‘Summer Penis’ Is Real, and It’s Spectacular

This summer, as some guys hit the gym for an amped-up summer bod, others are already quietly enjoying what you might call “summer penis.”

Summer penis is an elusive phenomenon that answers to the sway of the seasons. No barbell can boost it; no foodstuff can fill it. Summer penis is a temporary dick fluctuation that, thanks to the heat and warmth, gives you a months-long leg-up on shaft size. It’d be like if a woman’s boobs suddenly got huge from May to August.

I first found out about summer penis  —  not to be confused with summer penile syndrome, an itchy, painful (and largely pediatric) condition caused by chigger bites on your dick  —  while researching a story about sex during the hotter months. In a roundup of men who love summertime boning, we stumbled upon a 24-year-old named Kieran, a recruitment consultant, who told The Standard in 2009, “I have sex whenever my girlfriend will let me, but probably more at this time of year. Also, I’m bigger in the summer.”

Grower, indeed! I had lots of questions: If a man’s penis gets bigger in the summer, ostensibly due to light and heat, imagine what happens on Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. What’s more, does this mean women are being misled by penis size the rest of the year? How many women have had summer flings with a man with summer penis and then went on with their lives, remembering a much bigger dick than was really there? Is big dick energy a seasonal condition?

Guys Are Obsessed With Summer Penis, and They Have Lots of Theories About It

I raced in disbelief and panic to search “bigger dick in summer,” and found Guillermo, who took to Reddit two years ago with a simple question: “Bigger dick in summer and smaller in winter?”

Anybody notices size fluctuation during the year? I know mine is bigger, I have better erections in the summer and I also tend more to of a shower instead of a grower. In the winter, it is the exact contrary. Why is that? More heat = better blood flow? Does that happen to you guys also?

The responses suggested a few theories. “Just another part of your body’s homeostasis trying to better regulate ideal temperatures,” said one guy. “Yeah, I notice that during autumn my dick begins to swell to ridiculous size,” another guy responded, surely exaggerating. “It’s a great way for it to survive hibernation over winter.”

Another commenter revealed that he doesn’t have summer penis, but he has summer balls. “This happens only to my balls,” he wrote. “I mean, when it’s hot they like to go down like if they were trying to get to my knee. In winter or cold days they look like a little hard brain.”

“My flaccid size in the summer can be around 4 inches, sometimes 4.5 if I don’t masturbate for a few days,” said another commenter. “In the winter it can go down to 2, especially if the temp starts hitting –10 C [14 F].”

Guillermo felt validated. “It makes sense to me like other people said, your penis totally responds to temperature,” he responded.

I set out to find other “summerers,” as they ought to be known. One man told me on Twitter that he “kind of” has summer penis:

On Facebook, I found more. “I’m never going to scare anybody, but definitely feel better about myself when it’s warm,” one man named Larry told me. “Even in the wintertime, post-hot-shower looks a little better than pre-hot-shower.”

A man named Jerry had more to say. “Everyone knows when it’s cold outside that a penis will stay tucked away to stay warm,” he said. “So, I wouldn’t say it’s bigger in the summer, it’s just it likes the warm weather more so it stays out to say hello.”

Still, some men attributed summer penis to girth and length, not temperature. “I do have a large-wanged friend who says it feels bigger in the summer,” Kevin wrote. “I think it’s because it’s already big to begin with, and the warm weather is causing things to feel weightier than normal. You may have discovered an amazing test to find if a guy has a large penis.”

Maybe he’s born with it. Maybe it’s summer penis.

What’s Really Going On With Summer Penis? Doctors Explain

Turns out, summer penis is real. To clarify: It’s not that you have a bigger summer dick all the time. It’s that your dick changes with temperature changes, and that’s most likely to happen in any warm environment given the right conditions  —  such as the summertime.

“Summer or winter, your penis size should remain the same,” Orlando urologist Jamin Brahmbhatt told MEL by email. “When it’s cold outside, your body does try to maintain its internal heat, and therefore things may appear to be more contracted. When it’s cold outside, blood vessels near the skin contract to maintain the internal heat. However, this type of body heat regulation should not affect the overall size of your penis.”

What it will affect, he explained, is how your penis looks to you. “When it’s hot outside, your body does try to evaporate the heat through sweat,” he continued. “Also when it’s hot outside, you may take in more water, which may in combination with the sweating make it appear like your body or skin is bloated. And that may give you the perception that things are larger.”

Urologist Dudley Danoff, author of The Ultimate Guide to Male Sexual Health, told MEL that he believes summer penis is real if, and it’s an important if, we’re talking about erections, not flaccid penises.

“The non-erect penis is so variable in size from day to night, that it’s probably more of an optical illusion than real if we’re talking about flaccid,” Danoff said. “But there is an anatomical and physiological explanation for the summer months, and warmer weather versus, say, the Klondike.”

That explanation, Danoff said, is something called vasodilation. “The warmer the ambient environment, the more the blood vessels dilate, and the warmth allowing vasodilation increases blood flow,” he explained. “So if we think of the penis as these two sausage casings that fill with blood, and the one channel that carries the urine, then the sausage casing will swell and expand to its genetic limit depending on the volume of blood. The increased blood flow will increase, and the corpora [the erectile tissue] will be expanded, and the penis will be ‘larger.’ But I don’t think it holds true in the flaccid state. There would be no explanation for that.”

How much bigger could it get in the summer? That’s impossible to quantify.

“Your penis can’t get any larger when the corpora are filled to max,” Danoff said. “But it’s more likely they will be filled to the max in a warm environment than a cold environment. In ideal conditions, in a warm environment, and with appropriate stimulation, assuming arterial factors are in order (no diabetes, or old age, or neuropathy [nerve damage]), warm weather will help you achieve maximum filling.”

Right, but how big?

“You can’t say ‘10 percent more,’” Danoff said. “But it’s more likely to be filled to the max in the summertime than wintertime.”

I asked Danoff if there was any cause for concern for men with summer penis. Maybe a man wakes up one summer morning with a summer penis and he panics, or worse, he doesn’t know how to handle his summer penis.

“Cause for concern?!” he balked. “It’s a cause for cheering. There’s a reason why people don’t take honeymoons to the North Pole. They go to Hawaii. There’s a reason why a hot tub is attractive for romance.”

I Have Summer Penis! Now What?

If you are one of the lucky men on earth who has summer penis, don’t squander it. Take it out on the town. Show it a good time. Take some pictures so you can remember it. (Just use sunscreen.)

But if you don’t have summer penis, don’t fret. There’s a dick for every season. After all, your winter penis has served you perfectly well. And who knows, summer penis might also be a state of mind, like, say, big dick energy. Anyone can have that summer penis spirit. If there’s any word of caution, it comes from urologist Jamin Brahmbhatt, and it’s this: Just don’t quit your day job.

“Sorry, guys, moving to warmer climates doesn’t get you one step closer to the adult film industry,” he advised. At least, not in the offseason.

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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.