MR. PINK: Let me tell ya what “Like a Virgin”‘s about. It’s about some cooze who’s a regular fuck machine. I mean all the time, morning, day, night, afternoon, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick.
MR. BLUE: How many dicks was that?
MR. WHITE: A lot.
MR. PINK: Then one day she meets a John Holmes motherfucker, and it’s like, whoa baby. This mother fucker’s like Charles Bronson in “The Great Escape.” He’s diggin tunnels. Now she’s gettin this serious dick action, she’s feelin something she ain’t felt since forever. Pain. (…) It hurts. It hurts her. It shouldn’t hurt. Her pussy should be Bubble-Yum by now. But when this cat fucks her, it hurts. It hurts like the first time. The pain is reminding a fuck machine what is was like to be a virgin. Hence, “Like a Virgin.”
– Quentin Tarantino, Reservoir Dogs
Among the many physical perfections conferred upon romance novel heroes, one that’s rarely discussed is dick size. And let’s face it: Most romance novel heroes are huge. I guess the impression is magnified when the heroines (especially in historicals) are often virgins, but even if the heroine has had some experience, the hero almost always turns out to have a much bigger schlong than the ex-husband or boyfriend. And sometimes the size becomes downright ludicrous, like Sinclair in MaryJanice Davidson’s Undead series, whose dick is apparently as big around as the bottom of a beerglass. Linda Howard has also written about heroes with massive members. Their dicks are so huge, that even in the relatively rare instances when the heroine isn’t a virgin, the colossal cock still causes the heroine pain. (This may not be true of all her books—I’ve read only ten or so Linda Howard novels and I haven’t picked up any new ones in about five years.) Even geek heroes like Simon of The Real Deal has a wang of monstrous proportions—it’s so big that it’s a source of concern for him, in fact, another aspect of the book that had me rolling my eyes and busily marking the book down yet another point.
Since romance novels primarily cater to female fantasies, are we ladies really such size queens? One researchers says yes, but has found that width seems to matter more than length. There are quite a few flaws with this study, including small sample size (only 50 women interviewed), sampling method (the subjects were all acquaintances of the interviewers’) and the fact that the sample is non-representative (the women were young, between 18 and 25, college-educated, and no word was said about their ethnicity) so I’m not sure how seriously to take it. Masters and Johnson pointed out that since the vagina is elastic, penis size in all likelihood shouldn’t matter—but then shouldn’t and doesn’t are two entirely different things, of course; sex involves psychology every bit as much as physiology, and while a bigger penis may in fact make no difference in performance, that won’t matter if most people believe that it does. A large survey conducted by Psychology Today magazine in 1993 found that women seem evenly divided: half want big schlongs, the other half don’t care about size or like smaller penises. It also seems that women are adaptable about their preferences and often adjust their ideals to match their current mates.
Given the conflicted data about preferences for penis size, the legion of massively be-wanged romance novel heroes may very well serve as some sort of sexual ideal for all us romance novel readers (most of whom are lonely, love-starved, bon-bon munching housewives, right? SNORT) but I also think there’s more to it than that. I think that the large penises serve pretty much the same purpose as put forward by Mr. Pink: to make the sexual experience with the hero stand out in stark relief for the heroine, even if she’s not a virgin. I talked briefly about the appeal of the untouched heroine in “A Pox on This Herd of Tiresome Virgins”, and I think the big dickery is yet another device (huh huh, device) used to indicate that the heroine has truly found The One. Not only is his sexual performance superlative, but his penis size usually is, too. Mr. Right is Mr. Enormous.
This is why I don’t think we’ll be seeing many heroes with small (or even average-sized) penises any time soon, just as we won’t see too many heroes with beer bellies, love handles, acne or backhair.
Above and beyond that, most romance novel heroes also serve as an archetype for manliness, virility and masculinity. Almost all of the earmarks for good providers, protectors and sexinators (is TOO a word, because I just made it up) are present in romance novel heroes. They’re often taller than average, more muscular than average, more wealthy than average (if not at the begining of the book, then almost certainly by the end), have over-developed protective instincts and are definitely better-than-average lovers, even the virgins. The peener is seen as THE symbol of masculinity and virility, what separates girls from boys, and it’s only natural that their size is inflated (huh huh, inflated) in romances.
