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The Case for Upsizing
Or maybe the pills put you in a tent-pitch-friendly mind-set. “Let me be clear: This pill did not work,” one participant wrote in his notes on Day Eight. “But I did enjoy clicking around the American Apparel site.”
The only published medical trial for ExtenZe came out last June in Annals of the American Psychotherapy Association. Co-authored by Daniel S. Stein, MD, ExtenZe’s unpaid spokesperson, the pilot study monitored 20 males for an eight-week trial, and performed ultrasounds of blood flow and neurosensory analysis. The study didn’t report that anyone’s penis actually grew like the ads claim; rather, the researchers found an increase in erection strength.
So even though ExtenZe in no way increases penis size, as any reasonably intelligent person could probably have guessed, men still dial the number on the bottom of the screen at 3 a.m.
'Twas ever thus. For centuries, men around the world have inserted small objects inside the skins of their penises. These “Pearly Penile Papules,” as they are called in the medical literature, act as Ben Wa balls to “exacerbate sexual pleasure” and measure from 5 to 7 millimeters.
Current methods of penile augmentation are glorified versions of the penile papule model. Between 1991 and 1998, as many as 10,000 men have undergone penis operations in the US for cosmetic purposes since the introduction of an elongating method created by Dr. Dao-Chou Long in 1990. (Yes, his name is Dr. Long.) Phalloplasty treatments in the pipeline include grafts or patches, all for a net gain of 1 to 1.5 inches, as well as injections of gels into the glans or tip, which results in a longer, albeit maraca-shaped penis.
All of which proves, if anything, the great lengths to which men will go to increase their own size. ExtenZe may not deliver on all its promises, but it continues to sell, and like all the best products, it’s not selling a product so much as a promise. Because what’s a foreclosure or two when you’re solvent in the one place that matters? As long as the dream of a date with Bridgetta lives on, so will ads that offer her up in the form of a pill.
Daniel Nester is the author of How to Be Inappropriate, a book of humorous nonfiction. He lives in upstate New York.
John Talks Joe
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
My Great Fake Bake Experiment
Daniel Nester is the author of How to Be Inappropriate, a book of humorous nonfiction. He lives in upstate New York.
Nobody Loves My $20,000 Baby
Daniel Nester is the author of How to Be Inappropriate, a book of humorous nonfiction. He lives in upstate New York.
Go ahead, destroy my dreams.
If I had taken advantage of every penis-lengthening offer that landed in my mailbox over the years, would I be able to do cowboy ropetricks with it by now?
GMCaesar, you could probably throw it over your shoulder, like a Continental soldier.
This definitely deserves a "lol"
So you recruited guys to do it and THEN they state they were "too big already." LOL.
BTW, why only "overeducated white males"? What the uneducated or non-whites don't need help?!? Or even the non-educated non-white?
By the way, is it me or does gaining an extra inch or two seem like a drastic change to one's schlong (or I guess, schmekel). It reminds me of all the e-mails I get on extending my penis an extra three inches (ouch!) yet also getting e-mails on how they can take three inches from my stomach (now I know where it goes).
OK, the big dick pills don't work. Science can now turn to vaginal reduction pills. That might work. Or, better yet, during foreplay, women can wear eyeglasses that magnify. I have never met a women with fingers the size and girth of even small penises. And yet, they seem to manage very well on those lonely nights. Just how much do you need for clitoral stimulation?
If all of this crap really worked, it wouldn't be sold on midnight infomercials, or in the back or mens magazines. If they worked, there would be billboards of male enhancement pills, in bright shining lights in Times Square. They would be sold like candy at every drug store, corner store, gas station. Every man would on the planet would be hung like a horse.
It's really too bad the FDA doesn't regulate herbs. If they did, a lot of these false ads would be history along with the multi-billion dollar supplement industry.
And you deserve a lobotomy.
This ExtenZe Company seems like it's been pretty successful - I don't watch much TV, but I used to notice that these infomercials used to only come on wayward third tier networks very late a night. Nowadays though I've been seeing these infomercials on late night CNBC, CNN, and other major networks.
This ExtenZe company is terrible and should be shut down for false advertising, pandering as it does to men's feards about penis size.
I have seen the add and the name of this product is just amazing ..... I wonder how big the focus group was that help select the name .....can you visualize this from a B - movie , the scene is in a dungeon and our Hero is a muscular built Adonis with a small dick and is holding out and the demonic torturer says ...."ve haf vays to make u talk ..ve vill ExtenZepenis and then u vill tell us everyzing" ......infomercials are great and every one has bought something from them at one time or an other they rarely work and end up in the next garage sale or in the case of ExtenZe hopefully down the toilet .....why is there never a product for women like "ShrinkZepussy" ....that might put the ExtenZe team out of business if so many of us Males have such average sized dicks.
Hey, if it weren't for these products, there would be no advertisements on right-wing AM radio. Rush would be out of a job.
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
Should one delay taking the penis enlargement pills until they develop the pills to enlarge the scrotum? I mean, wouldn't it look hideous to have a disproportionate components of your junk?
Ooh, goodie! A Beast sex blog. Love reading the comments.
Does anyone remember the ad that was running forever that showed a guy with a 50 lb. weight tied to his peenie? It was for some product like this, I think.
Anyway guys, lighten up!
Now THIS is the kind of [rock] hard reporting TDB should keep doing.
Why did you need a 20-inch tube for a 12-inch ruler?
Your "test" doesn't pass a basic class in statistics. First, the sample is too small. Second, the required approach is double-blind testing (i.e., one group gets the real thing and the other a placebo). Here everybody gets the pill.
I hope you can get your money back for the samples you bought because you certainly won't get this study published in the New Journal of Medicine.
nodrama- It's a humor piece. The point being; that, of course the pills don't work.
the hell they don't - come on over to my house, mama
Actually, a patient-reported outcome, one without a control and a treatment group, is a perfectly valid way of measuring a drug's efficacy in its initial stages of study. Then again, this isn't a drug--it's a male enhancement pill that's, like, a vitamin.
"pearly penile papules" refers to a skin lesion, not something inserted under the foreskin...
This story was fun but too long. No pun intended.
@nodrama: Well, OF COURSE the sample was too small! That's why it was given the pill!
It is just propoganda, to get us thinking about IT.
It is not the pills that work, it is getting us thinking about IT that get IT to work.
Thank you.
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