They heavily influenced all other small-penised European sculptures.
May 12, 2016 10:14 AM   Subscribe



 
Because the attic Greek beauty ideal was a 13 year old boy. (All those statues of massively built guys with preteen faces, oh anicent deviant art )
posted by The Whelk at 10:21 AM on May 12, 2016 [5 favorites]


Um...

"Firstly, they’re flaccid. If you compare their size to most flaccid male penises, they are actually not significantly smaller than real-life penises tend to be."

That, maybe?
posted by escape from the potato planet at 10:22 AM on May 12, 2016 [12 favorites]


That was great. Thanks.
posted by mrgrimm at 10:23 AM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


That, maybe?

Good thing they kept talking about it, then!
posted by Evilspork at 10:32 AM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Have you been nude in a museum lately? They can be a bit brisk.
posted by ODiV at 10:34 AM on May 12, 2016 [40 favorites]


I'm guessing the fact that they were based on live models who had no access to centralized heating?
posted by maxsparber at 10:41 AM on May 12, 2016 [6 favorites]


I've anecdoted my experience with a college girlfriend who expected my junk to resemble David's before, and when it didn't, she didn't understand grower versus shower.
posted by Sphinx at 10:44 AM on May 12, 2016


At least now I know the etymology of priapism.
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:47 AM on May 12, 2016 [4 favorites]




Those same statues are also really into guns.
posted by bondcliff at 10:52 AM on May 12, 2016 [7 favorites]


Have you been nude in a museum lately? They can be a bit brisk.

I can never go back to the Louvre.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 10:54 AM on May 12, 2016 [21 favorites]


They're flaccid yet hard at the same time. Truly a conundrum that the artist presents us with.
posted by dr_dank at 10:58 AM on May 12, 2016 [6 favorites]


Maybe it’s so they’d be harder (eh) to break off while transporting? All bits sticking out of a statue would be at risk there, look at the first picture, how many pieces are missing...

But seriously that quote from Aristophanes is so fascinating. Makes sense!
posted by bitteschoen at 11:04 AM on May 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


They're not small. They're perfectly normal sized. I have no idea what you're talking about.
posted by slogger at 11:07 AM on May 12, 2016 [18 favorites]


Have you looked at the Parthenon? Those places were drafty.
posted by little eiffel at 11:09 AM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Hey, some are growers, and some are show-ers.
posted by janey47 at 11:12 AM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


I drive a 2000 Neon. Just saying'.
posted by cjorgensen at 11:19 AM on May 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Well the average height 2500 years ago was significantly shorter than modern day, stands to reason that other parts would be, proportional.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:54 AM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


I drive a 2000 Neon. Just saying'.

Pfft. You're just overcompensating for your tiny



wallet.
posted by Sys Rq at 11:55 AM on May 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


Ahhh this old chestnut...

I mean, it's fair and interesting to wonder about how different cultures represented people in art, but the framing around it is always pretty dumb, considering the penises in question are like...on the smaller side. But particularly for flaccid dicks, are certainly not *fascinatingly* small.

I distinctly remember being in a museum with a female friend, who launched into "there's such interesting history behind why all these statues have abnormally, freakishly small penises" and I had been thinking, "hey, these statues look like ripped versions of me"
posted by AAALASTAIR at 11:59 AM on May 12, 2016 [10 favorites]


Anecdote my father likes to tell:

It takes place at the unveiling of Musica, a large, nude, Classically inspired statue in Nashville, TN. There had been a fair amount of public backlash about the Metro Government funding a public statue that was NUDE—at least in the form of letters to the editor. They pull down the shroud and everyone sees the forty foot tall statue and reacts. Next to my father, a large man with a thick Southern accent calls out, “Why’d they make his johnson so small!”
posted by little onion at 12:10 PM on May 12, 2016 [11 favorites]


(Correction, Wikipedia suggests that it was privately funded, and that the grievances were about public display.)
posted by little onion at 12:16 PM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Small?
posted by Thorzdad at 12:25 PM on May 12, 2016


My penis is roughly the same size when there are people with chisels and hammers about.
posted by srboisvert at 12:35 PM on May 12, 2016 [12 favorites]


It's more fun to imagine the sculptors were all just hung like cashews and thought they were carving massive wangs.

Well, that's how I have fun. YMMV
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 12:40 PM on May 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


I hope I can still get a boner when I'm 2500yo.
posted by adept256 at 12:45 PM on May 12, 2016 [9 favorites]


and his small penis allowed him to remain coolly logical

I feel like making a Reddit novelty account that just drops this quote wherever it would be appropriate.
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:51 PM on May 12, 2016 [21 favorites]


The statue of David was originally paired with a statue of Goliath, and holy shit, you should've seen the schlong on that guy. A dick so big, it's been spotted in a loch in Scotland.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 12:53 PM on May 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


A related linkable article on the site--sorry for the derail--is about why women have been portrayed without pubic hair so often. (Short answer: less sexually threatening, less realistic so can be classified as fantastical not real and sexy.)

