Why I Think Penises Deserve More Aesthetic Appreciation

They’re a lot more appealing than we give them credit for

“Ick,” a friend of mine once said, when the subject of our conversation turned to penises. (Yes, that happens. Kinda a lot.) “I mean, I love them, but they’re just so…utilitarian. I don’t need to look at one in order to feel turned on. It’s just not visually appealing.”

This is at least the ten millionth time I’ve had this conversation, believe it or not. Men always seem so concerned about people talking about the size of their penises, but in reality, I’ve only ever heard one comment about size in all my life. The rest of the time, penis-talk centers around aesthetics.

What does it look like? Is it attractive? Why do some men want us to admire it during sex, or when they ejaculate? Is semen attractive? Do we have to find that pleasing in any way?

Believe it or not, there are a lot of things to explore here.

It’s interesting to me that most of these conversations end with the judgment that no, penises aren’t that great to look at. No, ejaculation isn’t that visually appealing. The whole thing is just…meh.

Though I understand this to some degree — if we’re comparing penises to vulvae, for instance, there’s no way a penis can win that beauty contest. I mean, vulvae are so beautiful, it’s overwhelming. They look like flowers. Butterflies.

Okay, so penises are a little more utilitarian than a fleshy, juicy, sweet vulva. They don’t have the same alluring softness that commands attention and admiration.

But are they and their functions somehow less beautiful and less appealing? I’m not so sure.

I’ve always had a particular love for penises. I learned this, perverse as it might sound, from my mother, who cannot get enough of the male member.

She was literally the little girl who got in trouble for asking her male best friend to pull his pants down and show her his penis. The one behind the bushes on the playground who actually said, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” (And she made good on her deal before being hauled away by a teacher.)

When I was a teenager and thumbing through catalogs while sitting next to her on the couch, she’d notice immediately when I passed through the pages of male underwear models and would say, “Oh my god, look at those bulges. I wonder what they look like under the briefs…”

“Mom, gross!” I’d yell while she was staring wistfully at the images of all those men.

Now nearing 70, she brings up the topic of penises on a regular basis, at the most random moments: like when we’re doing the dishes or going through some of her old boxes of memorabilia.

“God, I miss dick,” she once said. Or “I really wish I had a penis around. It’s been so long since I’ve played with one.”

Then she’ll launch into a ten-minute stream-of-consciousness speech in which she lists all the things she loves about penises, what she’d like to do to them…and on and on.

The grossed out teen Yael is long gone, and now in middle age, I celebrate conversations like this. I already feel like our culture is trying to tell me I’m sexually irrelevant — which means my mother is basically dead, according to society. But nope! There she is, talking about how fun it is to finger the slippery skin on a penis and how cute they look when flaccid.

How could I not have developed a healthy love for dick with such a penis-positive mother? I never heard that some women thought penises were ugly or unappealing until I was in college — it would never have crossed my mind to think so, thanks to my mom, who was always drooling over those male underwear models.

So to get to the point: Yes, I actually think penises are beautiful.

I’ve been guilty of saying otherwise in the past — that they weren’t anything special — but usually in the context of other genitalia, a circumstance we have determined that tips the scales a little unfairly. (Let’s maybe stop trying to compare apples to oranges here.)

But in general, I have always admired them. I love the way they transform so completely. I love the way the skin there moves and feels. I love the nooks and crannies.

I have endless memories of all the times I took out my camera while my last long-term partner and I were lying in bed watching TV, naked, and I’d ask if I could take some photos because his penis looked so gorgeous the way it would settle itself against his thigh.

He would roll his eyes, mutter something about how weird it was that I admired it when it wasn’t even hard, and kindly oblige me.

And I spent probably twice as much time touching, tasting, and simply looking at his penis as he spent on my nether regions. You see, I got to spend all kinds of time looking at his face, touching his hands, his hair, his arms. But there was that one part of him that was generally hidden away most of the time. So when it was available to me, you can bet I was going to pay attention.

There was a time in my life when I wasn’t so penis-positive (despite my mother’s influence). As a young woman, I was, in fact, intimidated by and scared of penises. I suppose that sounds silly, but I mean that quite literally and I know many women in my circle who felt the same.