What do you think? And I’m going to try and conduct and informal survey here: Do you like big dicks? Small dicks? Dicks that are neither big nor small? Or don’t you care? To be honest, I like them bigger than average. Not so big that I feel like I need a winch to help get it in position, because those just make me think “Ouch,” but I definitely like ‘em a bit large. Not that I’d ever reject somebody solely because of dick size, because it’s not that important to me, but I consider any extra inches a happy bonus. (Huh huh, bonus.)
BONUS: Some links on the Wonderful World of the Willy
Erection Photos – WARNING: NOT WORK SAFE. This is a pretty fascinating website documenting penis size, curve and angle from a clinical perspective. Check out the research section for some interesting figures on penis size and curvature.
Discovery Health Sex Center: The Penis
Concering the poll: I don’t have a preference per se. I’m a believer in what you do with it that counts. Also, I’m more interested in what he can do with the tongue. 🙂
As for the romance hero, I’d have to agree that the very generous size is tied into the overall description. He’s uber everything. It plays into the fantasy role model, I suppose. As an acquaintance once mentioned to a group of us “I have five kids. Things change. I like the fantasy of it. You just don’t get all that excited over reading about someone waving a pencil around in a cathedral.”
Just had to stop by after I saw that subject topic. I’ll ditto everything White Raven said. I’d say more but I’m still stuck on your “winch” comment – the mental picture won’t leave me.
Whoo-hoo, ya came through MAGNIFICENTLY with the dick topic!
I haven’t checked out all the links yet, but you have INSPIRED me! I went searching for dick bulge on the top 100 romance novel covers and was sadly disappointed.
Anyway, I hafta run and will send more dickly comments later—just wanted to give props.
Oh, and dick preference, big enough to feel it good and not too big to hurt. Yep. (FOr specifics I have to find ruler and get sig other to cooperate).
“Oh, and dick preference, big enough to feel it good and not too big to hurt.”
What she said 😀
I’m not certain of the length either—haven’t ever measured. (Doing some quick figuring in my head based on comparisons to the length of my hand.) 6 1/2 – 7 inches, I think. Width…uh, dunno. Definitely not beer glass sized (eek!) Maybe 1 3/4 inch diameter?
…I hope he never comes to this site and reads comments. Should I make this an anonymous post? Tee hee.
I have had larger that just *hurt*—don’t need me one of those again.
I’m afraid I fall into the “big enough to feel it good and not too big to hurt” category myself, but I did have the one boyfriend who personified the romance novel proportions. And it wasn’t a bad thing; rather, it was deliciously kinky.
Have you read this tale of a (male) writer trying to describe the penis in a sex scene?
http://www.redkrowe.com/~la/writing/cliches.html
The moonwalking and the boingy, boingy, boingy always lurk on the edge of my awareness when reading a bad sex scene 😉
Oh hell, I’ve read the bit that Bron is pointing you towards. Don’t be drinking anything when you look at it. It’s hysterical.
For myself, I don’t care so much about size except I don’t want any extra small ones. I had a teeny weeny when I was in college and I’m still not convinced it counts as a sexual experience because I was never really sure it was actually in and that we were…err…fornicating. And sometimes, without venturing into TMI territory, average size is just more comfortable for things like, say oral sex 😉
I remember reading that beer glass analogy and had to wonder if MJD had actually ever seen a beer glass or if she was referring to a tall, skinny highball glass. That doesn’t seem quite so threatening, does it? If not, WTF was she thinking? I don’t think even Ron Jeremy could compare himself to a friggin’ beer glass for God’s sake!
Great post and worth the wait I was whining about.
One of my sister’s good friends had the total “Romance novel” backstory, where her first sex ever was with a man the size of her pinky. She had NO CLUE, that that wasn’t normal (think she was 15/16 at the time) until her second partner in college. The majority of her hymen was still intact and she was like “why the hell does it hurt??” After experiencing an “average” man, she felt a lot better about the whole sex thing. And I have to think that she must have made her second partner feel like King Kong, LOL.
No, the worst big dick story in a novel was from one of Laurell K. Hamilton’s books. I forget which one (one of the latter ones, I’m sure), but some dude named Arturo was mentioned as having some enormously frighening tree trunk horse schlong. OY.
One thing I find interesting is how protective women are of the male ego vis a vis their own bodies.
We are forever trying to stuff ourselves into some body mold to be more appealing. Just read our magazines!
While we stroke their fragile male egos.
