Ask Bish – Is There a Safe Way to Make My Penis a Bit Bigger?

You might have read about penis enlargement techniques. Surgery, jelqing, pills, devices are all explained here as well as tips on being happier with penis size.

I’m a college student and I have sex once in awhile. I was here to ask you if there is any safe way to make my penis a bit bigger?

Hello

There are some safe ways to make your penis (seem) a bit bigger, but first of all I’m going to ask whether you really need to. I’ll also tell you about some unsafe and not recommended ways that people try to make their penis bigger.

Do you really need to?

The size of your penis really doesn’t matter very much. I know that a lot of people say this and it might be difficult to believe but it really doesn’t make you more attractive, or more of a man (if that’s what you want to be). It also makes no difference to how ‘good’ you are at sex. a) you don’t need a penis to be good at sex b) having a big penis does not make a difference for most people.

Remember that the average erect penis length is between 5.1 and 5.8 inches. This is much less than a lot of people think, in part because of the way that penis extension treatments are marketed (often on porn sites).

There are surgical and non-surgical interventions that can make small dicks a bit bigger. I’ll cover these a little below. So if you have a very small penis and this is something that is causing you problems, you could speak to a doctor about your options. However, if you have a regular size dick a doctor is probably not going to refer you for treatment. You should also be careful about trying to increase your dick size yourself with techniques and ideas you may have found out about online. They take a lot of effort and often any effects are temporary, or they might not work at all, or they might even damage your dick.

If you think your penis is small but it isn’t

A lot of people who think they have a small penis, don’t. As I explained above there’s a lot of misinformation about penis size and we live in a culture which says some pretty fucked up things about it. If someone really really struggles with this they may have what is termed penile dysmorphophobia disorder (PDD) or small penis anxiety (SPA). These psychological problems are still very much problems and can be treated with various forms of talking therapies. In fact, even if someone does have a clinically small penis, the first thing the doctor will do is to refer someone for more psychological treatment.

Overview of the different methods

Here’s a brief overview of some of the methods. A lot of this I am getting from this very useful academic book chapter called ‘Penile Enlargement: Current Treatments and Controversies’¹ which is in Advances in Andrology, which is published by Springer. Remember, where these methods have been researched it’s often with very small numbers of people and they are people who had a problem with their small penis to begin with. If, like me, you are squeamish you might want to be careful when you get to the section called ‘surgeries’ and ‘fillers’.

Devices

There are penis traction devices which attach from the bottom of the penis to the glans (bell-end). They stretch the penis throughout the day and have to be worn for several hours a day. Even then, they account for 1 – 2cm of extra length, but the results are temporary and the patient remains unsatisfied. The vacuum erection pump (made famous in this scene from Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me) uses a vacuum to expand the penis. These devices can lengthen and thicken the penis a liiiiiitle bit, but they need to be used daily for several months. Even then the effect wears off after a while.

Manual options

Then there’s something called jelqing which involves stretching and massaging the penis. Some men say that this helps but there is no medical evidence to back this up. It involves pulling on the penis when it is not erect (a bit like how people milk cows), hundreds of times per day over the course of some months. Some people say that this can make their penis a couple of centimetres longer. There are lots of jelqing videos and support forums where there are people who teach about how to jelq and how to jelq safely. However this method isn’t scientifically proven and there is a chance of damaging the penis. As with surgery, damaged blood vessels can actually reduce penis size and can be painful when you get an erection.

Hormone gels and creams

There have been a couple of small scale studies of some successful penis growth with the use of testosterone creams and gels in pre-pubescent boys with micro-penises and for boys with Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. However this hasn’t worked with adults (so maybe it’s more to do with Puberty).

(surgery bit coming up)

Surgeries

There are some surgeries (which are definitely reserved for people who really need them). Where they work, they just make small penises a little bit bigger. One method involves cutting the ligament that holds the base of the penis to the pelvic bone. Another method involves moving the bottom of the shaft of the penis forward (away from the body) a bit. Or there’s a method where fat in the pubic area is sucked out in order to show off the shaft of the penis more. Other options include implants, but they seem to be less successful and sometimes result in complications. And there’s a surgical procedure that involves disassembling the penis and inserting extra cartilage before reassembling, but that seems to really not be recommended.

Fillers

More recently there have been some options to have various substances injected into the penis which increases the thickness of the penis, if not the length. Some of these when practised by medical professionals show some early signs of promise² There’s one technique now called a Himplant® which has had FDA approval which has added 2 – 5cm of the circumference of the penis (not the length). However sometimes people try doing this for themselves with things like petroleum jelly and has disastrous consequences, such as life threatening infections and inflammations, and swellings. Please don’t do this!

Safer ways

You can trim your pubes, or try losing a bit of weight if you are overweight, because this will reveal some of the base of your penis which is there but you can’t actually see. You could also look at your penis in a mirror so you can see the full length of the penis. You could give it a shake.

Love your penis

You could also give yourself and your penis some love. Lots of people who say that their penis has gotten a bit bigger (with for instance jelqing or extending devices) are spending a lot of time, effort and maybe money on their penis. Perhaps they are seeing an increase in their penis size because they really want to see a return on their investment. So perhaps they are really pushing the tape measure into their abdomen, or measuring from different parts of the penis.

Maybe also they are learning more about their penis. They are admiring it and learning how it works. They are noticing when they are pretty hard but also when they are super hard. They are thinking about what turns them on, what kind of touch they like to give themselves. They’re really at one with their penis. So my advice is to invest love, care, affection and attention to your penis (just not by stretching or pumping or milking).

Admire your penis. Think about the pleasure it gives you. Think about how useful it is. Think about what an amazing organ it is. Look at the shape and how everything works. Think about all the blood rushing into sponges of blood vessels inside. Amaze yourself at how quickly that happens and how it can all rush out again so that you can go and pee in the morning. Hold it in a different hand or in a different way. Stroke it lightly or grip it at the base. Write poems to it. Send it flowers. Romance your penis. It’s the only one you’re going to have, so take care of it and enjoy it.

Most importantly remember that your penis is a very very small part of who you are: that’s true even for those with 11 inch penises.

1. Ho, C.C.K., Falcone, M. (2026). Penile Enlargement: Current Treatments and Controversies. In: Chung, E., Atmoko, W., Ko, E., Agarwal, A. (eds) Advances in Andrology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-29112-7_28 ↩︎
2. Chen Y, Jiang Y, Li X, Wang B, Guo X, Mai Z, Deng W, Zhu Y, Han B, Sun Z. Penile enhancement: A comprehensive and current perspective. Curr Urol. 2025 May;19(3):145-156. doi: 10.1097/CU9.0000000000000264. Epub 2024 Dec 17. PMID: 40376478; PMCID: PMC12076428. ↩︎

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