There has been a lot of talk about the size of a man's penis following the Republican debate between presidential candidates Donald J. Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio. The latter commented that Trump's hands were quite small, alluding to the age old theory that the size of the hand relates to the size of the penis.
Trump claims that he has no problems with the sizes of his hands or the rest of his body parts, but the topic has brought on questions about whether the longstanding belief is true. Studies attempting to prove the myth have conflicting results and experts still have no right answers.
Indiana University sex researcher Debby Herbenick said that some studies suggest the myth could be true, but these researches usually pertain to groups of people with different body features. So, results could be inconclusive, which is why there are still no real answers to the link between hand size and penis size.
As the length of the hand correlates to the size of the feet, another study that looked into the connection of the shoe size and the penis size revealed that there is no truth to this myth either. "The ability to predict the size of a man's penis by observing his shoe size is a common misconception; the present study shows that there is no scientific support for the relationship," the researchers stated in their report.
A video further explored the connection between the sizes of the hands and the feet to the size of the penis, where it concluded that the evidence gathered in the studies are "shaky." "There's not really any strong, irrefutable, repeated scientific evidence that visible body parts relate in any way to penis size," the video's host stated. "The average, by the way, is 3.6 inches flaccid and 5.2 inches erect. If that seems small to you, assess why you think so, and if the answer is sex theater of pornography, stop."
The debate wasn't the first instance someone directed attention to Trump's hands as Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter once wrote in his column: "To this day, I receive the occasional envelope from Trump. There is always a photo of him - generally a tear sheet from a magazine. On all of them he has circled his hand in gold Sharpie in a valiant effort to highlight the length of his fingers. I almost feel sorry for the poor fellow because, to me, the fingers still look abnormally stubby."
Why the belief continues to exist could have something to do with a man's perception that bigger is better when it comes to sex. However, another study showed that appearance, rather than size, is more important to women.
