The Problem Of Penile Presentation

I could describe many other examples than those I have already mentioned. However, I will close this essay with a description (for the time being, at any rate) of just one more. In this photograph, once again, but a portion of the model is shown: his lower belly, his shaved crotch, the very tops of his thighs, and his erect cock and tightly contracted, risen scrotum, clearly delineating the walnut-size testicles within the drawn purse. The pubes have been shaved, but the hairs are starting to grow back; they stand out, dark, like short brush strokes upon a peach-colored canvas. The rosy penis, lined and festooned with swollen blue veins, rears up, against the lower belly, to which, among the new hairs are dollops and splotches of semen, freshly deposited by the rigid, standing member. The only prop is a white blanket, visible only at the upper right edge of the picture, spotted as with the pattern of the leopard. The prop suggests that it is not only nubile young women who are cat-like; young men are also feline, albeit not in a cute and cuddly, but harmless, way, but in a dangerous and predatory, bestial fashion. The nearly balls pubes and the pink-and-peach flesh that is backdrop to the rosy penis, highlights not only the risen, discharged penis and the red, raw-looking balls, but also the semen that decorates the lower abdomen. The ferocity of the male animal is the source, this portrait suggests, of the pearly jewels with which his manhood is adorned.

The problem of penile presentation is an aesthetic and a social one. Contemporary American society does not countenance displays of male genitals (especially in their erect state), although this prejudice is beginning to dissipate in the wake of a humanistic concern for sexual equality for all. It may be that the display of the penis and testicles may become as commonplace and accepted--indeed, as celebrated--as it was in the days of ancient Greece and Rome. Until them when the display of the penis may be done for its own sake, artists--especially visual artists--are well advised to depict the male genitals in such a way that the masses won't find offensive.