Sex For Dummies - Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer

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no longer fall into this category. Where is Rubens, who painted such magnificent, voluptuous nude women, when we need him?) And, of course, seeing the male stars of porno videos doesn’t help either because these men aren’t picked for their ability to act, but rather to inflate.

      Now, if men asked women how they feel about penis size, they’d get another story. Some women are actually frightened by very big penises, and many women just don’t attach very much importance to the issue. But these men who are all hung up about the size of their penises can’t seem to get that straight — and, convincing them otherwise is a difficult job.

      MEASURING UP

      You can measure a penis in several different ways, and a man usually chooses the method that makes his penis seem the biggest. Although the basic penis measurements are length and circumference, the mood of your penis at the moment you pull out that tape measure is a key factor.

      Even if two flaccid penises look about the same size, they may be very different in size when they become erect. (And a man may have different-sized erections depending on how aroused he is.) In the locker room, the man with the biggest flaccid penis feels the most cocky; but the real proving ground is in the bedroom.

      One of the reasons that a man may think his penis is too small is the way he looks at it. (And no, I’m not going to suggest that he put on rose-colored glasses.) Most of the time, he looks down at his penis, and when he does, his eyes play a trick on him called foreshortening, which makes his penis looks smaller than it appears to someone else looking at it. To see his penis the way his partner does, all he has to do is stand in front of a full-length mirror and take in that view — I think he’ll be surprised. If he takes a look both before and after he has an erection, I’m sure his ego will get a nice boost.

      Although you can’t deny that men have different-sized penises, does the size of the penis make any difference where it really counts — inside the woman’s vagina? In most cases, the answer is a very big no.

      The vagina is elastic; it has to be to allow babies to be born vaginally. So a woman’s vagina can accommodate a big or a small penis. Because most of a woman’s nerve endings are concentrated at the entrance to the vagina, the sensations that a bigger penis may cause aren’t all that different to her from those caused by a smaller penis.

      

Men ask me all the time if some way exists to make their penises bigger. I know of only one way to do this, and I’m passing it on only because it actually also promotes good health. Although most of the penis is visible, part of the penis is buried beneath the skin and is called the crus. If a man has a lot of fat in his pubic area, then more of the length of the penis is buried beneath the skin. With weight loss, a man can reverse this trend so a greater portion of the penis becomes exposed; thus, his penis can “grow.” The approximation doctors use is one inch of penis length gained for every 30 pounds of excess weight lost. (Sorry, all you skinny guys, but losing extra weight won’t help you.)

      Some surgical techniques can enlarge a man’s penis. One technique can make most of it, except for the head, fatter, which leaves the head looking disproportionate. The other technique makes the penis longer, but requires the doctors to cut certain ligaments so the penis doesn’t point as high as before, which can cause the man to lose sensitivity. These side effects, as well as other risks, greatly reduce the value of these procedures, which is why very few surgeons perform them. In my estimation, the risks make such surgery not even worth considering. If you are intent on learning more of the gory details, however, make an appointment with a urologist.

      Getting erection direction

      The proportion of crus (penis under the skin) to exposed penis can cause variations in the direction that a penis points during an erection. Men with a shorter crus, and thus a longer penis, are more likely to have an erection that points downward, while an erect penis that has a longer crus will probably point outward, or even straight up.

      Occasionally, a man tells me that he is concerned because his penis points in a certain direction when it is erect. As you can see from Frank’s situation in the following case study, this phenomenon isn’t unusual. Some men have a more pronounced curve than others, and sometimes the penis also bends to the left or to the right.

       Frank

       When Frank came to see me, we spent half an hour talking without broaching the real reason for his visit. He admitted that he didn’t go out with women, but he blamed that on all sorts of things that didn’t make sense to me. I could feel that more was bothering him than he was letting on, and I told him straight out that I thought he wasn’t being truthful with me. That’s when he told me that he was afraid of dating women because, if he got close enough to them to have sex, they would notice that his penis was misshapen.

       Because I’m not a medical doctor, I don’t examine patients, but I did ask him to describe for me what his penis looked like. He said that, when he had an erection, instead of sticking straight out, as did the erect penises he’d seen in some porn videos, his penis had a very large curve in it. To me, his description seemed to be within the bounds of normalcy, but I sent him to a urologist to make sure.

       When I next saw him, he was a new man. The urologist had confirmed what I had thought, and knowing that he wasn’t going to be made fun of gave him the confidence to start dating. The next time I heard from Frank, about a year later, he called to tell me that he was engaged.

      

Because I’m not a medical doctor, my first piece of advice if you feel that your penis has an abnormal shape is to go to a urologist to make certain that this curvature doesn’t indicate some problem.

      In the vast majority of cases, the curve falls well within the norms of most men, and the concern is just a case of sexual ignorance. In other words, the man doesn’t know that most penises are curved to some extent. Once in a while, a man does have a more pronounced curve than most. Even the majority of these men don’t have a problem in bed, although a few may have to adjust the positions they use. In some cases, however, a man may have Peyronie’s disease, a condition that can make sex impossible (although, rest assured, in most cases the disease goes away on its own after a short while, as I discuss in Chapter 22).

      In any case, this problem is mostly in the minds of the men who come to me with concerns about the appearance of their erect penises. Because they believe that their penises look unusual, they are afraid to date. They worry that, when the time comes to undress, their partner will react negatively.

      

You have one simple way to avoid worrying about how a new partner will react to the shape of your penis, and this applies to the vast majority of other doubts that people have about their sexual abilities: Wait until you have established a strong relationship before you have sex with somebody. I don’t say you have to get married, but you will find the experience of making love much better if you are in love and you integrate sex as an expression of your love rather than as a form of recreation.

      So, whether your penis looks like a boomerang or is straight as an arrow, remember that the three little words “I love you” are far more important to your lover than the direction in which your penis points.

      Although

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