Science

Is Penis Size Correlated With Nose Size? A New Study Says So. 

What does it matter anyway?

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A man with a big nose resting his head on his hands.
Klaus Vedfelt/Getty

Chances are, if asked, almost every man could tell you the his penis size, flaccid and erect. The reason is simple: At least one time in his life, he took a ruler, measured himself from various angles, and learned the resulting specs by heart. Because at a young age, men gleaned that dick size matters. For sex, sure. But also because it’s a marker of virility, of masculinity. Life took a hot poker and burned this into our brains. To have a larger-than-average penis was a gift, one that meant you were more of a man. We all wanted to see how we measured up. The game of penis size comparison was practically impossible to ignore.

There are plenty of markers used to estimate the size of a man’s penis, most notably height and foot size. You know what they say about men with big shoes, right? Wink. And you know what they say about tall men, right? Wink, wink. Well, a review of the many studies that suggested these relationships has found that any correlations between penis size and either height or foot size “were either inconsistent or weak.” (The latter conclusion is based on the fact that the study sizes were too small, or that too much of the data was self-reported.) But it will take much more than a review study to scrub the penis-size-foot-size equivalency from collective memory.

The Penis-Nose Size Correlation

It seems researchers can’t stop thinking about how to guess a person’s penis size. A recent study published in the journal Basic and Clinical Andrology shows that there is, indeed, a correlation between nose size and penis size. A team of Japanese researchers studied the corpses of 126 middle-aged men. They took a variety of measurements, including height, weight, testicular weight, penis circumference, and flaccid penis length. They also took down stretched penile length, which researchers said best gauged the would-be length of the erect penis.

The short of it: The researchers found a correlation between penis size and nose size, measured as the distance from the center of each subject’s eyes to where the nostril begins. Subjects whose noses were smaller than 1.8 inches had a stretched penis length of 4.1 inches or less. Those who had a nose that was 2.2 inches long or longer (22 percent larger) had penises that, on average, measured 5.3 inches long. Those with nose measurements that fell between those two extremes had an average penis size of 4.5 inches.

Researchers concluded that “the fact that nose size is related to SPL (stretched penile length) indicates that penile length may not be determined by age, height or body weight but has already been determined before birth.”

It’s Time to Drop the Penis Size Comparisons

So what does this all mean? For one, the study should be taken with a grain of salt given the researchers looked at only 126 subjects, and they were all deceased. But more importantly, the study teaches us a whole lot of nothing, other than the fact that the obsession with penis size is alive and well.

It’s second nature for men to suffer from size insecurity and to make penis size comparisons with what they see in porn, in the shared showers at a local pool, or anywhere else. But the truth of the matter is that it’s all relational: If you’re comfortable with who you are, what does it matter? If your partner is satisfied by your size, what does it matter?

This is a hard fact to finally grasp, as it requires one to eliminate preconceived notions of masculinity. Comfort with oneself takes time, and it mostly becomes clear when a man is out of his teens and twenties and starts to settle down.

For fathers of boys in particular, this is good to note and bring up with your sons. I’m sure many men would admit there’s a part of them that beams with pride upon hearing that their son is packing. But whether ballpark frank or mini cucumber, the size of one’s penis — or the features that might say something about a person’s hung-ness — don’t have anything to do with who they are so much as what they think it says about who they are. If your son has a prize hog? Good for him. If he doesn’t, what difference does it make?

The less we adhere to these ingrained notions of masculinity, the more likely we are to highlight the attributes that actually matter. Anyway, did you hear about the guy with the big nose? Big tissues.

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