One of the common excuses to not wear a condom is that they’re too tight and they hurt. While that’s not much of an excuse at all (don’t fall for it), the supposed reasoning is that the condom is too small or too snug for your guy’s junk. But what about those with the opposite problem of having a penis too small for most condoms?

To be sure, no one wants to cop to having a small penis. Apparently, this poses a problem for condom companies who know it would be nearly impossible to sell small or extra-small condoms to men. Perhaps condom makers should take a cue from women’s clothing* and shift the sizes of the product? That’s what Dr. Bill Yarber, of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction suggests; just re-label small condoms as “large”, regular as “extra-large” and extra-large as, uh, “super-ginormous” maybe?

Whether that’s the answer, I don’t know. It’s important to figure something out, however, because men are buying condoms bigger than they ought to and it’s causing problems. According to a study conducted by University of Kentucky’s College of Public Health, nearly 45% of adult men reported having worn ill-fitting condoms while engaging in vaginal intercourse. In those cases, the condom broke, slipped, or was just too uncomfortable to keep on through ejaculation. As a whole, sex is less pleasant and more dangerous for men and their partners when the condom doesn’t fit correctly.

It’s certainly not news that men attach a lot of significance to the size of their penises. It’s been said that great monuments have been built, wars waged and countless expensive, foreign, sports cars purchased, all to compensate for a real or perceived deficit “down there.” I’m a woman so I can’t speak too much to the relationship between a man and his junk, but if this condom size issue is having public health implications (STDs, unintended pregnancies), I’m on board with re-labeling the boxes. It would definitely be easier than getting a guy to take his box of smedium prophylactics to the checkout counter, ego intact. As Menachem Kaiser of the Atlantic said, “if men want a condom that fits — and it’s much more about girth than length, if that helps — then they’ll have to band together and demand more accurate sizes from the condom companies.” Agreed.

*There’s this practice in the women’s clothing industry of skewing the size of a garment so the consumer feels like she’s buying a smaller size than usual. For example, if you normally wear a size 12, Boutique A might carry a size 12 but label it as a 10. They do this knowing you’re more likely to shop Boutique A because it feels good to fit your size 12 ass into a 10. Such is the female obsession with being smaller that many clothing manufacturers have employed this tactic with much success.