We tell them that it’s their personality that counts. We reassure them that size doesn’t matter. Lord, we freakin’ fake orgasms rather than tell him he sucks (or doesn’t suck it enough) in bed and he’d best get to figuring it out if he wants to stay there!
One thing about romance is that it is liberating. Men have unabashedly held up a standard where the female body is to measure up.
Check out http://askmen.com where they give prominent women numerical ratings of their desirability!
Romance is the one place where we get to do the same across the board, hold men up to unattainable physical standards. The heroes are fine as hell and hung big. They have tight abs, tight asses and heads full of hair. Back hair is non-existent as are love handles.
Read ‘em men, and know how it feels when we check out the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and know we’ll never measure up either. Read ‘em and weep.
LONG LIVE THE BIG DICK!
Monica, I am with you. I will tell you that while the motion of the ocean and a sure-handed captain are valuable, the size of the boat? It makes a difference-especially in the girth department.
Monica, should you ever run for president, you have my vote. 🙂
And the more I think about this entry, the more I see it as somewhat of a device akin to making the villain not just bad, but a puppy-beating, homosexual, pedophillic devil worshipper with a rape fetish problem. It’s overkill so the author doesn’t have to come up with scenes that demonstrate his bad villainness as pertains solely to the protagonists. He’s just a bucket of evil on a stick.
Giving the hero a big dick is just overkill to state “He is so much of a man, his manful manliness puts all other men, past, present and future, in the shade!” It’s such a copout. Don’t worry your pretty little head, Author-person, with scenes that demonstrate in clever, touching ways how manfully manly the man is. Just strap him with a big ol’ schlong and let him rip with his inestimable sexual prowess. We understand – he’s The Man. Now you can get back to writing about her angel-wing brows and her love sputum.
Geez. I love this site and I love writing for it, but my, oh my, dissecting the conventions of romance that I used to just gloss right over will make me a much more picky reader!
I wholly agree that authors should write scenes that illustrate the facets of their characters instead of merely strapping on a physical characteristic.
But IMO, heroes should have decent-sized dicks (not horse-hung ridic, but a decent eyeful). Which hero would you rather read about? Sir Dickalot or Lord Pinkydick?
I think I definitely want my heroes to be bigger than average, if only in the heroine’s eyes. But reading about a hero with a small dick is less of an off-putting experience than, say, reading about a hero who’s clinically obese, has really rotten teeth or has chronic halitosis. In other words: small dick is not a dealbreaker for me in terms of romance novel heroes just as it’s not for me in real life, but those others ARE dealbreakers.
Candy – I was with you until the end there. If I read about a romance hero with a small dick, I’m gonna laugh. No question. Then I’ll probably spend the rest of the book obsessing about the small size and waiting for the heroine to say something like, “Good lord, what’s wrong with your dick! I didn’t sign up for this!”
“Good lord, what’s wrong with your dick! I didn’t sign up for this!â€
O.M.G.! As an editor of erotic romance, I think I can definitely say that our readers don’t want mention of small, hell, even average can be a disappointment to some. For my authors who don’t want to break the bounds of realism with the monster, foot-long schlongs, I always suggest that they don’t give exact measurements, and instead have the heroine view him as ‘big’ or more than enough. That way, the reader can imagine them to be the perfect length for them. Does anyone else remember the hero from Robin Schone’s Lady’s Tutor who had to contort the heroine into a “special” position so that he could penetrate her fully with his massive whang? I mean, I was cracking up! Did she have some sort of secret bat cave located behind her cervix?
I guess I can’t be too picky about stuff like that. I, personally, have edited books with mega-wonder cocks that defied the laws of nature. One was part-canine, and swelled up at climax, and the other had weird tentacle thingies on it. I don’t think anything can shock me anymore…
The bigger the better as far as I’m concerned, I mean come on, this is fantasy here, what’s the point of having Mr Uber Man, if his willy doesn’t touch the sides?
As with a previous commentator, I too have experienced Mr Great-Personality-But-Small-Dick, and let me tell you, I was scarred for life, so to me, size does matter, and if the guy knows how to use it,he’s definitely a keeper.
Long Schlongs Rule, and the men/women that tell you that it’s not the size, it’s how you use it, probably have small dicks or at least sleeping with a guy with a small dick.
Oh, but think how REFRESHING it’ll be when the 28-year-old virgin widow heroine (who remained a virgin because her husband was too busy hitting the opium pipe and molesting kittens to have sex with her) doesn’t experience the massive, tearing agony during her first experience with Lord Teenywanger.
