The Guardian
Women Section
Double Take
That shrinking feeling
By Charlotte Raven
(Picture of Charlotte Raven)
Be in no doubt - these are great times for groins. The current vogue for visible pants for girls has coincided with the controversy over what exactly constitutes an acceptable portrayal of that part of a man. in the light of its recent ruling on Brass Monkeys' "Loin King" advertisements, the Advertising Standards Authority has been branded a groin-unfriendly organisation. It banned the ad because, in its view, the model was portrayed as a sex object. This was judged to be the case because a) it didn't show his face and b) his bulge was a bit on the prominent side. The model, Kelly, 24, was incredulous: "I've never been accused of being too big before." But then if "big" just means "he's got one", which I strongly suspect it does, anyone other than Action Man would have suffered a similar fate.
The confusion has arisen because nobidy is sure how rude penises actually are. We know they are ruder than breasts, but how much ruder are they than female genitalia. Canvassing opinion on this seems to shed no light. "Less rude," Ian said. "Ruder," said my mum. Actually, of course, they are both right. The answer depends on the condition of the organ at the time. And, yes, flaccid members are considerably less rude than a Basic Instinct beaver - about which such a big fuss was made. On the other hand, your fully tumescent phallus can justifiably claim to be the rudest of the rude. Which simply means we are only able to see them in real life. While mainstream porn is full female crotch shots, the hard-on maintains its behind-the-beaded-curtain mystique.
If that taboo should remain in place, it is at the expense of the boys. The ban on representations of, how shall I put it, working penises, has helped fuel a growing disrespect for the organ per se. We have started to base our opinions on the rather less arresting image of the limp and unlovely appendages which still look like the product of a grand divine joke. Partly, this is the fault of female pornography, which put a host of well-oiled hunks in a selection of fantasy settings and then somehow manged to forget to turn them on. It was certainly a bold endeavour: making porn for women without proper penises was like selling a car mag to men full of pictures of roads. As for the sight of all those lolling members - like over-greased spring rolls - and their owners, brave but disconsolate, deprived of their potential as sex objects but far too silly, in their togas and their leather thongs, ever to provoke our sympathy... What else could we do but laugh?
And then, once we'd started, we found we couldn't stop. Penises were funny and so, by extension, were men. It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation, this - we might have lost respect for them first. In which case, their penises were somewhat unjustly burdened as the butt of all subsequent jibes. Whatever. This process of demystification - the opposite of penis envy - has stripped the phallus of its power as a symbol of masculine potency and cast it, withered and wilted, into the box marked "deconstructed myths". Any attempt to portray it as a serious erotic/ metaphoric prospect has to be set in the past. The Levi's ads, for example, used to hark nostalgically back to the days when men were men and sitting in your bath with your jeans on for ten hours would only shrink the fabric - not your dick.
As to whether penises are funny, that is another matter all together. I have never thought them that entertaining and hate it even more when they talk. Remember Wicked Willy, that naughty little cartoon member with a mind (and a voice) of his own? It wasn't vulgarity that damned him so much as twee-ness and the terrible thought that some real people might have names for theirs. Fortunately, women appear to have rejected this whimsical approach in favour of a noisy full-on bawdy that would shame the Wife of Bath. Women's weeklies, we learn, are getting on board this bandwagon by filling their pages with dirty jokes or "near-the-knuckle-chuckles" as they call them in That's Life!.
"Q Why do men give nicknames to their penis?
A Because they don't like strangers making decisions for them."
Readers of the magazine are mainly working class and have an average age of 35. The magazine's front cover shows a picture of a young woman in a bedroom, staring in horror at a holey pair of tights. The speech bubble reads: "Where's the gusset gone?" More helpfully, the caption informs us that "Mum's tights told a tale of... LUST AND BETRAYAL". It certainly beats knitting patterns.
"Q Did you hear the one about the English nymphomaniac?
A She was halfway across the Irish Sea before she learnt that a 21-inch Murphy was a television."
Which just goes to show that penises are a hoot. And if you should think of disapproving, remember that it used to be breasts that were thought of as funny - from Carry On to Benny Hill and beyond.
