Ballpark hotdog
By Sara Twogood, MD
Moving on to the sophomore season of Sex and the City - this season is when the series truly solidified its status as something special.
Episode 1: Take Me Out to The Ballgame
Carrie and Big break up. Spoiler: it’s the first but certainly not the last time.
Carrie is moping around, looking like garbage and smoking cigarettes. I loved this episode when it first aired - it portrayed the sickening feeling of a break up so realistically – one that I was in the middle of experiencing myself at that time.
I of course did not go to a baseball game, flash my press pass to meet the “new Yankee” … and then go on a first date with him to a Dolce and Gabbana fashion party … but I fantasized about it (and also appreciated that she wasn’t ready to date him after all, despite how perfect he seemed).
But the real sexual lesson here is Samantha’s “tragedy” – dating a man with an incredibly small penis.
She takes a few centimeters of her ball park hot dog to demonstrate.
We’ve already discussed the average penis size in this post.
But what about data on sex / sexual pleasure / sexual satisfaction and penis size?
There’s a few data points that help us figure this out:
Research shows us that when women masturbate, almost 90% do so with clitoral stimulation ALONE. No penetration, nothing in the vagina for the vast majority of solo orgasms.
Another study reported that more than 2/3 of females sometimes, rarely or never orgasm from penetration alone.
These are the first clues that does not need to influence female orgasm.
“It’s not the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean”
Our favorite sex educator, Emily Nagoski discusses this phrase but thinks it’s really not accurate. She says “it’s not the size of the boat, and it’s not the motion of the ocean either. Women just vary”.
However, about 1/3 of females can reliably orgasm from penetrative intercourse alone. Why? It’s unknown really, but there are 2 leading theories (again, according to Emily Nagoski).
Females may have a gland next to the anterior wall of the vagina – and this gland may be larger or more able to be stimulated for women who get sexual pleasure and orgasm from vaginal stimulation. The “gland” is likely what people call the elusive G-spot. The male equivalent of this gland is the prostate. Not all men get sexual pleasure from prostate stimulation and not all women do either. But for women, the location and size of her “prostate” varies too much to be a reliable source for orgasm
The clitoris is not as small as it appears. Even though the most sensitive and most visible part is the nub under the clitoral hood, the clitoris actually extends like a wishbone from that area. The wishbone bones are called the clitoral (or vestibular) bulbs. For some women, they may be larger and closer to the vaginal opening and therefore stimulated with penetration.
With both of these theories, you can see why penis size could and would matter – it needs to be long enough to stimulate the G-spot or wide enough to stimulate the clitoral bulbs.
From what we know about Samantha, it seems she is in that 1/3 of women that can reliably orgasm from penetrations alone … but it certainly takes the size of the boat and the motion in the ocean to get her there. And poor James, he’s a small boat on a placid (flaccid?) lake. It’s never going to work.