by Jason Stotts
I sometimes see pictures of men measuring their penises in all sorts of wrong ways. While you can measure it however you want, it’s not helpful to anyone. It’s like measuring your height while standing on your toes: it’s just not the right way to measure this.
So, how do you measure your penis? You use the “bone-press method” or BPM. In order to do this, you take a rigid ruler and place it along the top of the penis. You then, as its name suggests, press the ruler into the pubic bone until it stops. Once you have this in place, you measure to the tip of penis. If you have a penis that has a severe curve, you can instead use a piece of string, push it into the bone, lay it along the top of the penis in the center, and then measure the length of the string.
So, why do we use the BPM? Because it’s easily repeatable, it’s objective (if you measure from the bottom, where would you start?), and it gives the maximum insertable length.
Of course, the overall length isn’t necessarily the most important measure of a penis; for example, some studies have shown that women tend to prefer girth to length. I think that any report of penis size should include length and girth, so something like 5.5″ long and 5″ around. Of course, if you do include girth, where do you measure it? Many penises are not of a uniform thickness, so it matters where you measure them. I think that girth should be calculated by the average of three measurements: at the base, at the middle, and immediately below the coronal ridge of the glans. This would give a reportable number like 5.5″ x 5″.
There are more complex ways to measure penises, like the Adjusted Penis Size Measurement or “T.M.I.“, but these may be unnecessarily complicated. The T.M.I, for example, calls for penis size to be calculated via the formula ((L*D)+(W/G))/(A^2) or Length times Diameter plus Weight over Girth divided by Angle of the tip squared.
Ultimately, you might be surprised to find that your penis is basically the same as everyone else’s, because the average human penis size is 5.165″ (SD=0.653″) meaning that 68.3% of men have a penis between 4.512” to 5.818”.
Want to look it up yourself? Here’s the study:
Veale, D., Miles, S., Bramley, S., Muir, G. and Hodsoll, J. (2015), Am I normal? A systematic review and construction of nomograms for flaccid and erect penis length and circumference in up to 15 521 men. BJU International, 115: 978–986. doi: 10.1111/bju.13010