Did you say tentacles? ‘Cause, frankly, that’s just wrong. I’m all for big, massive, even need-to-hold-her-open-with-a-special-instrument. All fine. Tentacles? No. Absolutely not.
Heh. I’m good with long, but tree trunk is…ouch.
My ex-fiance, well, every time at the point of entry I was in excruciating pain. And while the during was excellent, I’d be too damn sore to do it again for the next two days. And “use more lube!” doesn’t do SHIT, btw. I could use an entire bottle of aloe lube down the hole and that didn’t make a difference. Nobody ever mentions THAT kind of fun in a novel, believe me.
Lord Pinkydick sounds like last week’s contest…
One was part-canine, and swelled up at climax, and the other had weird tentacle thingies on it. I don’t think anything can shock me anymore…
TENTACLE THINGIES? What the hell—has tentacle rape anime managed to influence printed erotica now? Did the heroine have blue hair, an impossibly small, pointy chin and creepily large, sparkly eyes, E.D’trix?
(I didn’t link to the more “interesting” pictures from the La Blue Girl series because I don’t want this site to become COMPLETELY un-worksafe, understand.)
**Did the heroine have blue hair, an impossibly small, pointy chin and creepily large, sparkly eyes, E.D’trix?**
Hmmm, no actually. The hero was part shifter/mixed dna/animal thingie. I actually think he was part-tiger. Don’t know that I ever heard of tigers having suction cup tentacles on the peener, but whatever. I figured I had already gone along with the futuristic/alien/part-tiger aspect, so why not throw in the tentacled whang?
Hmmm. Maybe the mixed DNA thing caused his penis to manifest as an octopus?
Makes me think of the Wonder Twins. “Form of a TIGER! Except the penis! The penis is form of SQUID! No, make that a KRAKEN! Ah, fuck that shit, sky’s the limit, make that penis form of CTHULHU!”
Wait, except the boy Wonder Twin was limited to water-based objects, right? How much does it suck to be that guy? “You can change into any form you want—as long as it’s water based. So asskicking tiger with Cthulhu penis, no go. Tray of ice-cubes or ice-sculpture of Celine Dion, no problem.”
Oh gawd, I love the wonder twins!
“Wonder twin powers…activate!”
“Form of…a wooly mammoth!”
“Form of…a bucket of ice cubes!” (And wasn’t it funny how the silver bucket was always included?)
And together the two would catch the no good criminals trying to shut down the amusement park…
I forget where I first heard this, but I never understood how he’d make himself into a bucket of water, but then remain in the bucket after he took his own dumpus on some fire or whatnot. Are you the water, or the bucket, dude?
Aha! I can beat the editrix. I read about a reptilian hero who featured a hemipene. Yup, dual pronged like a snake. I can’t recall if there were spikes like a snake (they got no hands—have to hold on somehow).
lol Kate, I think I remember that book with the double penis, or maybe there are more out there. And a certain author with rabid fan has heroes with tentacle thingies (so to speak)…unless that’s the one that was mentioned above. Hmmm…and then there was the one where the hero’s penis turned electric blue, though I think they actually DO laugh about it in the book.
Tentacles?! What’s the title? I haven’t seen a hung hero with tentacles since those Atlan books.
I gotta read the tentacle thingies on the dick. You gotta tell us which one it was.
Now I’ve done double-endowed and big blue dick and a clit massager as part of my heroes’ apparatus (hey, they’re futuristic…my world…my dick creations *g*), but I just have to read about the tentacles.
Jaci
As a reader and a woman, Super Dick’s make me cringe. As a writer, I typically just don’t mention it unless I have to.
Did you know that male cats have spikes on their penises? They don’t hurt going in, but coming out they do and thats’ why female cats scream during sex. Maybe tigers have something simliar? LOL
girls always saying i hurt them when i put it inside them they feel like im tearing them open maybe my dick 2 beeg 4 them
Can anyone inform which one is the book with the electric blue penis? I remember reading it a long time ago, but I completely forgot its title and author!
Book with the electric blue penis: Never Send a Dog to Do a Woman’s Job, by Shelley Munro
Unless there are others, of course. 🙂
This one is really funny – and the heroine does laugh when first sees the blue wonder, hurting the feelings of the poor alien hero!