Last updated on August 24, 2020
Question:
Hello. I have a problem. Okay, well, it is about my penis. I am 15 years old and uncircumcised. On the skin of my penis just at the back, there are some acne-like buttons, about 13 or 14 buttons. When I squeeze them a little they feel like whiteheads or blackheads. They do not hurt and are not red, but if I squeeze them a little harder, a whitish soft substance comes out. The substance is not liquid or hard, just in between hard and soft. I don’t know how to get rid of them, but it hurts when I squeeze then, and eventually, the white substance will just come back in the button on my penis skin. I don’t know what to do and won’t tell my parents because I had some other problems with my foot and they would just say it is insignificant. So I was wondering what could I use to dry them up? Do you know anything that I could use? I have an acne cream with sulfur to dry up acne and was wondering if I could use it on the buttons. I really want to get rid of it.
Thank you so very much for answering these questions. May God bless you! Thank you so much!
Answer
Do not use acne medication on your penis, unless you like be sore for a number of days. The skin of your penis is much thinner than the rest of your body, so medications designed to soak through the thicker skin of your face will be too powerful for the skin of your penis.
Because the bumps are not red, I doubt very much that it is acne anyway. What I think you are seeing are the glands in your skin. The skin of the penis is so thin that you can see a ways through it. And because it is thin, glands under the surface cause push it up to be seen as small bumps.
What you are probably seeing are the sebaceous glands. They produce oils that keep your skin soft and flexible. When you are a teenager, your increased hormones while you are growing cause these glands to step up production, so they get bigger. In a few years, things will slow back down and they will get smaller. The common name for these small bumps is “Fordyce spots.”
They cause no harm, but you are causing harm trying to break them. You are injuring your skin and giving bacteria a chance to enter your body to cause real harm. Just leave them alone. They are normal and can be seen on most men’s genitals.
If you think that I might have missed my guess or that you didn’t describe something well enough, you are welcome to send a close-up picture of the bumps and I’ll research the issue further.