“If you could see a man’s dick size like you could see a girl’s boobs, a whole lot of men would shut the fuck up,” a young woman named Piper Bailey, wearing an off-the-shoulder shirt declares in a video that’s been viewed 17.1 million times on TikTok.
Cut to Anwar White in a green hoodie who responds that you can do just that. “I call it ‘Catching Print,’” he says to the camera. “And I’m going to teach you how to do it.”
Anwar, known online as “Dating Coach Anwar,” and author of the forthcoming book Girl, Get Your Guy, then details his system for judging the size of a man’s dick through the “print” it makes on a man’s pants. Anwar divides penises into A, B, and D sizes, a nod to a woman’s bra measurements. “A” is the smallest, a dick outline that doesn’t reach the ball sack (4-6 inches erect). “B” is medium-sized, reaching the end of the scrotum (6-8 inches). And “D” is a penis extending beyond the nut sack (8 plus).
Soon after Anwar posted his “Catching Print” video on March 13, the trend went viral. He even posted a follow-up video with a diagram and analyses of celebrity print sizes. According to Anwar, Harry Styles is a D. He ends the video by declaring, “My work is about empowering women. Power to the matriarchy.”
But does this trend empower women or objectify men? One man posted on TikTok that “catching print” makes a woman a “creep.” “You are not ‘balancing the scales,’ you are showing that you are no better than your or others’ abusers.”
Alex • Photo: Attila Kiss.
Some women disagree and are enthusiastically catching print. One woman I contacted on Reddit said that catching print is about equality: a way to level the playing field after enduring objectification and sexual harassment from men. “Women are tired of going the high road with no social improvement. Why turn the other cheek if you keep getting slapped over and over? It’s time to fight back,” she wrote. “If men don’t like how it feels to be judged by their D size, good. Women don’t like it when we get shamed for having a ‘loose vagina.’ If other men won’t hold men accountable, then it falls to us women and catching print is a language they understand.”
Another print-catching woman I spoke to on Reddit agreed with Anwar that dick assessment is empowering. “It does feel good to ‘catch print’ of a guy that’s obviously checking me out or leering at my cleavage, sort of like I’m taking some power back :),” she wrote.
Since learning about the trend, she can’t stop herself from scoping out men’s bulges. “It’s become automatic, I check a guy out and I’m immediately scanning for his ‘print,’” she wrote. The woman, who is bisexual, said she doesn’t check out women’s breasts in the same way.
These women might be outliers. Heterosexual women are more likely to check out a man’s face than his body, according to eye-tracking research by psychology scholar Ross C. Hollett, a lecturer at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia. While heterosexual men do look at women’s faces, they are more inclined to gaze at woman’s bodies too. The gender difference, he believes, is a mix of biology and social conditioning. Men may be looking at bodies for breast size and hip-to-waist ratio that can be considered relevant for reproductive value, Hollett wrote in an email interview. “However, there have also been decades of visual media which has emphasized the value of women’s bodies, so we expect this has conditioned men to maintain strong visual interest in women’s bodies (regardless of reproductive motivations).”
Women don’t ignore men’s bodies altogether, said Hollett. “Women are more complex as they may only exhibit an intense interest in gazing at men’s bodies under specific circumstances,” he wrote. Some of these circumstances are being single and watching pornography.
Perhaps women don’t gaze at men’s bodies unless they are single because they fear reprisal from their partners. Even if they are single, gazing at men’s bodies has nearly always been viewed as deviant. The “catching print” trend is giving women permission to gaze that they have lacked.
Fiachra • Photo: Brian Kaminski.
Are women who objectify men just as bad as the reverse? Anwar doesn’t think so. “The difference between the objectification of women and the objectification of men is that it’s been quite harmful for women when they’ve received it,” Anwar says, as it leads to harassment and assault. Catching print is different because the power dynamic of a woman objectifying a man is different. Women don’t hold physical power over men, as men do over women, he says.
Hollett is sympathetic to women’s desire to ogle men, but he still isn’t overly enthusiastic about it. “I can completely understand why women would view this type of behaviour as ‘payback’ as I believe women have been unfairly and persistently objectified for generations to a greater degree than men,” he wrote. “However, the notion that fighting objectification with objectification would achieve any kind of equity is probably misguided…the objectification of women is linked to a host of potential negative outcomes.”