I suspect this is because we were raised in such a sexually toxic culture where penises were equated with power and dominance. By the time I had my first sexual experience, I’d already been taught that penises were very simple machines, driven by a specific need, and that they a) should not be distracted from that need and b) might fulfill that need before a woman’s needs were fulfilled, and if so…too bad.

When I think of my first relationship, though I remember my partner bragging incessantly about his huge dick, I literally have no memory of what it looked like. And that’s because I went to great lengths to never look at it. I was terrified to do so, as if it might turn me to stone. As a woman, I knew looking at a penis would convey desire and I wasn’t supposed to have desire.

I also genuinely felt afraid of it. The cultural stereotype that everything in our sex life should revolve around it and its unpredictable behavior played out to the letter in our relationship. He’d warm me up for sex by playing with my nipples when we were watching a movie so he wouldn’t have to “waste time” later, and when he came in six, eight, or eleven minutes, long before I was ready, that was that. Sex was over.

I was in my mid-twenties before I dared to actually look at a penis directly (nope, I didn’t turn to stone) and it was as gorgeous as I’d hoped it would be. I still remember that first glance. In fact, it was so gorgeous that I had to explore it with my tongue and mouth as well as my fingers.

That was a turning point for me in my journey to appreciate penises the way they deserve to be appreciated.

Looking back, I realize how much our culture hyper- and toxically-sexualizes penises, making it uncomfortable or even scary for some women to engage with them in a way that feels safe. It makes me sad because I think it creates a barrier for a lot of women who might like to explore their love of the male form but who shy away because they don’t want to tangle with sexual explorations that are closely tied to female domination.

For instance, I had very conflicting feelings about giving oral sex to a man or watching him ejaculate because I associated both with my own disempowerment. I had too many experiences of the “head push,” too many demands for oral sex when there was little to no reciprocation, and too many aggressive commands to lie back so a lover could come all over my chest, neck, or face — without any consideration as to whether or not I’d like to receive that.

When one boyfriend told me to get on my knees and suck him off, I started crying the moment he shoved his dick into my mouth, pushed him away, and disengaged from further sexual activity.

“I will never do that again,” I cried, as he stared at me in shock. “I will not get on my knees. I am not your servant.”

He probably didn’t mean anything by it. It was a porn fantasy — and one lots of people enjoy playing out in real life.

But I didn’t like it. We hadn’t talked about it beforehand. He hadn’t asked for my permission to talk to me that way. And I hated that he felt he had the power and the right to make me service his sexual needs when I knew he would not have responded positively to me making the same demands.

I felt similarly about his constant desire to come on my face. There are all kinds of reasons why I don’t like that, but I’ll stick with the main one: It made me feel dominated without me having given him permission to dominate me.

It’s easy to understand why I sometimes had a hard time loving men’s bodies or their expressions of sexual fulfillment for such a long time. So much of it seemed to have to come at my expense.

But over the years, I learned to reject the cultural positioning of the penis as a weapon of domination. And I learned to challenge having it used that way on me.

Today, I think my mother would be proud by what a penis-friendly woman I’ve turned out to be. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

I can now appreciate the beauty of a penis without it seeming domineering. I love exploring them in different ways. And I definitely don’t find them visually unappealing.

I even love watching a man masturbate and ejaculate — god, I love that — because I’ve learned it’s very different for a partner to do it because I asked him to for our mutual pleasure, than to do it because he wants me to worship his sexual fulfillment. Watching him enjoy himself and witnessing his body in orgasm because his pleasure gives me pleasure is a whole different ballgame.

I had to teach myself to disconnect my own sexual experiences from the toxicity our culture injects into our perceptions and behaviors involving our sexuality — not just female sexuality, but male sexuality, too. Of course it poisons us in ways that hurt women, but in many cases, it hurts penis-owners, too.

For me, my ideal sexual experience involves feeling that my entire body — particularly my vulva and vagina — are admired and desired and maybe even a little bit worshipped in ways that don’t take any power away from my partner.

And I think penises deserve nothing less than that, too.

© Yael Wolfe 2021

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