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What do The Pitt star Noah Wyle, former Captain America Chris Evans, and Democratic candidate for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani have in common? According to thirsty fans on the internet, all their smiles are portents of something, well, big.
In the past six months, the term “hung smile” has become a growing meme among stan communities as a shorthand for discussing the attractiveness of certain male stars. On Reddit forums and in TikTok videos, on X and on Bluesky, people have described these men as having a “hung smile” to suggest it’s representative of them being well endowed. Of course, they have no way of really knowing—which is why some of the “hung smile” posts have become purposefully silly.
What is and is not a “hung smile” is certainly in the eye of the beholder, but in some of the most viral thirst posts, the stars’ grins are wide, often show flashes of teeth, and seem to signify a relaxed sense of confidence. But there’s no clear throughline, and even those posting about “hung smiles” concede it’s just another way for them to say these guys are hot. “It’s used a lot to compliment masculine and buff men, especially male actors, singers, influencers etc.,” said the anonymous person behind the X account @fabbgrat—they went viral earlier in July with a “hung smile” post about Superman star David Corenswet that was favorited more than 58,000 times.
“Hung smile” has existed online for many years, albeit in a different form—a 2011 entry on Urban Dictionary stated it referred at the time to the fond smile a person might demonstrate when recalling the size of their ex-partner’s extraordinarily huge penis. Its current meaning appears to have been popularized late last year thanks to a post about a surprising figure: accused health care CEO killer Luigi Mangione. When police released images of a suspect during their manhunt in December, Blizzy McGuire, a shit-posting social media star who gave the world the “Christian Girl Autumn” meme in 2019, proclaimed that the handsome man seen smiling in CCTV footage had “that hung smile.” Their post has since been seen more than 9.3 million times on X, causing McGuire to ask six months later whether she was responsible for the term’s ascendence. (Seems so!)
So is it possible for someone’s smile to be an outward reflection of what lies beneath? No, you horny idiots. Well, rather … not exactly, explained Justin Dubin, a Florida urologist, member of the American Urological Association, and co-host of a podcast about men’s health. Aptly comparing “hung smiles” to “big dick energy” (a term popularized in 2018 thanks to Pete Davidson and Ariana Grande’s relationship), Dubin said that what people may actually be responding to in these men could be a perceived sense of self-confidence that may or may not be connected to penis size. “If you have a perceived larger penis size, you’ll have a more favorable image to yourself,” Dubin said. “Because you’re more confident in yourself, maybe you do have a big dick energy because of the fact you believe you have a bigger dick.”
The first step to understanding any of this is appreciating that the relationship between a man and his penis can be extraordinarily personal, and a lot of men don’t like what they see downstairs. As many as almost half of all guys may be dissatisfied with their size, even if 85 percent of their female partners are more than pleased. (Among gay men, there is some evidence penis size might matter a touch more, and may determine whether they are more likely to top or bottom). As with most body-image issues, a man’s perception of his penis is often affected by media he may consume. One 2019 study interviewing six men who had undergone penile augmentation surgery found they were often influenced by seeing large penises in pornography or hearing jokes about small penises in mainstream media. (Just as an FYI, a 2014 international study of more than 15,000 penises found an average erect length of 5.16 inches and girth of 4.6 inches.)
Crucially, though, whether a man is smaller than average or not, men who believe they’re on the smaller side are likely to be less sexually satisfied and more likely to suffer from anxiety or depression. Conversely, guys who do seem self-assured or happy with their junk may thus naturally radiate big dick energy, whether justifiably or not. That’s in line with the findings of one 2006 study that found men who rated their penises as larger than average also believed themselves to be more attractive overall, suggesting a general confidence boost because of their perceived size.
One of the study’s authors, David Frederick, who is an associate professor of psychology at California’s Chapman University, presented some unpublished research at the Sexuality Preconference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology this year. Frederick found that men who reported having larger penises and greater upper-body muscularity were also more confident flirting and pursuing romantic relationships. “Men’s views of their penis size were far more important than their height or weight for identifying which men were more confident hitting on a stranger or asking for their number,” Frederick told me.
“There are obviously no studies on whether men with larger penises have more confident smiles, but there are reasons these men might have something to smile about,” he added.
Seeking further clarity, I reached out to the first person who came to mind: the Girthmasterr, the Australian OnlyFans creator who became virally famous last year thanks to his 8-inch-long, 7-inch-circumferenced penis. “There’s definitely truth to the big dick smile,” he told me. “It comes from knowing that your dick is big enough to get the job done—you need only the opportunity to prove it. You’re immune to the dick-measuring contest without any effort.”
Truth be told, I didn’t notice anything particularly distinctive about the Girthmasterr’s smile. In some photos, he shows his teeth, but in many others he doesn’t. He just looks sort of … normal, albeit confident and content. But the Girthmasterr said the thing that gives him this energy is being free from the mental anguish he believes smaller guys suffer from. “The real confidence of having a big dick comes from knowing how unimportant it is to many women, whereas men that don’t have a big dick will always wonder ‘What if,’ ” he said.
Dubin, the urologist, can understand where the current boom in “hung smile” jokes comes from because he believes it’s very normal to want to speculate about the size of a man’s penis. In the past, people have tried to deduce men’s size by gleaning things from their height, race, hand span, or foot size. However, Dubin said there’s not much scientific data to support any general connection between these features and the penis. He did, however, point to some studies that suggested things like nose size, finger length, and butt size may be connected.
If people are drawing connections between a man’s smile and his penis, it may also be because there is evidence that the reverse is true. In 2022, researchers found that people shown pictures of different men’s penises made judgments about their personality and handsomeness. Prototypical penises were associated with attractiveness, being good in bed, agreeableness, and openness to experiences. Meanwhile, men with narrower penises were thought to be more neurotic, while those with wider ones were seen as more extroverted and sexually active. “First impressions really, really matter,” New Mexico Highlands University assistant professor of psychology Thomas R. Brooks, one of the researchers behind the study, told me. “When we don’t have a lot of information on somebody when we first meet them or encounter them, whether that’s in person or online, we take what we get and we have what are called heuristics that we use to make shortcut assumptions about people.”
Brooks conceded he hadn’t heard of the “hung smile” term until I contacted him, but believed it could be a phenomenon that warrants further study. He suggested, though, that what might be occurring is a variation of the so-called halo effect, whereby we allow our positive judgment of a person in one area of their life—in this case, their appearance or smile—to color our perception of them in other areas. “If you see a cute dude on social media, and he’s got the ‘hung smile’ and you’re initially attracted to him, then you’re probably going to generalize that good feeling you have to other areas, like that he’s got a great personality, he takes care of his mom, and he probably has a big dick.”
However, it’s also possible that if you’re attracted to a man’s “hung smile,” you could just be attracted to his smile alone. A 2021 study found that bigger smiles were perceived as more attractive, meaning that you’re probably just projecting other things about that man with a big grin.
At the end of the day, Dubin believes the only way to correctly determine the size of a man’s junk is to actually measure it. After all, he would know. “I’ve seen more penises than 99 percent of people, and I have no idea,” he said. “I cannot predict what anyone’s penis size is when they walk into that room.” But even if you’re not a guy who’s packing, Dubin suggested you can simply fake it till you make it: “Believing and acting like you have a big dick, people will think that you do.”
