Porno, anxieties and inches: What makes a man lie about the size of his penis?

In God’s Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis (Soft Skull Press, 2013), journalist Thomas Hickman says that “man is perfectly aware that the size of his penis has no relevance whatsoever in his relationships, he knows that it is not the most important factor in how a woman will respond… Still, we can’t help but think the opposite.” And it’s not just the size that worries him: height also plays a primordial role in relationships. So much so, that sometimes men lie about it on dating apps (and in politics), adding a few inches so that they seem taller, even though the deception becomes obvious when online conversation leads to the physical plane.

If something as obvious as physical height can become the object of certain fiction and fantasy, why wouldn’t the same take place when it comes to an anatomical part with which the world (of men) has been obsessed since the beginning of time, one that has been represented widely, from cave paintings to conveniently edited and cropped images on millions of websites?

According to a study carried out by Spain’s Jaume I University, between 12% and 26% of Spanish people with penises consider their member to be small. Perhaps this is the motive as to why — as was reported by another study entitled Social Desirability and Young Men’s Self-Reports of Penis Size — the majority of men lie about their size, tending to add on a few centimeters to achieve greater social acceptance or, at least, a more enthusiastic response when it comes to dating apps. These lies often go beyond mere words: many take photos of their genitals from angles that make them appear larger. During the pandemic lockdown, here at EL PAÍS, we published a guide to taking honest nudes, for which one photographer explained: “If the camera has an angled lens, it can distort the ratio and, when zoomed in, creates something like a fisheye effect. That makes whatever is in the foreground appear larger. The camera that comes standard with the iPhone has these characteristics, so you just have to put the phone in front of what you want to capture to get a photo in which what is in the foreground looks very large, and the rest does not.”

Other men, not content with this mere angling trick, actually edit images (apps that create six packs, pectoral muscles and make biceps bigger are getting more common and easier to use all the time). In the worst of cases, some even send photos of another person’s penis. These practices amount to “cockfishing” (also known as “catcock”), a term that appeared on Urban Dictionary for the first time in 2017. “When a man talks about how big his penis is, and sends photographs from a favorable angel, making his penis seem larger than it is,” states the site.

“I think that men think they will receive more attention and interest projecting that image, and perhaps they are afraid of being compared with others,” says Megwyn White, sexologist and director of sexual education at the Satisfyer sex toy company. “It’s very hard for men to avoid pornography’s messaging and sexual representations throughout culture and the media that put an enormous emphasis on penis size and penetrative sex. At the heart of this belief is the idea that the penis is the definitive symbol of masculinity and sexual skill. The average size of an erect penis in pornography is eight inches; in contrast, studies have found that men’s average penis size while erect is 5.2 inches, and that 90% of men have a member between 3.9 and 4.7 inches. This shows that the ideal that many want to measure up to is not realistic nor, frankly, necessary,” says the sexologist. The specialist adds that sometimes, size-related anxiety is so bad that “there are cases in which some men say that their penis is smaller than it really is to lower expectations before a sexual encounter.”

Doctor Francisco Gómez León, who specializes in men’s sexual health and is an expert in erectile dysfunction and impotence, also mentions the gigantic influence of pornography on sexual education, especially among men. Many come to his clinic looking for information on how to increase penis size, whether in length or width. “It’s important to begin to deconstruct the misinformation that has come to us via porn, in which the penis is always the focus. For example, in our clinics, when it comes to performing a penile thickening or an augmentation phalloplasty with hyaluronic acid, we carry out clinical sexology therapy geared towards dismantling myths and beliefs that a patient may have. We take down a clinical history regarding the true need or motivation that the patient brings at the time of undergoing the procedure and place him in a reality that is, above all, healthy for his psycho-emotional well-being,” he says.

What happens when the moment of truth arrives and the images that were sent before an encounter don’t match up? Doctor Blanca Madurga Patuel, a urologist with more than 30 years of experience and who is the author of Todo lo que necesitas saber del pene y nunca te atreviste a preguntar (Everything you need to know about the penis and that you never dared to ask; Planeta, 2024), says that many studies have found that size is only important to 85% of women, meaning that the fears and anxieties confronting the heterosexual men who lie about their dimensions is almost speculative: it only matters to them. “A man who is forced to lie about his attributes is a man with low self-esteem. Logically, when he gets to the date and it’s the moment of truth, it will not match up to his intentions. Maybe not so much because of the real size of his penis, but because he lied. Sincerity must always come first in a healthy sexual relationship,” she says.

Gómez León agrees that, in the case that the date goes forwards (and is consummated) after the sending of erroneous or false images, the person who has been lied to will most likely disengage. “It is still a deception or a scam. When it comes to the person who lies, this will create more insecurity and even, contrary to what one might think, instead of becoming aware that lying does not bring anything good in terms of results, the practice of lying may even increase, but remain only in the virtual dating space, and never advance to physical encounter,” he says.

To conclude, one more take on why it’s not a good idea to send fake images or lie about one’s penis can be found in a Daily Mail article, which focuses on the increasing popularity of cockfishing. The piece includes the case of one man who, after sending a Grindr contact a fake image of his penis, received an image of his own member, taken some time ago. It seems like lies surrounding penis size are endless, and as Hickman says, “if men could choose, they’d have a penis so immense that they’d have to hold it up with both hands.” Which would make it hard to photograph, by the way.

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