You’ve likely heard someone say the phrase, “Size doesn’t matter.” Guess what?  They may have been wrong. A new study shows size does matter to women, even before they have sex with you.

The saying “Size doesn’t matter” may be wrong.

Penis Size From a Layman’s Point of VIew

Let’s look at the penile traits it doesn’t take a PhD to understand. Consider these facts:

• Unlike many other mammals, a man’s penis does not retract.
• The human male’s penis is proportionally larger than any other primate.
• Man stands upright, placing the penis right out front when approaching a female.

It would appear, at least anecdotally, that the aesthetic quality of your penis could matter, at least prior to the development of clothing. It was likely one of the first things a woman saw. How could it not matter when she was choosing a mate?

49 life-sized, nude, male figures were reviewed and scored on attractiveness.

The Importance of Penis Size Research

A new study conducted by researchers Brian Mautz, Bob Wong, Richard Peters, and Michael Jennings, released by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences appears to indicate that a human male’s penis size does affect sexual attractiveness. Conducted at the Australian National University, the researchers found the size of a man’s genitalia was found to be directly related to “precopulatory female mate choice, based on male genital traits.”

Mautz and his colleagues created 49 computer-generated, life-sized, nude, male figures. These figures were a representation of three different traits:

• Height,
• Shoulder to hip ratio, and
• Flaccid penis size

105 women, who averaged 26 years old, were then asked to review each figure and score them on their attractiveness, on a scale from 1 to 7. These women were alone in the room as they reviewed the figures, and their responses were anonymous.

Penis size was found to be just as important as stature.

The Importance of Penis Size Results

Some of the results of study confirmed past study findings. First, women do prefer taller men. They also prefer men with broad shoulders and narrow hips — think classic swimmer’s physique. These were not surprising.  However, when Mautz and his team controlled for these variables, one very interesting fact became clear -

Penis size (both length and girth) was nearly as important to women,
in rating attractiveness as stature!

As Mautz explained, “As you increase (flaccid) penis size, the amount of attractiveness scores gets bigger.” Not only did women score the figures with larger flaccid penis sizes higher, they also spent more time looking at the figures with larger penises.

Interestingly, women with a larger body mass index showed an even stronger preference for the figures with larger penises. It was also found that for the taller men, penis size was even more critical to the women in their attractiveness scores. Mautz theorized this was due to “a taller guy must have a disproportionately larger penis to sort of make it clear” that he is well-endowed.

In their findings, the researchers conclude, “The observation has generated suggestions that human size partly evolved because of the female choice. (…)  Our results support the hypothesis that female mate choice could have driven the evolution of larger penises in humans. More broadly, our results show that precopulatory sexual selection can play a role in the evolution of genital traits.”