What really matters to the opposite sex when it comes to your favorite plaything since adolescence? Is it its length? Is it its girth? Is it how it looks like inside a bikini brief?

Well, let me tell you this much, your penis won’t be winning any beauty contests soon. We don’t have a bright red yellow-tipped penis accentuated by a bright purplish-pink scrotum like a mandrill does. Nor do we have a red penis with a blue scrotum highlighted by white pubic hair like a vervet moneky has. What do we humans have? Do we have any teeth on our penises? Or any spikes? Or even multicolored-tips? What did evolution end up giving us for ornamentation? An excess of foreskin.

What we have down south is a rather sorry-looking spectacle. For the most part, it comes in a dull pink monotone, sports an unruly bush of hair, is often lethargic and smells like a urinal by the end of the day. A human penis is not really something that you would want to feature in National Geographic.

Neither will your penis be winning any talent competitions soon. Most other primates have a penis bone and can make it stand at attention through sheer muscle control. Meanwhile, dolphins have voluntary control over the tips of their human-sized penises, which can swivel independently of the shaft. And as for the human penis? Ha! I can hardly get mine to sway to the tune of Careless Whisper.

But, my fellow men and your penises, you shouldn’t feel all that bad. There is one good thing that is going for you. You boys are long. Pretty damn long.

According to The Mating Mind How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature, adult human males have the longest, thickest, and most flexible penises (not that our penises plan to do gymnastics or yoga any time soon) of any living primate. The results of the longest, este, largest scientific study of penis size ever conducted in the world have recently been published (and I hope the study does not include any centerfold pages). The penis proportions of 5,122 men were collected over a twenty-five year period at the famous Kinsey Institute of Sex Research at Indiana University and, for the test subjects’ sake, I do hope that their penises were returned to them after the study.

The results of Kinsey study were rather unremarkable: There was little variation in penis length. Two thirds of the participants fell within an inch smaller or longer than 6.14 inches at erect length (Actually, I may have to take some blame for the study’s outcome. I didn’t let them collect my penis, which led to such mediocre results. Oh well. Nobody believes my proportions anyway. Not even my wife).

Now, before you take out some measuring tape, bond paper, pentel pen, masking tape and a sex scandal video to verify the results of the Kinsey study, keep your penis in your bikini briefs and ask yourself: Why does your penis have to be so pretty damn long?

Will a long penis lead to monetary rewards? Is a long penis nature’s version of a built-in barometer (notice that I did not say thermometer)? Is a long penis supposed to help us pick up hard to reach objects?

So, does longer mean its better?

A gorilla doesn’t think so.

A gorilla has three times a man’s body bulk. But the average size of a gorilla’s penis (and these are on good days) is two inches. But do you see the gorilla wearing codpieces or going for psychological counseling or surfing the internet for Swedish pumps? Hellz, no! And there’s a reason for this: Gorillas have small phalluses because they do not compete with their genitals. Now, just to let my three female readers know, I copied that statement verbatim from the book Anatomy of Love. As I write this, I am trying to process the depth and innuendo of that statement. But frankly, I am just scared of a competition where genitals are involved.

Thankfully, the anthropologist Helen Fisher reveals to us that gorillas live in stable harems. And to win over a harem of come-hither gazing-female gorillas, you do not win them over with the length of your flesh club, you with them over the bulk of your body. However, for No Girlfriends Since Birth (NGSBs) who are foolhardy and desperate enough to give it a try, you might be able to wow some female gorillas with your six-inch (or so) wonder. Imagine that, a harem of gorillas at your beck and call.

Which kind of indirectly leads me to my next point: maybe long penises evolved as courtship display. Which sure beats giving the object of your affection some flowers and chocolates.

After all, there must be some reason why men developed conspicuous genitals other than to develop better hand-to-eye coordination. In many species of insects and primates, males have exceptionally elaborate penises. Some of their penises can do elaborate song and dance numbers. And scientists believe that these performers evolved specifically because females chose males with elaborate, sexually stimulating genitals.

In fact, anthropologist Maxine Sheets-Johnstone argued that the reason men evolved to walk upright was to make our penile display more effective (and perhaps because it was easier for men to look down instead of looking behind for your penis). For example, when a male chimp ties to solicit a female, he opens his legs, displays his erect penis, then flicks his phallus with his finger as he gazes at his potential partner. It’s that easy.

