Unhung Hero(available to watch on iTunes) is 90 minutes of dick-size exploration and introspection by a guy called Patrick Moote, prompted by his rejected marriage proposal being broadcast live at a basketball game, which later went viral, garnering international media coverage and racking up 10 million plus incredibly humiliating views on the 'Toob . The jilting party later admitted to Moote that she said no because Moote’s penis is too small (mercifully, she waited until the "kiss cam" had stopped rolling to tell him that).
You'd think being dealt those two ego-crushing blows would finish off a guy, and that he'd retreat to places where most men with inadequacy issues can usually be found – the studio audience of Top Gear or the comment sections of broadsheet newspapers' websites, perhaps - but instead he made a feature length documentary about penis anxiety. So say what you like about his dick, he's got big balls. (Although, sadly, this would only serve to make his dick look smaller in relation to them).
In Unhung Hero, Moote discusses his penis with his father, who also admits to also being a 'small hanger' and with a urologist who tells him his penis is the junk equivilant of a girl with an A-cup. He also meets Jonah Falcon, owner of the world's largest penis, who is a sanguine about their divergent fortunes, pointing out that having a big (the biggest in fact) penis 'would make sex easier, but it doesn’t make relationships easier. It would be you plus a few extra inches, but guess what? You’re still just you. People are going to like you either way.'
I personally feel the same about my penis-size anxieties as I do about my existential fear of death – there's not much that can be done about it, so why waste time fretting? But my pragmatic and sober approach to wiener issues perhaps isn't that typical, and there are plenty of worried teens and nervous communal shower users out there sweating it out, but really? Are there? (Read that last bit in Cary Bradshaw's voice for maximum typing in bed while looking out a window at the rain effect.) You hear a ton of stories about Loose Women and internet porn putting the fear of God into men about their dick size, but is that actually happening?
As someone who has experienced unemployment and prolonged bouts of enforced celibacy, I'm familiar with both* Loose Women* and internet porn, but I don't think they've had much effect on my self image, penis-wise: with Loose Women I just think 'these irrelevant old people sure are making some annoying noise' and change the channel, and as for porn, I just figure everything is bigger, better and shinier in America, right? RIGHT?
Me being blasé about this isn't some backhanded way of telling you I'm hung like John Holmes (although I am), but I always thought that penis anxiety in this enlightened age had stopped being a 'thing.' Sex gets discussed constantly, now so surely we're all a bit more clued up about what's normal - and who's got time to actively worry about their dick length anyway? And for every 'size does matter' ranter, there are enough girls saying 'it's what you do with it that counts' to assuage most men's fears. RIGHT?
Wrong - either I'm in denial, or in posession of preternaturally high levels of self confidence. A study carried out last year by King's College London discovered that a third of men suffer from penis anxiety. And crucially, suffering from penis anxiety is no indicator of penis size. Either you worry about it or you don't, regardless of what's going on in your pants.
I'm not sure if I buy this theory, and I reckon I can disprove it. I went to boarding school for the bulk of my education, which means I've got a pretty good idea of the size of most of my school friends' wangs - thanks to communal showers, changing room comparison parties and of course those clandestine homoerotic encounters that obviously went on every night. So, I decided to conduct my own highly scientific study, where I ask a few of them how they felt about what they were packing, knowing what I did about what they were actually packing, just like that Dove advert where people describe themselves to a police sketch artist and we compare what they really look like with their self image, but with cock. (You thought I was going to ask strangers if I could see their dicks? No.)
School friend #1
What his dick actually looks like:
It looks like a plucked chicken that's been thrown out of a moving car and then nailed to a board and hit with a hammer – and by that I mean it looks like every flaccid dick ever. It's totally average.
How he feels about his dick:
'When I was a kid I was worried about it because I guess I developed later than most, so I didn't have much to show for myself until I was about 16, but by then I'd already checked about a thousand times online to see if I was the only one and I knew that I wasn't. Now it's fine, it even made a baby recently.'
Conclusion: He feels entirely average about his entirely average dick, which seems like a proportionate reaction.
School friend #2
What his dick actually looks like:
Of our sample group, this guy's is the smallest, like, when it was cold in the showers it looked like a mole's nose poking out of a moss bank.
How he feels about his dick:
'I was in those showers at school too, I know it's not the best, but it's not the worst either, it gets bigger when it's hard, although I'm assuming you never saw that. Anyway, have you seen micropenises? Those guys are unlucky, but then I read something on the internet about them and even they get girlfriends and stuff. I've also read a bunch about how most women aren't super fussed about size. Sure, some are, but some aren't. I've not had a girlfriend in a while but I know that's more to do with me being an obnoxious drunk than my dick being small.'
Conclusion: He's an optimist but also a realist.
School friend #3
What his dick looks like
It looks pretty long, but it's kind of skinny, like a deflated Siamese cat or a loosely rolled joint.
What he says about it
'When I was young it used to stress me out that mine looked a bit different to my friends', but then I saw a load of porn and realised that they come in all shapes and sizes. Once a girlfriend said it looked weird (it bends weird when it's hard) and that sent me into a Google-ing spiral for a few hours, but I found some statistics that proved I was normal, and I got over it.'
Conclusion: He probably watches too much porn, but apart from that, he seems fairly happy.
So there it is, of my three friends, 100% of them don't have penis anxiety, which seems to be entirely down to the power of Google and over-exposure to porn. So my conclusion is that penis anxiety is on the wane, and we have the Internet to thank. Thank you Internet.
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.