Some men may not mind being objectified, as evidenced by the number of men donning bulge-forward clothes in their social media posts to draw viewers to their dicks. But these posts may be having real-life consequences. Urologist and sexual health expert Dr. Joshua Gonzalez who is based in Lost Angeles thinks such content may be driving the rise in requests for penis enlargements that he’s seen in the past five year. “There are creators whose following is based on post after post of them in underwear, gray sweatpants, or a jock strap. … It’s purely objectification related to their big print.”
Though Gonzalez thinks social media can affect men’s views of their penis size, he doesn’t think it’s the only thing influencing them. “I think patients that are interested in enhancing their penis are already seeking out ways to do that. I don’t know that this catching print thing is necessarily going to make that more common,” Gonzalez says. “There’s a lot of people that have always been insecure about their size, even if they have completely normal-sized penises.”
Manuel • Photo: Roberto Chiovitti.
In fact, most men who get penis enlargement have a normal-sized penis. “A lot of people are not aware of what is a normal size because they compare themselves to what they see in pornography… [and] social media.” The average erect penis is about 5.5 inches. So most men fall into Anwar’s “A” category, Gonzalez says.
Gonzalez notes that a man’s dick print does not correlate to his dick size. “Penises change shape and size all the time throughout a regular day,” he says. “If it’s hot outside, they’re going to probably hang better, versus when they have just gotten out of a cold shower or cold plunge.” “Catching print” sets “unrealistic expectations that their penis is always that size that you’re seeing,” he says.
Gonzalez also mentioned that some men are show-ers, not grow-ers. Anwar says he has taken this into account with his catching print dick measurements.
Some men of color have pointed out that they are harmed more by the trend because of unrealistic stereotypes of BBCs [Big Black Cocks]. Anwar hopes that this trend doesn’t further the stereotype. He notes that Black men and white men’s dicks aren’t as different in size as the stereotype would make it seem. As a Black man, Anwar has experienced this stereotype often. “There have been many times when I was single where the first message I would get from dating apps would be ‘got a BBC?’” he says. “I think that a lot of black men have been valued just for their dick size and not necessarily for their humanness.”
Anwar has heard the criticism that the trend hurts trans men who may be outed by people catching their print. “My intention was not to offend or to put people in danger at all,” Anwar says. However, the majority of the feedback he’s getting is positive. “They wanted me to have the Nobel Peace Prize, or what they’re calling the Nobel Print Prize,” he says.
Sergio • Photo: Joan Crisol.
Anwar insists he’s not shaming men with small penises. However, some women want bigger penises, and he thinks that’s fine. “Catching print” gives women knowledge so they can go after men who fit their penis preference, Anwar believes. “I have clients that are saying, I know my body, this is what I need, and I honor that,” he says.
In the end, size isn’t that important Anwar says. “Confidence matters,” he says. In other words big dick energy is more important than a big dick itself. “I had an Italian guy that was like four or five inches of the best sex I’ve ever had in my life,” he says.
Some women catching print aren’t looking for a large size. One woman I spoke to said she “catches print” seeking out the smallest dicks she can find.
For some men, a penis enlargement is a way to achieve confidence, regardless of their original dick size, Gonzalez says. “Who am I to tell someone that they can’t enhance their body if it’s done in sort of a safe way, especially if it’s going to have a positive impact on their self-esteem, and their sex life?” he says.
Hollett isn’t completely supportive of the “Catching Print” trend. “I think women’s visual interest in faces (and by virtue their interest in emotional and social dispositions) and their tendency not to objectify men is one of their strengths,” he wrote. “It provides some balance and a reminder to men that sustainable and meaningful social or romantic connections are best achieved when we spend more effort trying to understand what a person thinks or feels rather than trying to estimate the size/shape of their breasts, buttocks, or penis.”
But the catching print trend does have a silver lining: it shows that heterosexual women and men are not that different, at least in their desire to ogle bodies of the opposite sex.