Sigh. If only we could flick our phalluses to attract our potential partners. Don’t human females realize that when we publicly display our penises to them, it is celebration of a legacy of millions of evolution that men should be proud of, and not something that should lead to our arrest. Perhaps, we males need more than just an awesome penile display. Perhaps we also need to wear bikini briefs, a red bandana, and have an awesome catch phrase like “Seeeezzling hot!”

Quite intimidating, I admit. Which leads us to my third point: Males could have evolved large penises to intimidate other males.

In The Human Instinct, fertility specialist Robert Winston stated that a long, diabolical-looking phallus has the potential not only to attract females but also to frighten off other competing males. I know exactly what he means, I’ve been scared off by some uncircumcised penises in my lifetime. Some penises from the wrong side of town have even held me up at knifepoint. And Ron Jeremy, Peter North and George Estregan put the fear of God in me as a child, and it was not only because my folks might catch me watching triple xxx from their betamax machine (May I digress and ask a philosophical question: Is there double x?).

But even scarier than George Estregan’s penis is the fourth possible reason behind a long penis: sperm competition (I told you nga (already) I didn’t like competition among genitals. But a competition among sperm, this is just too much).

According to The Mating Mind, sperm competition explains the mating tactics of insects. Most female insects are highly promiscuous and copulate with several partners. After copulation, they either eject the sperm or store it for a couple of days months, or even years, while the sperm earns interest. So males are forced to compete inside the female’s reproductive tract.

A male damselfly uses his penis to scoop out the sperm of other paramours before he himself ejaculates. Some male insects try to dilute the sperm of the competition or shove it out of place. Still other species adapted for sperm competition by evolving penises with scoopers, scrapers, suckers and flagella for removing rival sperm.

In other semi-promiscuous (whatever that term means) animal societies where a female mated with several males, it was the male who delivered his sperm closest to the uterine cervix that would have the best chance of impregnating his partner. So, unless your swimmers had the athleticism of Michael Phelps, a long phallus might have been designed to give your DNA material a head start.

Now, this leads me to my own speculations on the evolution of the human peepee. Firstly, I am glad that the human society was not built to be overly promiscuous (whatever that means). Because if that was the case, then I would really hate to have a penis that had opposable thumbs. Secondly, if a long penis was the result of evolutionary prerogative, then the late John Holmes was probably the most evolved man in the world.

Therefore, my fellow evolved pink hairless apes, let us celebrate with what little (or what a lot) we have peeking out flaccidly from that little patch of pubic hair down there. It may not be able to do any scooping, it may not be able to do any cartwheels and it may not be in Technicolor, but it gets the job done. However, before you erect to do any damage and become as haughty as Floyd Mayweather, Sr. before the Pacquiao-Hatton fight, know that your favorite sparring partner is not on the top of the heap when it comes to the other penises of the animal kingdom.

Blue whales and humpback whales can crush you with their penises that are eight feet long. Bull elephants, on the other hand, have penises around five feet long. Although the bull elephant may not be able to crush you with his penis, he can still manage to slap you around with it a couple of times. Meanwhile, the boar has an eighteen-inch penis that ejaculates a pint of semen. If you accidentally step all over that mess, then you might slip over and break your neck.

But the best reason to remain humble over your little pride and joy? Scientists at the University of Alaska recently reported a specimen of the Argentine Lake Duck with a penis nearly half a meter long, the same length as his body. And, get this, its phallus is shaped like an overlong corkscrew.

So stop intimidating those poor gorillas with your penile display, or else an Argentine lake duck is gonna come and corkscrew you over.

My right eye bulges slightly larger than my left eye, my left leg is tad bit shorter than my right leg, and one of my ‘boys’ droops perilously lower than the other ‘boy’ (if I told you which boy drooped lower than the other, that would be too much information).  If the two sides of my body represented two sides of a math equation, I could never get them to become equal. And because I will never get them to be equal, this is the reason I will never be called beautiful.

I find it unfair that my mathematically-inept anatomy should be a basis for people to judge my aesthetic pleasantness. Can’t people just love me for my self-deprecating sense of humor, my forest of chest hair and my disturbingly large proboscis?  Can you truly judge how beautiful a woman is without having to resort to a nightgown competition, a talent portion, and a question and answer portion where none of the answers involve world peace?  

Have we been force-fed the concept of beauty by imperialist Western media giants as they bombar us with their O.C. and their Gossip Girl and their horrible remake of Beverly Hills 90210?  Is universal beauty truly defined as blonde, blue-eyed, and with mammary glands that can disrupt gravity fields, just like the beauties we see in Girls of the Playboy Mansion?

