Whether it’s lightening the color of their labias or opting for vaginal rejuvenation surgery, women have been putting their sex organs through hell to keep them looking just so for centuries. Men, meanwhile, have remained content for their junk to go on resembling saggy, hairy brains.
Surely, then, if you’re the type of middle-aged guy who expects your significant other’s genitalia to look like the 18-year-old porn star you’ve been fantasizing about, it’s only fair that you go get the wrinkles on your balls ironed out? I’m not talking about using an iron to get your scrotum looking like a naval shirt collar, of course — I’m referring to the fairly new trend of men getting botox injected to their sacks.
“Men are now having Botox — the neurotoxin drug that temporarily paralyses muscles — injected into their scrota,” reported the Independent in 2016. Appropriately labeled Scrotox, according to the same report, the effect is much the same as regular Botox — i.e., the removal of wrinkles — which lasts for about four months. “But as well as smoothing the skin, Dr. [John] Mesa explained that Scrotox allows the testicles to hang down further and appear bigger, which is another attraction for many men,” reports the Independent.
And the guys who get it done sure do seem to like the results! John Perez, one such man who decided to undergo the procedure to unwrinkle his balls and make them look bigger, went as far as telling GQ that he wished his doctor was less conservative with the amount of botox that was injected. “Next time I’d ask him to be a little more aggressive because I liked the results,” he said.
A lot of dudes on Reddit agree with Perez that smoother balls are better balls. “Oh, my God, those balls are as smooth as eggs. Yes, I’ll suck them,” writes one. There are detractors too, of course: “Who is looking at balls and saying that is not smooth enough?” asks one, to which another responds: “The people selling the surgery.”
From a functional standpoint, it’s important to know that while the wrinkles on your face are not there for any functional reason other than signifying to the world that you’re getting one stop closer to considering your balls obsolete, the same isn’t true about the wrinkles on said balls. That’s according to Seth Cohen, a practicing urologist and professor of urology at NYU Langone Health, who claims that the wrinkles on your scrotum are there to protect you from injury and help your testicles safely produce sperm.
“During heavy activity such as bike riding, running or exercising, the scrotum is relaxing and contracting all the time, to keep the testicles protected from trauma,” Cohen told VICE reporter Grant Stoddard (who elected to have the surgery for his article — a better man/employee than I). “So if you relax the scrotum [with botox] the function of the cremasteric muscle is not working, then you’re putting your testicles at risk for trauma.” In other words, the desire to make the most aesthetically hideous organ of the male body appear slightly less hideous is basically cancelling millions of years of testicular-evolutionary development.
For that reason, certified urologist Jamin Brahmbhatt tells me he thinks the FDA unapproved procedure is “insane,” but adds that in his opinion, the only real risk is the potential for a reaction that causes the body to absorb the botox. “It’s extremely unlikely, but if it does happen, it can cause weakness throughout the body, trouble breathing, trouble swallowing or trouble talking,” he explains.
So is the procedure painful? Not according to Gotham Plastic Surgery surgeon Douglas S. Steinbrech, who told Metro in 2017 that the procedure — which costs anywhere from $500 to $800 — takes approximately four minutes, while the Botox itself takes two to seven days to work its magic. It’s possible, then, that the relative low cost of this ostensibly not-too-painful process explains why men in their 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s have all opted to straighten their sacks out.
But even if men are choosing to inject neurotoxic protein into their ball skin, do women even prefer smooth balls in the first place? “From a gynecologist’s point-of-view, female pleasure during sexual activity is generally from anything that enhances clitoral stimulation. Having a stretched-out scrotum does not enhance clitoral stimulation,” Lauren Streicher, associate clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, told Health.com.“That said, if the guy with the stretched-out scrotum is holding a nice vibrator… then maybe we’ve got something.”
A female friend of Stoddard agrees. “There’s something to be said for being slapped in the cunt by free-swinging balls,” she told him. “There’s the sheer impact, which is nice, but it also delivers a skin-on-skin feeling that you lose with condoms.”
So there you have it, guys. If you have to use a condom but you’re worried that doing so is going to jeopardize the quality of your significant other’s sexual pleasure, be a good ally and go get your balls unruffled.
Andrew Fiouzi
Andrew Fiouzi is a staff writer at MEL.
