2024 Rewind: What Body Feature Offers Clues to Penis Size?

This piece is part of EDGE's 2024 Rewind series. We're reaching into our archives and sharing some of our favorite stories from the past year.

Those curious about the size of a man's penis often find clues in other physical attributes, such as the size of their hands and feet. But according to California urologist Dr Rena Malik, they need to look up at a prominent feature on the face, and the more prominent the better.

Malik explained in a podcast recently, reports by the Daily Mail, that "there is some convincing evidence that men who have bigger noses also have bigger members. She also claims how young men's penises are more than an inch longer today than they were just three decades ago."

Speaking on the Diary of a CEO podcast, the expert at the VA Medical Center said: "There's one study, it's a Japanese study, where they looked at only Japanese men, so there are some limitations - but essentially they measured all these body parts and penile length. And what they found was that nose length was correlated with penile length, not hand length or foot length."

Her source is likely a 2021 study published in Basic and Clinical Andrology which involved 126 men aged 30 to 50 years old. It found that nose size was more closely correlated with stretched penile length than height or body weight in the group surveyed.

A more recent 2023 Chinese study involving 420 men aged 20 to 56 years old also found that erect penile length was more closely correlated to nose size than ear or testicle size.

"To further confirm the relationship between nose size and penile length, especially erectile penile length, a correlation analysis was carried out by collecting general data and the data related to the nose, ears, and genitals of 377 males aged 20-56 years, including erectile penile length and erectile penile circumference," reads the study's abstract. "The results revealed that nose size had the highest correlation with erectile penile length (r = 0.507, p = 0) and flaccid penile length (r = 0.451, p = 0). Therefore, it is believed that nose size is an independent predictor of flaccid and erectile penile length, and the common factors that contribute to this correlation may appear in the fetal period."

It also correlates with a popular Chinese belief, according to the study's abstract. "The saying 'Big nose and big penis' has been popular among Chinese people for a long time, and many people have confidence in it. This saying may be related to Chinese physiognomy, and Chinese physiognomy regards the nose as 'Saturn' and thinks that the land nourishes everything and is the representative of reproductive function. Therefore, it is believed that if a man's nose is large, then his penis is also large. Besides, the male nose is similar to the penis, which may also be one of the important reasons for this saying."

On the podcast Malik also explained two other urological changes that have taken place. Firs, that there has been a change in sperm quality over the past 50 years; and, second, a change in penile length.

"And they've actually seen that penile length is increasing, and they think that this is because the onset of puberty is changing and boys are getting exposed to factors that are making them go through puberty earlier. And, hence, they are getting more exposure to testosterone and developing longer penises, so that's a sort of interesting theoretical thing"

"A 2023 study from Stanford University which analyzed data on the penises of 55,700 men from 1942 to 2021 found a surge in length over the last three decades," cites the Daily Mail. "The meta-analysis found the average erect penis jumped 25 percent in length from 1992 to 2021 - from 4.8 to 6 inches."

The Daily Mail adds that "about 55 percent of men are thought to be dissatisfied with their penis lengths, according to surveys. But, for comparison, surveys show the majority of partners consider their partner to have the ideal penis length."