‘With very few exceptions, almost none of the partners in the movie wanted them to do this.’ Photograph: World of Wonder View image in fullscreen ‘With very few exceptions, almost none of the partners in the movie wanted them to do this.’ Photograph: World of Wonder Documentary films ‘Never big enough’: inside the booming penis enlargement industry In a revealing documentary, a looksmaxxing-influenced world where ‘your social capital is tied to your appearance’ has led to more men wanting more
Andrew Lawrence Sat 31 Oct 2026 10.00 CET Last modified on Sat 31 Oct 2026 16.42 CET Share Prefer the Guardian on Google M an’s obsession with his member is a tale as old as time, writ large in sky-scraping edifices, in allusions that flatter (big dick energy) or offend (prick), in the countless artifacts across the ages that venerate male potency – a porn star’s description of Donald Trump’s “toadstool” penis. But it’s the booming intimate wellness industry – AKA the rash (ahem) of fillers, therapies and cosmetic procedures that have come into vogue since the little blue pill rocked the market – that most intrigued Daniel Lombroso, the esteemed documentarian who made his name at the Atlantic and the New Yorker dissecting male fragility.
Read more “A lot of the stories I worked on at those places were kind of fringy subculture and oftentimes adjacent to white nationalism,” says Lombroso, who became aware of the rising demand for penile enhancement procedures while reporting on plastic surgery trends at the New Yorker. “I started calling all these practitioners. But to make an embedded film the way I do, you need someone who’s very open.”
A 2024 study of US Google searches noted an increase in interest in penile-enhancement injections from 2013 through 2022. Lombroso’s 90-minute film, Manhood, puts male self-esteem issues at the heart of the trend on a cold, chafing examination table. Our guide throughout is Bill Moore, a capitalist in scrubs who gives fresh meaning to the phrase bedside manner. We meet him at home, tongue-kissing a pet lap dog while snuggled up under the covers with his male partner. We behold the full splendor of his naked body, nipped and tucked in retreat from the ravages of time and his own unforgiving eye. “Nobody would suspect I’ve ever had anything done!” he says with bracing cluelessness.
We see Moore hawk outpatient penile enhancement procedures from his Dallas strip mall office for $15,000 and $20,000 a pop and tout the lowly glow-ups as career-changing, sex-life turbocharging, depression-curing – whatever patients need to hear to fork over the dough, really. “Everybody wants a boat that’s one foot longer,” one guy says as Moore sticks a long numbing needle into his nether regions. “The boat is never big enough.”
We see many of these patients (though customers is the better word, since, again, Moore is not a doctor), their faces more obscured than their ink-marked private parts. The inclination toward anonymity owes as much to the physical embarrassment Moore’s clientele bring into the room as to the irony of receiving this kind of care from an out-and-proud gay man – the megachurch pastor, the border patrol agent. It’s wild to see Moore act as a machismo whisperer to men who might perceive him as less than masculine, especially as he reflects on the guilt and fear of rejection he experienced before coming out to conservative Christian family members in the deep south (not that his mother having dementia doesn’t hel…