Is It True What They Say About Guys With Big Feet?

We’ve all heard it before: The claim that the size of a man’s feet can tell you something about the size of his reproductive organ. Sometimes it’s as vague as "big in the shoes = big in the pants," and sometimes it's as precise as a complex algorithm that can supposedly deduce the subject’s masculine length, in inches, from his shoe size.

For a while, all that the people who claimed these sorts of things and their detractors had to go on was anecdotal evidence. All the “proof” either side had boiled down to, “yeah, well, I used to date a guy who [confirmed/disproved] what you say."

Thankfully, we have urologists, those brave men and women who boldly explore the nether regions of science most of us would never dare tread. In a handful of studies, they’ve searched for empirical evidence of the supposed foot-penis size connection and came up, ahem, a little short.

Let's Go to the Measuring Tape...

In 1993, two Canadian doctors measured the height, foot size and slightly stretched penile length of 63 men. The length of the penis was linked to both height and foot size, but the correlation was pretty weak. The researchers, who won the 1998 Ig Nobel Prize for Statistics for the study, warned that there was no “practical utility” in trying to predict penis size from either of those other measurements.

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In 1999, Korean researchers measured the length and circumference of 655 Korean men’s flaccid penises, as well as the size of their feet, length of their toes and fingers, the sizes of their ears, mouth and even the amount of hair on their heads. They found a weak correlation between the length of the penis and the circumference of the penis (three cheers for being proportional!), but not with any of the other measurements. The circumference was also slightly correlated with height, weight, and the length of the third and first toes (in order of strength), but not enough that the scientists could conclude anything beyond “the size or characteristics of body extremities is not enough to predict the penile size.”

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A year later, Richard Edwards found in the sixth edition of his online "Definitve Penis Size Survey" that there was no correlation between penis size and shoe size, but a strong one between penis size and height. There wasn't a vast difference in those sizes as men got taller, though. (Of course, we also have to keep in mind that all measurements were self-reported by the survey takers, which could color the results.)

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In 2002, a study from the University College Hospitals in London measured penises and feet of 104 men and found no correlation whatsoever. While their results may be the most discouraging to guys who like to talk up their size 16 shoes at the bar, they did have one of the best introductions of all the studies I’ve read in my science writing days: “The penis appears in virtually every aspect of life.”