The Straight Dope 12/09/2005

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The Straight Dope -- By Cecil Adams
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THE STRAIGHT DOPE 12/09/2005

Dear Cecil:

Why is it that ancient Greek and Roman paintings,
sculptures, and other works of art depict males with such
small genitalia? My first thought was that the artists
wished to draw the viewer's attention to other, more
important, aspects of the work. However, my roommate has
pointed out that this treatment has the opposite effect. I
really don't think evolution has treated us as kindly as
this artwork might lead us to believe. So why the small
penises? --Phil, Los Angeles

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Cecil replies:

Phil, it's time we had a little talk about the Greeks.

You remember the Greeks. They were the guys (and it was
mostly guys--women at the time were mainly relegated to
childbearing and housekeeping or sex objecthood, and were
seldom heard from) who pretty much invented what we now
think of as Western civilization. Their ideas about culture
and society, which the Romans copied, influence us to this
day. The Greeks also . . . well, we'll get into a discussion
of Greek sexual preferences some other time. For now let's
just say they were fascinated by male beauty, and in
particular by (ahem) the penis.

The Greeks weren't shy about displaying their manly
attributes. Nudity was celebrated in Greece as in no culture
before or since. We're so used to nude classical sculpture
and painting that we figure that's how everybody walked
around back in those days. In fact, however, male nudity in
art and among athletes and warriors was largely confined to
the ancient Greeks, for whom it became a point of
pride--they considered embarrassment at having to disrobe
for sports a sign of barbarism. Admiration of the manly form
at times verged on the cultlike; the more heroic bits of
male sculpture, small penis or no, have an erotic charge
that can make even a straight male sweat. Naked women were
depicted too, but less often, and you sometimes get the
feeling the artist's heart wasn't in it.

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/051209.html

STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC #1 - 03/14/1986

Dear Cecil:

Why do we nod our heads for "yes" and shake them for "no,"
instead of the other way around? Are there any peoples who
reverse the gestures? --Have to Know, Chicago

Cecil replies:

Believe it or not, H., some people think this is a silly
question. Little do they know. No less a personage than
Charles Darwin looked into it and wrote up his findings in a
book called The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals (1872). Darwin was interested in finding out whether
there were universal gestures and expressions, so he sent
out a questionnaire to missionaries and whatnot that, among
other things, asked what gesticulations the locals used to
convey "yes" and "no." Nodding and head-shaking turned out
to be pretty common, but there were some striking
exceptions. For example, certain Australian natives, when
uttering a negative, "don't shake the head, but holding up
the right hand, shake it by turning it half round and back
again two or three times." One Captain Speedy--I can't say
the name inspires much confidence--told Darwin that the
Abyssinians said "no" by jerking the head to the right
shoulder and making a slight cluck, while "yes" was
expressed by the head being thrown backwards and the
eyebrows raised for an instant. The Dyaks of Borneo
supposedly raised their eyebrows for "yes" and slightly
contracted them, "together with a peculiar look of the
eyes," for "no." Eskimoes nodded for "yes" and winked for
"no."

For more, see: 
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_450b.html

STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC #2 - 06/17/1979

Dear Cecil: 

People talk about John Wayne Gacy having murdered a record
number of people, but I'm curious about the official
statistics on another famous Chicagoan--Herman Webster
Mudgett, AKA "Dr. Henry Holmes." Holmes supposedly murdered
around 200 women at the time of one of Chicago's world's
fairs. Yet his name is not mentioned with Manson,
Starkweather, or Corona as one of the nation's leading mass
murderers. Holmes first came to my attention in Jay Robert
Nash's Bloodletters and Badmen. I doubt Nash's facts,
however, and I'm wondering whether any official account of
Mudgett's crimes exists. -- Steven L., Chicago  

Dear Steven: 

There are several accounts of Mudgett-Holmes's activities,
not the least of which is the doctor's own, a lurid
confession written in 1896 while he awaited execution.
Holmes admitted 27 murders, most of which, he said, occurred
in his infamous "castle" on what is now Chicago's South
Side. He was a psychopath and a compulsive liar, though, so
there's no telling how many he really did away with. On the
gallows he claimed he'd only slain two persons, both of whom
he had carved up on the operating table in his macabre
basement. Frank Geyer, a Philadelphia police detective who
later wrote a book on the case, unearthed (in a regrettably
literal way) enough evidence to pin four killings on
Holmes--those of a onetime business associate named Benjamin
Pitezel and three of his children. Holmes--who really was a
doctor, with a degree from the University of
Michigan--destroyed or hid the bodies of the rest of his
victims. Conjecture puts the toll as high as 200. 

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_455.html

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