A scientific review of artwork from the 15th to the 21st centuries suggests that the “ideal” penis size has grown recently. A peer-reviewed medical publication, BJU International, has published the findings.
According to research author and editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Impotence Research Ege Can Serefoglu, a professor of urology at Biruni University Faculty of Medicine, “In recent years, we are encountering a dramatically increased interest in penile enlargement surgeries.”
“We realized that this increased demand is mainly due to the increased consumption of porn, especially during the pandemic period. Many young men compare their penis size with that of porn stars and consider their penises to be small, although their sizes are within the normal range,” he said.
“They are having a great amount of anxiety regarding the inability to satisfy their partners, although it has been demonstrated that penis size does not have a significant impact on partner satisfaction,” Serefoglu told PsyPost, a psychology and neuroscience news website.
“This phenomenon is called ‘penile dysmorphophobia,’ which is nowadays considered as a part of body dysmorphic disorder. Considering the magnitude of this disorder, we wanted to assess the ideal penis size by measuring the length of this organ in nude paintings. As expected, we have observed a dramatic increase in penis size in the recent centuries.”
The researchers methodically examined 160 paintings of naked adult men made by 99 painters from 21 nations, dating from the Renaissance to the present, to examine how the representation of male genitalia in Western art has evolved over time.
Only paintings in which the penis size could be established and represented in proportion to the face were used for the measurements. The male figures’ faces were checked to see if they followed the Golden Ratio, a guideline for proportion in art, to confirm that the paintings were realistic and proportionate. To evaluate whether the penis was in proportion to the face, researchers calculated the penile length to ear length (PtEL) or penile length to nose length (PtNL) ratios.
The paintings were grouped into three categories based on the historical development of art: Renaissance Period (1400-1599), Baroque-Rococo and Impressionist Period (1600-1899), and Contemporary Art Period (1900-2020), after first being divided into seven groups depending on the centuries in which they were painted.
The number of paintings showing the naked male body significantly increased in the 15th and 16th centuries, although the penis was still portrayed as being relatively modest during that period.
The researchers discovered that paintings from the twenty-first century had larger average penis sizes than those from all earlier centuries. Also, compared to all prior periods, artworks from the Contemporary Art Period had much larger average penis sizes. The results show that penises have been shown as larger in current artworks than in earlier ones.
The results were what the researchers had anticipated. Serefoglu reported, “We were aware of the fact that ‘small penis’ was considered to be ideal in ancient Greece and in the Renaissance period. In the contemporary period, we knew that penis sizes enlarged along with the perception of the society related to the ‘ideal penis size.”
According to the study, modern men’s self-esteem and happiness with the size of their own penis could potentially be impacted by contemporary art’s growing propensity to depict larger and potentially unrealistic penises.
Serefoglu advised that “Men should not consider porn stars as ‘normal’ and they should not be focusing on their penile size, which does not have an impact on partner satisfaction.”
To understand why artists are depicting penises in this way and the possible ramifications of this trend, more investigation is needed.
