Despite Randall Munroe's noble plea in xkcd, humanity probably isn't going to stop talking about penis size anytime soon. In addition to the fact that the less mature among us often find dick jokes funny, it's a subject that's obviously wrought with insecurity for a lot of men. That can probably explain why a new literature review of penis-size studies in BJU International is titled, in part, "Am I normal?"
A team of researchers led by David Veale of King's College London Medical School noticed that "there have been no formal systematic reviews of penile size measurements," as they wrote, and they set out to change that. To do so, they collected data from 20 penis-size studies involving 15,521 men, including only those that had at least 50 participants, and in which the measurements were conducted by medical professionals (no self-reporting, for obvious reasons).
Veale and his team's goal was to use this data to develop "nomograms of flaccid and erect penile size measurements" — that is, charts doctors can use to show male patients where on the overall distribution of penis size they sit. Here's what they came up with for length, for example:
It's not necessarily the clearest way to get that information across, especially without someone standing there and explaining it to you, and for Americans, the whole centimeters thing doesn't help. So to simplify things, here are the average sizes the researchers discovered for each category they looked into, translated to inches (don't worry — I didn't round up):
Average length of flaccid penis: 3.61 inches
Average length of flaccid penis stretched out by researchers (yes, that's a thing they do sometimes): 5.21 inches
Average length of erect penis: 5.17 inches (alas, on this most important of categories, the researchers could only find four studies that fit their criteria, so the sample size is a relatively small 692 individuals)
Average circumference of flaccid penis: 3.67 inches
Average circumference of erect penis: 4.59 inches
The authors also found that the "strongest significant correlation was between flaccid stretched or erect length and height." There was less evidence, though, for other common middle-school penis tales, such as a connection between penis size and middle-finger length (two studies looked at this: one found a weak correlation, while the other didn't find any correlation at all), or between foot size and and penis length (same deal).
Now, this review definitely shouldn't be taken as the end-all, be-all resource on penis size and correlations between penis size and other body parts. The authors aren't claiming that the sample was representative, for one thing. But more studies will lead to a better understanding of penis length, a better understanding of penis length will lead to more news articles about penis length, and the circle of life will go on.
Read more posts by