Does Size Matter? More to Us than to Our Partners

There is no doubt that size matters to some extent. There has to be some selection pressure that has driven human males to have larger penises and human females to have larger breasts than our closest ape relatives:


But how much it matters is a harder question to answer.

In an interesting pair of survey results, researchers at the University of California added further evidence to support that we are our own worst critics, and that women are harder on themselves. The studies, one about breast satisfaction and the other about penis satisfaction, gave very similar results. The breast survey showed that 70% of women of all ages are unhappy with the size or shape of their breasts. It also showed that 56% of men are happy with the size and shape of their partner's breasts. If they did want their partner's breasts improved, they were about equally divided between whether they wanted them bigger or less droopy. Women were also nearly equally divided about whether they wanted their own breasts bigger or less droopy, but were more than twice as likely to wish their breasts were smaller than men were to wish their partner's breasts were smaller (9% to 4%).

The penis survey showed that 45% of men were unhappy with the size of their penis (almost all, of course, desiring larger), but that 85% of women were very satisfied with the penis size of their partner. If they were dissatisfied with their partner's penis size, most wanted it larger, but not as universally as men. Whereas 45% of men wanted a larger penis, and only 0.2% wanted a smaller one, 14% of women desired a larger penis for their partner, while 2% desired a smaller one. Men picked a larger penis at a ratio of 90 to 1, but women at only 7 to 1.

The take-home message? In general, we agree on the ideals (women's breasts should be larger, perkier, men's penises should be larger--and, well, probably perkier, too, although that wasn't included in the surveys), but we are more apt to obsess on our flaws (or even think of them as flaws) than our partners, which should give us all some measure of comfort.