Japan is famously reticent to show pics with pubic hair for similar reasons. Last time I was in a Japanese porn store--a long time ago, things may have changed-- I found German child porn (very softcore, but still...) which was OK because no hair.
posted by kozad at 12:53 PM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


They're flaccid yet hard at the same time.

10.0 on the Mohs scale
posted by XMLicious at 12:54 PM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


I really wish I could find my photograph of an exhibit in the British Museum and its accompanying placard, which read something like: "Three of the figures are men, and one is either a woman, or is missing a small piece of clay."

Yes, I heard it read out on the News Quiz but I saw it first
posted by BungaDunga at 1:09 PM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


I mean... there are other topics on that website.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:19 PM on May 12, 2016


Metafilter: pale skin, small shoulders, a skinny chest, a big tongue, a small rump, a big prick and a long-winded decree.
posted by killdevil at 1:32 PM on May 12, 2016 [5 favorites]


At least these penises aren't made of malachite...cause they'd dissolve...in a vagina...wait, whaaaatttt am I talking about?
posted by nikoniko at 2:01 PM on May 12, 2016 [8 favorites]




At least these penises aren't made of malachite...cause they'd dissolve...in a vagina...wait, whaaaatttt am I talking about?

Seriously though, you know someone would have tried to fuck the statues if they had erect penises.
posted by AFABulous at 2:46 PM on May 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Probably not women, either.
posted by AFABulous at 2:46 PM on May 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


Bittschoen:

That actually may be a legitimate concern. For once I can tangentially pull in some of my historical knowledge. Preceding the Sicilian Expedition, Alcibiades and his pals were accused of knocking all the penises off the hermae in town. Hermae were penis-bearing public edifices of religious significance. It became such a big deal that he had to flee. It's serious business when penises fall off statues.
posted by constantinescharity at 3:01 PM on May 12, 2016 [5 favorites]


Finally! Being ugly, brutish, lustful, foul, and illogical can work in my favor!

*waggles bushy eyebrows*
posted by cmoj at 3:06 PM on May 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


Metafilter: penis-bearing public edifices of religious significance
posted by Evilspork at 3:18 PM on May 12, 2016 [5 favorites]


Also, on all those sculptures, the left one hangs low.
posted by beagle at 3:40 PM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


But does it wobble to and fro?
posted by louche mustachio at 3:48 PM on May 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


I need to know for Art History reasons.
posted by louche mustachio at 3:48 PM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Metafilter: our small genitals make us coolly logical.
posted by teh_boy at 5:30 PM on May 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


I honestly think our modern obsession with "these statues have small penises" is a result of most of us only seeing strange penises in porn. And as a woman, I think it's fairly possibly to overestimate the normal size of a penis if you really only encounter them either hard, right before, during or immediately after sex. Now that I've been married for 15 years I know the normal, un-sexually involved size is pretty small, regardless of, umm, performance time size. So yeah, when I was 18 they seemed small in comparison to the porn I'd seen and the couple of sexual experiences I'd had, but now eh.
posted by threeturtles at 9:41 PM on May 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Yeah, no. Some of us actually have penises and have seen them every day of our lives.

Them statues got little 'uns (I mean, christ, David's is half the size of one bone in his index finger), and that is an intentional aesthetic choice. Read a dang article, sheesh.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:26 PM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Now that you've said that, all the statues seem like they have weirdly huge hands.
posted by Zalzidrax at 6:14 AM on May 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


Yeah, no. Some of us actually have penises and have seen them every day of our lives.

I don't think it follows that if you have a penis that it makes you better-informed on the distribution of penis sizes than the average woman?

Unless you are one of those penis-owners that is into other penis-owners, then it seems entirely reasonable to assume that the average woman has seen more penises than you in the course of their life. (On average, of course!)
posted by andrewesque at 6:35 AM on May 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


penises
posted by escape from the potato planet at 7:52 AM on May 13, 2016


penii
posted by cynical pinnacle at 8:59 AM on May 13, 2016


penii is a false Latin plural, assuming as it does that penis is a 2nd-declension category noun (ending: us) instead of its true status as a 3rd-declension noun

the correct pseudo-formal Latin plural is in fact penes
posted by sciatrix at 9:20 AM on May 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


an awesome turn of events: a woman giving a "well actually" on penis grammar
posted by AFABulous at 10:17 AM on May 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


Sys Rq: "Them statues got little 'uns (I mean, christ, David's is half the size of one bone in his index finger), and that is an intentional aesthetic choice. Read a dang article, sheesh."

A dang article: "If you compare their size to most flaccid male penises, they are actually not significantly smaller than real-life penises tend to be."
posted by Bugbread at 6:10 AM on May 28, 2016


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