You know the cliché because you’ve heard it often enough. “Oh, it’s really not the size that matters to me. It’s the way you use it.” And then there’s my favorite left-handed compliment, “Oh yours is just dandy because the big ones really hurt.”

Then again, I remember watching Jimmy’s Fallon Late Show, featuring my beloved back-up band the Roots, and that queenly elephant of comedy Rosanne Barr is on, spewing her familiar domestic Goddess routine when Fallon starts talking about her ex-husband, another comedian. She extends her little pinkie finger and grips it at the knuckle joint. “You mean Tom Arnold, Jimmy? Mr. Beverly Hills dick. Hung like a sunflower seed.”

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Still bitter after they’ve been separated about two decades? I mean, I feel for him. For all I know it may not be true and, really, why should I care? But there it is.

Two of the world’s most acknowledged experts on this matter are the urologists, Kevan R. Wylie of the Royal Hallemshire Hospital In Sheffield and Ian Eardley of St. James’ Hospital in Leeds, England. The two Yorkshire specialists got together to review the literature of penis-size in a groundbreaking issue of the urology journal BJU International issued in June 2007. 85 percent of the women questioned stated they were “pleased” with their partner’s penis proportions. Why then do so many men suffer from what Wylie and Eardley call SPS (Small penis syndrome)? SPS, they say, is not really to do with the actual size of one’s penis, but, rather, the anxiety of thinking one’s penis is too small. This is completely different from males who really have a small penis.

Classification and measurements, scientifically speaking, of course, are important. According to Wylie and Eardley, the average erect penis is 5.5inches to 6.2inches long and a 4.7 to 5.1 circumference at mid-shaft. Thus a micropenis is less than 2.75inches log when erect. Very few men actually suffer from genuine cases of this condition. Yet, at the same time, 45 percent of men complain that they were dealt a bad deal at birth and want a bigger penis. “It is important that these concerns aren’t dismissed by doctors,” says Wylie, as it only serves to heighten anxiety.

“I hate having a 4.25inch erect penis,” says one surveyed subject. “I’m at the bottom of the chart, like, half an inch from a micropenis. What I hate most is that the sex isn’t good with a 4″ penis. There’s just not a lot of room to move back and forth and really enjoy it.  At such a small size I have to stay way too close. Condoms are way too big. While people with a five-inch penis want to be bigger, I just want to be average. And it’s not going to happen. I feel like I’ve been deprived of some of the basic pleasures of being a man and I hate the world because of it.”

Yet one of my old adolescent girlfriends, a long retired ‘adult entertainer’ who “made ten millions bucks and quit” sees things differently. “The whole business of commercial sex is predicated on insecurity. Every stud in a porn is really hung, but that doesn’t all men are or should be, just like not every man on the street can look like Cristiano Ronaldo or George Clooney. It’s just one more way to feel like a crumb of dirt in a materialistic universe.”

Which brings us to a business that thrives on the Internet. Artificial penis enlargement is a huge booming business. Google it and you’ll find everything from ‘enlargement’ pills to plastic surgery. There is some evidence that some of them, such as the Phallosan Extender System and the Penistretcher device, may result in some slight lengthening of the penis according to Wylie and Eardley. But the two scientists have made a note of the fact that such devices also stress that there is no peer-reviewed research offering evidence that what is basically the stretching of a flaccid penis offers any long-term cure for the problem. The same, they say, goes for the plastic surgeons shilling their ability to make a man’s penis larger.  Indeed, anyone familiar with true-crime literature about the America’s Cosa Nostra, knows the story of the New York City mob chieftain, Paul Castellano. Pauly C was assassinated in 1985 by his underlings, according to Selwyn Raab’s book Five Families, after news of his ‘extension surgery’ by a famous plastic surgeon was all over the news for months. Again, it needs to be noted that these techniques are unproven except for cases of true deformity. And they warn that serious complications may ensue.

What both Wylie and Eardley do is recommend that ethical urologists take men’s concerns seriously. Should education and counseling fail to do the trick, they advise psychotherapy for men whose obsession over penis size overwhelms them and interferes with their lives.