Hi,
So I recently came across some articles which claimed that smaller penises were seen as more culturally superior and noble, especially seen in Greek statues (e.g. Michelangelo's Statue of David), and in renaissance art.
I'm really curious as to why this opinion died out. Could it have something to do with the liberalisation of sexuality? Particularly in regards to what women desire?
I have yet to find any particular pieces of art which showcase larger penises, without it being seen as demeaning or 'animalistic'. That being said, I don't know all that much about art history. Other similar thread responses focused solely on old art history as a representation, but I've found little about the shift in view regarding this.
Would be great to hear some opinions, thanks!
Congratulations, OP. Thanks to you, I now have 'large penis' all over my search history.
Your articles are correct, as far as they go. Certainly, in classical Greek and Rome, abnormally large penises were seen as crude, barbaric, and/or amusing (this AskHistorians thread has examples and citations). There was a general belief that large penises were sexually pleasing for those being penetrated, both men and women (there's a fragment of Roman comedy, concerning which my google-fu has failed me, in which a well-endowed slave gripes about the constant state of exhaustion his horny masters leave him in; some of the Priapus poems, e.g. 25, feature the phallic god offering similar complaints), but, in context, this wasn't 'manliness'; classical ideals of manliness focused on self-control and moderation, and sexual excess was seen as weak - even, strangely to modern manly mores, effeminate.
As to the modern interpretation: this not-particularly-scholarly article suggests that the modern idea, that large penises correlate with manliness, is linked to the mainstreaming of pornography (for the screen, the bigger the better) and men's self-comparison to those long and long-lasting porn performers. Certainly, giant swinging dicks are not common in modern art! I would guess that 'what women desire' has little to do with it, since women report that size has little to do with their satisfaction. Interestingly, that article suggests that men may be more affected by comparative penis size than with objective penis size, agreeing with the idea that seeing giant porn penises has intensified the link between penis size and masculinity. I would also note a further possible connection: in the sad history of 'racial science', many white scientists (and moralists) promulgated the myth of the 'macrophallic black beast', the idea that black men were closer to animals than human, as demonstrated by their aggression, strength, and giant penises. Those tropes are still present today (as one can easily check by browsing /r/all), but it would not surprise me if, as 20th century men struggled to redefine manliness in ways that didn't involve the subjugation of non-whites, the same set of traits came to represent manliness in general.
If you can find a copy of A Mind Of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis, it might well be worth reading on this.
EDIT: I just realized that I didn't really talk about the aesthetic question, to which I'd respond that penises in general, large or small, aren't generally considered aesthetically pleasing in modern art, due to, I think, the more general cultural rejection of 'heroic nudity' and moral concerns about aesthetic appreciation of nude male bodies. Think superhero comics, and what body parts the Spandex doesn't perfectly outline, or how movies, up until recently, got R ratings for full frontal female nudity but NC-17 for dick. (I blame the Victorians.) Large penises may be desirable sexually, or in terms of masculine representation, but they're still not aesthetically approved.