Supersize me! The long and the short of it, part 2
When the television camera focuses on a subject, whatever it is takes on a surreal objectivity that can stick in your mind and poke your eye out.
A 3-part documentary titled "Penis Envy" aired on the UK's channel 4 this month. The program guide says "The penis is the organ most central to a man's sense of self, and the quest for penile perfection has driven some men to extraordinary lengths. This programme meets the Russian surgeons who chopped off a man's penis and re-grew it on his arm . . . "
Eeeeeeew! And this teaches us . . . ?
The man who made the films, Jacques Peretti, tells us about men hopelessly and obsessively searching for "the perfect penis," about a man who tows trucks with his foreskin as a means to spiritual enlightenment, about the infamous John Wayne Bobbitt, whose prick was sliced off by his wife and ultimately found its way to a career in porn. "I was interested in seeing where this male preoccupation / neurosis with penis size has taken us, and so embarked on a frankly frightening, but undeniably gripping voyage of discovery."
Ah, now we get it! Even men who don't suffer from penis dysmorphia are horribly fascinated by those who do. It's a guy thing.
Whatever the motivation—and it most emphatically is not to satisfy women—in the last 15 years, more than 250,000 men have gone under the knife in search of size. It's no big surprise, either, that more than half of them hail from the USA, birthplace of the Big Mac and home of the Whopper.
Phalloplasty may indeed be the Next Big Thing. But though cosmetic surgeons have developed several different enlargement techniques, none of them has been endorsed by any medical organization. The American Urological Association, the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons have all issued policy statements against cosmetic surgical procedures to enhance the penis.
The procedure for lengthening a penis typically involves snipping the ligament that attaches it to the pubic bone and moving skin from the abdomen to the penile shaft. Releasing the ligament partially frees the penis, dropping it to a lower position, which may occasionally increase flaccid length half an inch or so, but generally gives the illusion of length gain.
Unfortunately, cutting the suspensory ligament can cause an erect penis to wobble and point at odd angles, particularly when it's erect. Sometimes hair grows on the shaft. There can be thick scars. The penis may hang low between scrotal "dog ears" or may actually retract. Sensitivity may be lost. And this can all be yours for $4000 to $6000.
Penis thickening, which costs $7000 and up (way up, depending on the complexiity of the surgery), can increase girth by up to 30 percent by suctioning fat from the abdomen, inner thighs, or love handles and injecting it under the skin of the penis. But fat tends to be reabsorbed by the body, leaving the penis lumpy or misshapen. Even if it stays put, it still feels like, well, fat.
Some surgeons insert strips or sheets of skin and fat (dermal fat grafts), since skin isn't absorbed by the body. But scarring from this method can cause deformity, curvature, or shortening. To avoid these problems, other doctors insert layers of cadaver skin, which has been "purified" to minimize the risk of disease and which doesn't provoke an immune response. Since this is a fairly recent practice, however, it's too soon to know if it will hold up.
After surgery, many doctors recommend manual stretching and weights to be hung from the penis (or some other traction method) to sustain and increase the length. Weights are used at two weeks for a lengthening procedure, three weeks for fat grafts, and four to five weeks for dermal fat grafts. Some patients maintain traction for up to 6 months after surgery, to reduce the chance of retraction, stretch the shaft skin, and maybe further lengthen tissues that couldn't be cut at surgery. Scars may take many months to fade and soften.
What can go wrong? Any surgery has risks, including allergic reaction to the anaesthetic, infection, scarring, and excessive bleeding.
Penis enhancement has a list of special risks, as mentioned earlier: shortened penis; hair on the base of the shaft; low-hanging cock; scrotal "dog ears"; loss of sensitivity; bumps, lumps, and clumps of fat; impotence; urinary incontinence, and persistent pain.
The poor guy who goes through this hell is understandably depressed and maybe even desperate. Maybe the surgeon didn't tell him all about the possible complications. Maybe he was flat deceived. And, face it—he felt inadequate in the first place, right?
More surgery is often the only way to fix damage caused by the original procedure, and one or more subsequent operations may not help. They can even make things worse.
Some doctors have stopped performing cosmetic enlargements altogether. Gary Alter, who was one of the top phalloplasty surgeons in the US, has turned his talents to repairing the damage done by previous operations. In the last few years, he has "reconstructed" more than 200 men with multiple deformities and problems.
On his website, Dr. Alter says, "Most patients are very pleased after penile reconstruction, since their appearance again becomes much more normal. They are able to resume a normal life again, without the severe cosmetic and functional deformities. Self-esteem is restored."
But you have to wonder. Wasn't it the self-esteem that needed enhancement in the first place?