whatever boots he measures up quite modestly. The same formula applied to the paddle-handed, flipper-footed swimmer Ian Thorpe suggests he’s membered with a whopping 21cm todger.
Which is all fine and well, but it’s significance is a little vague. Even more so with the endless ”how do you measure up” surveys the men’s magazines have been tossing out. I’ve been dutifully measuring myself. Incidentally, I’ve found those plastic measuring tapes that are somehow associated with sewing to be more generous than the macho metal ones that retract into those little boxes. Only it’s getting annoying. I’m no better off with this information than I was before. The only practical use being for choosing a condom, but by and large they still come in one size only.
Aside from the homoerotic or auditioning for porn roles, the occasions for comparison of the flushed flesh are mercifully rare. No chance to scoff or alternatively to hide one’s glans in shame. If we lived in some sort of Amazonian society where to be selected as a mate the menfolk would all have to line up, their erections on display (sort of like peacocks), one would want to have an impressive member. Only we don’t. That’s not to say we don’t live in a society where dick size isn’t a factor. Oh no, nothing of the sort, penis size is a huge thing in the world of men, but only when comparisons can be made. Which usually means it’s Mr Floppy on display. Apparently most erections are of a similar size. The same cannot be said for the starting point. It’s this state that bears the brunt of public scrutiny.
Look at what happened to Tom Berenger’s career after he cavorted starkers in At Play in the Fields of the Lord. On the other end of the package spectrum Ewan McGregor went stratospheric after exposing himself in The Pillow Book. Now the comparison is unfair, Berenger was larking about out of doors, McGregor was getting in and out of the bath in the company of a lady friend. These things have an influence. This is why streakers, in my opinion, are brave but foolish men.
Some years back I was walking a lady friend to her university residence. Just as we were passing one of the men’s residences an extraordinary wail broke out. The noise of countless banshees whooping in delight. They were shrieking at a pack of students streaking round the women’s residence. Responding to it like a clarion call my companion rushed ahead, stopping just at the entrance to the men’s residence. As it happened, to position herself between the door to their residence and the 20 or so naked men running towards it. As each squeezed past her she looked only at their crotches, assessing each one like a school marm looking for untied shoelaces. Unprepared for such close assessment, their expressions ranged from acute embarrassment to horror. Many covered their genitals with their hands. After the last one scuttled past and slammed the door she turned to me, disappointment all over her face and said: ”They’re all so small.”
”Yes,” I said, ”they are aren’t they?”
I too am an incorrigible cock-watch. Over the years I’ve glanced at countless penises. Big ones, dangly ones, weird mushroom-shaped ones. It comes from years of institutional showers. One looks, one compares. I suppose in much the same way as women look at each other’s breasts. Sizing up aside, there is an aesthetic to consider. The prevailing theory from my school days being that penis shape is determined by personality, not body type. This was rooted in the observation that tall boys didn’t necessarily have long penises, nor did the tubby boys with gland problems have fat penises. Whereas wayward boys with untoward ideologies all too often had penises that were bent or twisted. One troubled child, all seething with inner dialogue, had a penis that stuck out perpendicular. A more questioning penis I have not seen, like an anatomical exclamation mark.
Forget Renaissance man, or even new man, we are living in the era of comparative man. Which makes moments of nudity in the company of strapping men harrowing indeed. For those cocksure men who’re sure of their appendages, the penis is mightier than the sword. For those who aren’t, well they can always speculate about what the deified and maligned Beckham might be packing. After all, if the vases and statues from Greek antiquity are anything to go by, being built like a god doesn’t necessarily mean being hung like a horse.