Interestingly enough, no degree of exposure to Western media has mutated our universal concept of beauty (so you can keep on watching Girls of the Playboy Mansion without any side-effects). In Simply Irresistible the Psychology of Seduction, there was considerable agreement in what was considered beautiful across a host of racial, cultural and national groups, including groups as widely separated as the Ache of Paraguay up to the Chinese in, uhm, China. Fact is, our concept of beauty has been hard-wired into our DNA. 

In a University of Texas study, a group of three month old babies were exposed to a series of photographs of human female faces and the babies’ corresponding response to each of these faces were measured.  Apparently, all the infants responded much more significantly to faces which meet these culturally accepted standards of beauty.  This study suggests that we are born with instinctive concepts of beauty since none of these three months olds have yet seen The Girls of the Playboy Mansion.  

According to The Human Mind and how to make the most out of it, evidence from African mud-huts to Manhattan condos to Quezon City KTVs suggests that the rules of attraction continue to work on the same principles as it did during our evolutionary past. That’s right, my three female readers, we get all Neanderthal when we are attracted to somebody.  Now, I do realize that some DOMs have been around since Neanderthal times, but even back then I’m certain they weren’t too sure what made them attractive to the opposite sex.  When it comes to attraction, my fellow DOMs, you do not need pomade, you do not need a clutch bag, you do not need a fifty-pound gold necklace that swings across your exposed nipples. As for the ladies, you do not need lipstick, you do not need six-inch high heels, and you do not need silicone implants.  Oh wait, you might want to think twice about silicone implants (But more on that later).

Because what makes you attractive, handsome, beautiful and sexually arousing is – symmetry.  And perhaps several visits to the Belo or Calayan medical clinic (Make sure to visit the clinic whose endorsers you find more attractive, handsome, beautiful and sexually arousing)    

Several studies indicate that the consensus on beauty, whether it be for the sex with inverted or everted genitals, is rooted on how symmetrical your face and body are.  Psychologist Steve Gangestad and the aptly-named biologist Randy Thornhill measured various anatomical features, from foot and hand breadth up to ear length and breadth, and combined all these measurements to produce an overall index of bodily symmetry for each person in their study.  The researchers then asked volunteers to evaluate these same people for attractiveness, and compared the results. The study found that the more symmetrical volunteers were more attractive. 

The equal lengths of your pinkie fingers was not only correlated with your attractiveness to the opposite sex, but it was also correlated with your mental horsepower.  Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller of the University of New Mexico directly measured the intelligence and body symmetry of seventy eight male undergraduate volunteers. Electronic calipers were hooked up and used to measure the right and left sides of ten body features on each participant, ranging from foot width to little finger length, to the nearest 0.01 mm.  And voila!  Intelligence was found to be strongly correlated with body symmetry.   

See, men, if we could learn to exercise a bit more of self-restraint with regard to our symmetry, we could not only become more attractive, but we also might become more intelligent as well. 

What makes those damn symmetrical people so attractive anyway? Why can’t I enjoy all the thirty two years of heathen bachelor-hood that went into my asymmetry? Disparagingly enough, the more symmetrical your body and your face is appears to be associated with how genetically fit you are.  The body’s resistance to parasites and other pathogens shows up in body and face symmetry.  Since we weren’t born with DNA test kits, we evolved indirect measures to gauge another person’s genetic seal of good housekeeping – by being sensitive to very minute differences in physical appearance.  So if the left and right sides of the body are mirror images of one another, we can intuitively tell that that person is more genetically robust than a cup of barako coffee in the morning.   Evolutionary biologists see beauty as a kind of ‘health certificate’ which guarantees that if you get horizontal with a symmetrical person, you will produce higher-quality offspring.     

But what symmetrical body parts should you look for to guarantee that you will have kids that will look like Brad Pitt, have the physique of Piolo Pascual and the cunning of Jocjoc Bolante? In The Mating Mind How Sexual Choice Shaped The Evolution of Human Nature, female breasts were considered the best indicators of fitness because they came in (what should ideally be) symmetric pairs.  Female breasts are the type of bodily ornaments that not only advertises a female’s genetic fitness, but it is also an ornament that keeps men entertained for hours on end.  So when body traits grow in pairs, the perfectly symmetric development of these pairs indicates a high level fitness.  And, just for the purposes of mate choice, these, ehem, paired traits tend to grow large to make their symmetry more obvious to the opposite sex.  The larger the mammary glands, the easier it is for men to spot the asymmetries (As much as you may think it, I am not making this up).   Some breasts have even grown so large on their own that they have been classified as weapons of mass distraction. 

