(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

Let me begin by saying that I’m extremely reluctant to disagree with anything Ariana Grande says or does.

She is our lord and saviour. She created grande-ing, helped bring BDE into the mainstream, and gifted us with bops fitting for every moment of heartbreak and restoration.

She is an icon.

But Ariana is also, shockingly enough, a human being, so she can get things wrong.


That she did, when she made repeated references to her ex-fiancé’s penis.

Cast your mind back to the thank u, next video, in which Ariana writes ‘huuuuge’ next to a photo of Pete, discusses his big… teeth, and slaps a BDE (big dick energy, for anyone not in the know) badge on the driver in the Legally Blonde section.



We laughed along, analysed photos of Pete Davidson wearing sweatpants, and focused on dissecting every other bit of the video.

Before that, Ariana responded to multiple references about the size of Pete’s penis, at one point answering a question about the length of her song, Pete Davidson, with: ‘Like 10 inches?….oh fuck….I mean….like a lil over a minute.’

(Picture: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)

Now, Pete Davidson has mentioned how he felt about all those discussions of his dick in the form of a joke at a stand-up set.

And, as loath as I am to say it, he actually has a point.

‘I don’t like that she talked all that shit for my penis,’ he said.

‘Everything is huge to her. Why would she tell everyone that I have a huge penis? So that every girl who sees my dick for the rest of my life is disappointed?’

He doesn’t seem huuuugely upset, thankfully, but the joke brings up an important line in the sand about what’s appropriate to discuss when it comes to the intimacies of your relationship.

Is it okay to talk about the penis of someone you had sex with? Is it okay if you’re being complimentary?

I’m going to say no, it’s not.

But before we get into that, let me acknowledge that Pete doesn’t really have a leg to stand on when it comes to the appropriateness of things to joke about.

This is the man who joked about swapping out his then-girlfriend’s birth control pills to lock her down with a pregnancy, loudly proclaimed that he used to masturbate to photos of her, and, before they were dating, joked about the Manchester terror attack on stage.

Pete is not some poor, innocent victim here. He’s done a lot of shitty stuff.

But two wrongs don’t make a right, and while most of Pete’s shittiness has been pretty specific to him (how many of us are comedians planning to talk about our extremely famous significant others in a recorded interview?), discussions of an ex’s penis size are one of those things that a lot of us might find ourselves doing.

We’re just being sexually empowered, right? What was Sex and the City for if not to make us drink cosmos and feel free to chat about dream dicks over brunch?



Not so, I’m afraid.

The wrongness of chatting about someone else’s penis comes down to consent and privacy.

When you have consensual sex with someone, part of the deal is that they get to see your genitals and vice versa. They even get to touch them, the lucky sods.

The knowledge of the parts of their body that usually remain covered is a privilege, granted with trust and passion. They get undressed and they bare themselves to you, giving you permission to know every physical part of them and keep that information as a personal memory, gifted as part of your sexual experience.

I’m sorry, I know that sounds extremely corny and emotional, but stay with me.

If you were to use that moment to snap a photo without asking ‘hey, is it cool if I do this?’, your sexual partner would rightly be upset. They didn’t agree to that.

If you then posted that photo online without their permission, that would be revenge porn, which is entirely not allowed.

Obviously, talking about someone’s penis is not the same as revenge porn. Saying someone is huge is not the equivalent of posting photos of someone’s naked body online.

But it sits on the outskirts of the same circle of not-okay-ness.

The details of your sexual partner’s genitals, and the rest of their body, have been shared with you, not with whoever else you fancy telling. It’s something that people generally like to keep private, and choose who they let in.


Even if you’re being complimentary, by discussing the usually hidden body parts of someone you’ve slept with, you’re crossing a major line of personal privacy, denying them the right to keep personal details just to themselves and to people with whom they choose to share them.

It’s like telling someone else’s secret that they told you in confidence. It’s not your secret to tell just because you’ve heard it, it’s theirs.

And – not to explain the basics of empathy – imagine how you would feel to know that people you’ve never met have discussed your body parts at length, offering their views on the description of your vulva and declaring that they wouldn’t like a man with balls that hang that low.

It feels creepy, doesn’t it? Like someone looking through your diary or nosing around your underwear drawer.

When it’s positive (he’s massive) it’s crossing a boundary of respect and privacy, and when it’s negative, it’s body shaming, plain and simple.

There are caveats to this rule of never, ever discussing an ex’s peen, of course.

If you ask them first if it’s okay to discuss their penis at length, and they say yes, you’re in the clear – they’ve consented to the details being shared far and wide.

If they are a person who shares photos of their schlong publicly on the internet, yes, it’s probably up for discussion.


But beyond that, it’s simple, just the very basic details of a penis – its length, its colour, its curve, its pubic stylings – are not public information unless the owner of said penis has consented to that being the case.

Allow the hidden parts of people to remain private. Rather than telling everyone that your ex’s penis is massive, let those who are allowed to unzip his trousers discover that happy secret for themselves. Instead of spreading the word that you think someone has a tiny dick, allow others to make up their mind.

Oh, and remember that penis size really, really isn’t everything, and that by reducing all the intimacies of your sex life down to ‘he was really big’ or ‘his left ball was bigger than his right’, you’re ignoring all the intricacies of sex that lead to pleasure – the emotions, the techniques, the foreplay. It’s reductive, and by chatting about sex simply in terms of penis size, you’re upholding the negative idea that that’s what sex is all about.

Your ex’s penis belongs to them. It’s up to them who they share it with, whether in its literal form, through a photo, or a vivid verbal description.

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