Loose Lips	Loose Lips Archive

The US and Canada these days boast an unusual distinction-- they are two of the few places in the world where you are fairly likely to encounter both cut and uncut men in any context where naked men are to be found-- gym locker rooms, saunas, or bath houses. In most other countries, circumcision is either very rare or nearly universal. The general rule is that for religious reasons, circumcision is nearly universal in Muslim countries and among Jews, wherever they are found. In most of the rest of the world-- Latin America, Europe, East and (non-Muslim) South Asia, and Australia-- circumcision is fairly unusual.

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North America is the place with the most dramatic variation over time and space. Circumcision was common from about 1950 to 1980, with a pronounced decline in circumcision rates in the decade after that. For example, in Ontario, 60 percent of boys were circumcised in 1974-5, while only 19 percent were in 2000-1. Circumcision rates show some pronounced regional variation in the US and Canada-- the data from 1999 show that only 37 percent of boys were circumcised in the US West, while 81 percent were circumcised in the US Midwest. Males in Quebec have always been about half as likely to be circumcised as men from Ontario.

What this means in your neighborhood YMCA is that you'll see a lot of both. There is a circumcised majority in the middle age groups, with both younger men and older men a lot more likely to have a foreskin. Hispanic, Asian, and black men are more likely to retain the original equipment than white men. So as you look around the shower, you'll find plenty to catch the eye, and plenty of differences in the basic package.

Miss Poubelle thinks that gay men ought to be happy with this trend. Whatever you prefer, there is certainly plenty of it to be had. Another benefit, it would seem, is that whatever state your parents left you in, you're likely to see many other guys in the same state. So there's less reason for either circumcised or uncircumcised men to feel like they stand out as unusual.

Back in the days of near-universal circumcision in the US, some uncut guys have reported that they felt like freaks, and would try to keep the skin pulled back so that others wouldn't notice. It had not occurred to Miss Poubelle that the subterfuge might also go the other way-- with cut guys trying to pass as uncut. But then she found out that her friend Sig is currently engaged in some undercover foreskin fraud.

Miss Poubelle's friend Sig is circumcised but likes uncut dicks better. At first, this was just a preference for sexual partners, but with time, he also began to wish that he himself were uncircumcised. Over the years he has experimented with foreskin restoration. Now he's got what he calls "a convertible"-- if he pulls the skin forward, it will stay there for two to six hours, depending on how hot it is and how much moving around he's doing. But this has led to an odd effect-- a degree of anxiety about whether other men can tell that he's not really uncircumcised.

"I feel like I'm trying to put one over on them," Sig says, "and I'm always nervous that someone's going to accuse me of foreskin impersonation! What if my dick picks the wrong moment to unpeel itself?"

English lacks a handy term for the anxiety that comes from having others discover the presence or absence of your foreskin, possibly because the number of men who have suffered such anxiety must be relatively few. But it seems to belong to a larger class of anxieties that others will discover things like the nosejob, the toupee, the capped teeth, the bronzer, or the sock in the crotch.

Someday, when the DSM-56 has finally managed to catalogue every single human failing and anxiety, perhaps there will be an entry for False Foreskin Discovery Anxiety Disorder, listed on the same page as Preparation H Discovery Anxiety Disorder along with recommendations for diagnosis and treatment.

Till that time, Miss Poubelle is prepared to take a benign view of Sig's peccadilloes. We'd all like to make our bodies closer to our ideals, and Miss Poubelle has too many of her own vanities to condemn those of others.