As we say in the South, there’s a lid for every pot, and there’s a woman for every dick. Okay, maybe not that last part. But if Reddit is any indication, there’s a sizable audience of enthusiasts for any common and uncommon penile phenomenon. Case in point: the subreddit r/grower (NSFW), a home for tiny flaccies that blow up like Mentos in a Diet Coke.
Enter the fascinating world of time-lapse boners. There’s truly a place on the internet for everything.
As any guy who’s been in a locker room could tell you, a grower isn’t an inferior peen, but it’s often embarrassing. Even if you boast an impressive boner, you walk through life presenting tiny — and most people who see it soft will never know otherwise. So you may be delighted, then, to find that a lot of people are into the whole element of surprise: There’s a grower fandom.
In a recent thread on r/AskWomen that collected ladies’ favorite NSFW subreddits, one commenter tipped off the crowd to r/grower and exclaimed, “These penis havers do some amazing things! Seriously some magical stuff.” Indeed! (If you’re curious, other women highlighted subs like r/chesthairporn and r/beardsandboners.)
R/grower was started by a guy who allegedly goes from 3.5 to 8.5 inches. He lists the group’s purpose thusly: “A subreddit for the Growers among the male population! Post your before/after pictures here! In one picture, in a gif, or an album, show us your ‘transformation.’”
And they do. There are endless images of penises in a resting state, then fully transformed into surprising lengths, for an audience of nearly 12,000 to review and delight in. The top posts of all time are generally sped-up videos of tiny danglers blooming into full thrusters.
While they are penises and cannot be embedded here, let’s just say that some of the pics and vids demonstrate truly miraculous feats. These dicks go from “nothing to write home about” to “DEAR GOD WHAT JUST HAPPENED.”
Like this one, which goes from eunuch to do-me. And this one, which is a video demonstration of what you might call HOLY MOTHER OF GOD.
“Shit!” one woman commented.
Shit is right. Unfortunately, there aren’t lots of comments in general, and as it’s Reddit, it’s not always clear who the commenters are — women, gay men or some mix of both enjoying these everyday demonstrations of Miracle Gro dicks.
But it goes against cultural perception and what men have largely been told about growers, which is that women don’t like them. People think showers are better because showers are bigger — and this isn’t necessarily true!
Also, size is not actually why women might prefer a shower. The reason is more that the shower offers less of a surprise. She knows what she’s getting with a shower, more or less, and isn’t rolling the dice. In other words, it’s not that all women need a giant schlong — they don’t. It’s that a shower doesn’t seem like a false bill of sale, whereas a grower might not, well, grow as much as you’d like, and you won’t know until you get in there and work that thing. And what if you already like him?
As one woman writes, while “grower magic tricks are cool,” she thinks showers are more reliable. That said, she concedes that most men are growers (by one estimate, 79 percent). Her advice to those men: Get the word out. “If you are swinging a soft six, you can tell your buds or whatever girl you wanna smash that you bat with a hard nine. And they are more likely to buy it.”
Still, that’s not even an accurate representation of what women like, and when you start finding women online who prefer growers (that is, most men), they say that it’s actually insulting to suggest that women don’t get how most penises work. You might be surprised — women enjoy penises just as they are.
For starters, when women are polled about their preferences, plenty of them pick growers over showers. “Probably a grower,” was one response. “It’s nice to see the aftereffect of a guy being turned on. Know you’re doing something right then I guess.”
“Doesn’t really matter as long as it’s big enough to satisfy,” said another.
“I like a grower,” another woman responded. “My boyfriend is definitely a grower, and I like watching it slowly get hard.”
Other sites try to help women out on the grower front and tell them why they should want one (“They’re not cocky”).
In a list online of the 10 kinds of dicks women love (there are 10!?), grower is numero uno. The reason: It has that special quality women enjoy: sleight of hand, or, rather, sleight of dick. “This is the more discreet type, because you never know just how long and big it can go, unless you go all the way with the guy,” they write. “At first it might seem small, but rub it just a little and it grows 2 to 3 times its flaccid size. Magic!”
This magic thing is key. Over at a different Reddit thread, someone lobbied women again as to what their prefer in the growing-vs.-showing department, and presto: “Personally I prefer growers — makes me feel like I’m performing a magic trick!” one woman wrote.
Many more women chimed in to say that there is nothing off-putting about a dick that needs to warm up to launch. “For the record, most women understand what a grower is so there’s really no need to hide your flaccid dick,” a woman says. “I, personally, love floppy little softies.”
Throughout the thread, many women say they find it totally adorable to have a grower dick and even incorporate the excitement into the foreplay.
“My sometimes-person and I call his penis his ‘tiny little soft thing’ when not in use,” a woman describes. “He also knows how much I love to play with it when its soft. We try to make it as small as possible and hide it. I get such a kick out of it. When hard it is a perfectly sufficient size. That’s all that really matters. You just never can tell what will happen until it gets hard. Most people are aware of that.”
Another woman puts it in terms men might better understand: boobs.
A man asks:
So even after you’ve come, and you’re [lying] with the guy who made you come, naked, in the morning light — your (I assume incredible) body is illuminated by the day’s first rays, and his is next to you, you look down and see him — maybe only 2 inches, maybe less, soft and spent, you wouldn’t think, “Wow… what’s that?”
And a woman responds:
No, I’d be like, “Oh, look, a penis.” We’re not idiots, we know it’s not large and hard all the time. That’s like me asking if when we’re lying in bed, you look over at my boobs and think “WTF are they? They’re sagging to the side — gross.” Of course you don’t, because you know that when women [lie] down, their boobs look different. Just like how we know that when a guy’s penis is soft, it looks different.
Back at r/grower, it’s clear that women who like growers are prepared to do the work, literally and figuratively, of making sure you understand they get it, and they like it — even love it.
On another pic post, from a man who says he’s 1-inch soft and 6 hard, a commenter chimes in with gentle support and praise. “You’re perfect,” they say. “A great size (for both your soft and hard states), intact, with a lovely shape and skin tone.”
Growers, you’re gonna be all right.
Tracy Moore
Tracy Moore is a staff writer at MEL. She covers all the soft sciences like psychology, sex, relationships and parenting, but since this is a men’s magazine, occasionally the hard ones. Formerly at Jezebel.
