An Upgrade for Your Penis?
The Norwegian anthropologist Gunnar Lamvik went to the southern Philippines to study seafaring culture, but as an outsider, it was difficult to access much information. Committed to getting as much data as possible, he went all in, spending three years on and off ships, connecting and getting to know his mates — a task that would help him later at SINTEF, a Norway-based think-tank where Lamvik devotes himself to studying how culture impacts occupational safety. Some of the things he discovered while immersed in that world surprised him. Ryan Jacobs at the Atlantic tells the story:
Many Filipino sailors make small incisions in their penises and slide tiny plastic or stone balls — the size of M&M’s — underneath the skin in order to enhance sexual pleasure for prostitutes and other women they encounter in port cities, especially in Rio de Janeiro. “This ‘secret weapon of the Filipinos,’ as a second mate phrased it, has therefore obviously something to do,” Lamvik wrote in his thesis, “‘with the fact that ‘the Filipinos are so small, and the Brazilian women are so big’ as another second mate put it.”
According to University of California, Santa Cruz labor sociologist Steve McKay, who traveled extensively on container ships with Filipino crews in 2005 for his research on the masculine identity in the shipping market, raw materials for the bolitas can range from tiles to plastic chopsticks or toothbrushes. A designated crew member boils them in hot water to sterilize them, and then performs the procedure. There are also different preferred locations for insertion. Some have one on top or bottom, and others have both. One shipmate told McKay that others have four, one on top and bottom and on both sides, “like the sign of the cross.” Another said: “I have a friend at home, you know what his nickname is?” McKay recalled. “Seven.”
The practice is unique to Southeast Asia and dates back to at least the 16th century, though no one is sure if it has been continuous. Italian scholar Antonio Pigafetta accompanied Ferdinand Magellan and his crew on their explorations and journaled about a similar behavior in what is currently southern Philippines and Borneo. Apparently, it was also practiced in Thailand and Indonesia, but vanished from the historical record in the mid-17th century, when men bowed to the pressures of Islam and Christianity.
Mckay was shocked to learn that it still existed in what, based on his extensive conversations with Filipino seafarers, seemed like great numbers. In the extremely limited body of academic literature on this topic, there aren’t many numbers. One 1999 study found that out of 314 randomly selected Filipino seamen in the port of Manila, 180, or 57 percent, said they had them.
Header image via Wikimedia Commons.
