Smaller condoms are no joke in India

A two-year study conducted by the Indian Council on Medical Research has concluded that Indian men just don’t measure up. According to the study, 60 percent of Indian men have penises that are smaller than the international average. Three to five centimeters smaller, in fact.  We all snickered on Friday when the story first broke, ...

605620_condom6.jpg
605620_condom6.jpg

A two-year study conducted by the Indian Council on Medical Research has concluded that Indian men just don't measure up. According to the study, 60 percent of Indian men have penises that are smaller than the international average. Three to five centimeters smaller, in fact. 

A two-year study conducted by the Indian Council on Medical Research has concluded that Indian men just don’t measure up. According to the study, 60 percent of Indian men have penises that are smaller than the international average. Three to five centimeters smaller, in fact. 

We all snickered on Friday when the story first broke, but it’s actually no laughing matter. According to the report, the bad fit is wreaking havoc on safe sex practices in India, which leads the world in HIV infections. Because condoms are sized to fit the international standard, one in every five times a condom is used in India, it falls off or is torn. The solution? The council is calling for condom makers to sell smaller products on the subcontinent.

At least one German firm sympathizes with the shortcomings of Indian men. It plans to introduce a spray-on condom for all sizes by 2008. In the meantime, Sunil Mehra, who used to run the Indian edition of the laddie mag Maxim, is trying to console Indian men with that time-honored adage: “It’s not size, it’s what you do with it that matters,” he says. “With apologies to the poet Alexander Pope, you could say, for inches and centimeters, let fools contend.”

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