Aside from being lethal weapons, evolutionary psychologists John Manning and the comeback-ing Randy Thornhill have also shown that women with more symmetric breasts tend to be more fertile.    But men, be forewarned: There are also some women out there who use silicone implants to simulate symmetry. Or even to exponentially simulate symmetry.  So be wary while you are on the constant lookout for genetic fitness.   Keep on looking, though.      

But since men cannot look at a female’s chest area for prolonged periods without risking dismemberment, is there a more acceptable area of the female anatomy that we can scrutinize?    

According to The Human Instinct How our primeval impulses shape our modern lives, nothing screams like “our kids will make us millions when they are Hollywood celebrities” than a person with a symmetrical face.  There is even a fairly precise formula for the structure of the perfect female face, drawn up by ancient Greek philosopher, mathematician and the bane of high school students everywhere – Pythagoras.  Pythagoras believed that for someone to be considered ‘beautiful’, the ratio of the width of the mouth to the width of the nose should be 1.6180339887 to 1.  This figure should also hold true for the ratio of the width of the mouth to the width of the cheekbones. Now what does this all mean, aside from the fact that you cannot be beautiful if you flunked geometry in high school?  It means that if you were to measure the faces of universally attractive faces, like that of Angelina Jolie’s, her measurements would probably fit squarely into the ‘Golden Ratio’. Just be careful that, while measuring Angelina Jolie’s face, you are not sucked into her industrial-sized lips.    

Unfortunately, if your inborn face symmetry measuring device is more irreparably damaged than the relationship between the PDEA and the DOJ, you cannot  just come up to an attractive woman and shove a tape measure all over her face, even if it is for valid scientific reasons.  I have the scratch marks to prove it.  There are more diplomatic ways to handle this situation.  Politely come up to her, take her picture without her permission, and then scurry away like the stalker you are.  Because modern technology allows us measure facial symmetry on a computer program using a scanned photograph.  This program measures the sizes of and distances between various facial parts, then assigns a single score for physical attractiveness, which correlates highly with the scores of ‘beauty’ assigned by human judges.  This demystifies beauty by turning it into an objective attribute much like your vital statistics.  In other words, they can reduce your attractiveness (or the lack of it) to a mere number.   To whoever made this marvelous application who can determine how beautiful or how butt-ugly I am, I say – screw you.

Sigh.  Is all the effort to keep ourselves symmetrical worth the hassle?  And if we men are to remain symmetrically, does this mean we need to learn how to become ambidextrous?

For those who need more motivation towards an ambidextrous lifestyle, a Canadian study in 1999 revealed that the more symmetrical men’s bodies were, the greater the likelihood that they were to have sexual encounters. And, when the likelihood of sexual encounters increases, the question of asymmetry becomes moot and academic.  But perhaps the most potent argument for symmetry comes from our third-time’s-a-charm evolutionary biologist Randy Thornhill: A study he conducted in the University of New Mexico suggested that regular orgasms are up to forty percent more common for female partners of men with symmetrical bodies.  That’s just so randy, Randy. 

But, Randy, your study sure does raise a lot of questions. For example, were the volunteers for this study female undergraduate students of the University of New Mexico?  Did you take any pictures of this study while it was being conducted?  And can some of my male readers have the Facebook IDs and phone numbers of your volunteers?  Aside from those key questions, Randy, how could you tell that your female subjects were being truthful about their orgasms?  Did you give them a questionnaire that says “Did you have an orgasm”?  Did you count the number of times that their eyes rolled to the back of their heads?  Did you measure the decibel level of their screams?  Or did you just put them through a congressional hearing? Despite the number of questions we have about your study, Randy, we can only be sure of one thing: the male subjects, who worked very, very hard at their symmetry, must have been very, very happy with the results of the study. Not that they really cared about the results of the study.   

And on a parting note: To all the No Girlfriends Since Birth (NGSBs) who are reading this column, remember that not all of your paired body parts are meant to be symmetrical.  So please do not attempt to make any adjustments to any of your paired parts, without the assistance of your urologist.  Or your manghihilot.