The explainer
It’s a niche physical pursuit building an unlikely community in the US. Cosmo reports on the how, why, where – and whether it’s UK-bound
We’d like you to meet a person named Kristie. Kristie is a 34-year-old mother of two and make-up artist living in Phoenix, Arizona. The way she tells it, a drug dealer saved her sex life. Kristie and her husband, married since 2017, had a tough time during the baby years. Pregnancy and breastfeeding made Kristie’s libido crash. She wanted to want sex. She missed it. But she just wasn’t feeling it on her own.
She visited her gynaecologist, who didn’t offer much guidance. The doctor referred her to a private sexual-health specialist, but Kristie couldn’t afford the treatment. So she took matters into her own hands. Kristie found someone online who would sell her what she’d been googling for weeks: a hormonal remedy, whispered about on internet forums, that she wasn’t legally allowed to acquire at all.
She spent $150 (around £125) in Bitcoin on a one-month supply of an anabolic steroid cream. The active ingredient? Dihydrotestosterone (DHT), the potent chemical cousin of testosterone and a popular black-market substance among bodybuilders. Kristie was determined to bulk up in a very specific way – by enlarging her clitoris.
She began by applying a small amount of the cream with her fingers twice daily. In under a week, Kristie’s clitoris was plumper and more sensitive. Orgasms were suddenly easier, arriving after just 20 minutes of stimulation rather than the full hour previously required. Each climax was more intense too, originating from what felt like deep within, radiating in waves through her entire pelvic zone. Five months later, her clitoris continues to tingle with growth. ‘I feel like a 14-year-old boy wanting to hump everything I see,’ she says.
The notion of optimising the human body for some desired benefit – brighter moods, genius brainpower, a healthier gut – has fuelled trends such as cryotherapy, UV light boxes and keto diets. Now, led by a phalanx of online enthusiasts, the biohacking boom has come for the clit. In public forums such as the subreddit Grow Your Clit – which some 39,000 people have joined since its founding in 2019 – members share anecdotal advice. Many members post close-up images for reference. On kink social networking sites such as FetLife, where Kristie first learned about clit enlargement, users share similar stories, cataloguing their experiences with testosterone and DHT. The medical specialists Cosmopolitan spoke to for this story say they too have noticed an uptick in patient interest of late.
Online clit cultivators identify as straight, queer, gay, cisgender, trans, non-binary, monogamous
