Non-erect penis size and shape; twisting of the penile shaft

The Flaccid Penis

The flaccid penis varies enormously in shape and size, much more so than the erect penis, since smaller penises tend to proportionately enlarge more on erection.

Here are illustrations of how a flaccid penis may appear. Again, all variations are normal, in the sense that they occur frequently in the human population. Even a variation which occurs at a frequency of only 1% will affect about 1 million men in the US alone. The message, therefore, is that you may be part of a minority, but it is a large one!

All pictures from Images of Size, a pictorial guide to penis size.

A typical flaccid penis - uncircumcised and circumcised

(Arguably there is no such thing as a typical penis, but these illustrations represent the "textbook" penis.)

And here are some variations on the theme. Again - they're all normal. See also the size page of this site and the foreskin-circumcision photographs.

Limited amount of shaft showing when flaccid

This may well be due to excessive amounts of fat around the pubic area. Weight loss may appear to produce an increase in penis length, but in fact what happens is that the shaft is being revealed as the surrounding tissue reduces in bulk.

In some cases men really do show only their glans when they are flaccid.

In some cases the shaft of the penis retracts into the foreskin, producing a bunched-up appearance like this:

There are more photos of the retractile penis on the size page.

You can email your comments, queries and problems to: mtce2009 @ yahoo.com (remove the spaces when emailing)