People—despite personal experience, popular culture, and biting political commentary (thanks, Donald Trump)—are not too good at pinpointing the average length of an erect penis.
According to a survey of 2,100 men and women from nine countries, British prescription website DrEd found that women think the average penis length is 5.4 inches. Men, exactly .2 inches cockier, guessed 5.6 inches.
Both are wrong, of course. An erect human penis averages out at 5.17 inches, according to a 15,000-penis-strong study conducted in 2015.
DrEd then asked participants about ideal penis length. Dream big, you know? Let's be selfish and focus on the United States, home to half the survey participants. In the U.S., the ideal penis size was more than 1.5 inches longer than the actual. That's at least a whole knuckle's length of red-blooded American disappointment.
Across the survey, women said their ideal was only an inch longer than the actual, and men said 1.5 inches, making them their own biggest critics.
Now let's narrow that down even further and talk about Maine. We don't get the chance often, unless its governor has done another dumb thing. People from Maine (Maineiacs, if you will) think average penis length is an impressive 6.5 inches, and ideal an astonishing 7.6 inches. What are they feeding their sons up there?
When it comes to penis size, men are their own biggest critics.
On the other end of the spectrum, New Mexico has the shortest ideal length—6 inches. Internationally speaking, among the 10 countries surveyed, Austria recorded the longest ideal length, and the U.K. has the lowest expectations.
It seems that men everywhere are relatively screwed, satisfaction wise.
Except that most men surveyed (44.5 percent) said they were satisfied with their size and only 16 percent said penis size decreased their sexual confidence. Plus, only 11.2 percent of women said penis size was very important to them.
So really, it's about finding where you shine—in Maine, where you are expected to fit a lobster-sized penis comfortably into your jeans, or the U.K., where they don't expect much at all. Or, it's about accepting the package you have so it can do its best work.
This story originally appeared on Esquire.com.
* Minor edits have been made by the Esquiremag.ph editors.
