[The size of a model’s member, for example, had
a greater influence on attractiveness if the model were tall, since proportion
may have been an important factor in how appealing the men appeared to the
women. “A change in penis size has a larger effect for taller men than it does
for other heights,” Mautz says. “This result could be because penis size was
smaller when assessed relative to the height of a taller man,” the authors
note.]
 |
| Getty Images/Image Source / Getty Images/Image Source |
Call it sexist or sensationalist, but now
science suggests it’s so: women find men with bigger penises more attractive.
(UPDATED) Reporting in the journal Proceedings of the
National Academy of Science, researchers led by Brian Mautz, now a
postdoctoral fellow at the University of Ottawa in Canada,
studied how 105 young Australian women rated attractiveness in males.
The researchers, including those from Monash
University and Australian National University, asked the women to view
life-size video clips of computer-generated images of naked men who varied in
height, body shape and flaccid penis size, but not in other qualities like
facial attractiveness and hair. The women gave each image a rating from 1 to 7
on total sexual attractiveness, rather than assessing individual
characteristics.
“We show that penis size actually is important
on some level and, importantly, it interacts with other traits,” says Mautz.
The size of a model’s member, for example, had
a greater influence on attractiveness if the model were tall, since proportion
may have been an important factor in how appealing the men appeared to the
women. “A change in penis size has a larger effect for taller men than it does
for other heights,” Mautz says. “This result could be because penis size was
smaller when assessed relative to the height of a taller man,” the authors
note.
But height was equally important. Shorter men
with larger penises were ranked as more attractive than shorter men who were
not as well endowed, but they still remained on the low end of the scale for
overall appeal, says Mautz. “You’d think that if penis size is super
attractive, it might help shorter guys more. It does increase attractiveness
for short men, but they still are under average in attractiveness scores.”
It turns out there may also be a threshold for
the ideal size, which may also work against the vertically challenged; the
study found that above about 3 in., additional enlargement in genitalia doesn’t
make that much of a difference in attractiveness, regardless of a man’s height.
That’s not to say that there’s an upper limit
on penis size, however; Mautz and his team did not find a maximum on desired
size, but noted that “the most attractive penis size” appeared to fall outside
the range used in the study, which was designed to capture 95% of the
variability women would encounter. So although attractiveness beyond the 3 in.
continued to increase in a linear fashion, it did so at a slower rate.
The results may not be as superficial as they
seem. Based on evolutionary principles, it could be possible that women look to
penis size to judge a man’s appropriateness as a mate; the size of a man’s
member may indicate an ability to sire and produce healthy and robust children
(something that obviously tended to play a greater role before developed
societies began wearing clothes). And that, say the researchers, might help to
explain why men have evolved relatively large penises in relation to those of
other primates.
While size may matter, the findings don’t
suggest that only size matters. In fact, body shape seemed to
trump both height and genital endowment in determining attractiveness. Based on
the women’s answers, the researcher calculated that height was as important as
endowment in a male’s attractiveness, while wider shoulders and narrow hips was
more important than both combined.
So if appealing to women is the goal, then
it’s the gym membership that may make more sense than investing in genital
enhancement devices.
(Note: A
previous version of this story was incorrectly edited and did not accurately
reflect the data on the relative importance of the three factors studied in the
research.)
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