Songfacts®:

• Mid-'90s hip-hop was afflicted with many songs that demeaned, diminished, and defaced women. In 1994, producers 20 Fingers and vocalist Gillette (full name: Sandra Navarro Gillette) decided to strike back. The resulting "Short Dick Man" became a surprise hit in the US, UK, and Europe. The song's title pretty much says it all. It makes fun of guys with small membrum viriles (that's Latin for Jimmies).
  
  Even though the song was arguably legitimate social commentary, it sounds childish, with over-the-top lyrics like "do you need some tweezers to put that little thing away?" Billboard labelled it a "novelty" song and it's rarely leveraged in serious conversations about gender equality.
• A clean version of the song was released under the title "Short Short Man." It's the same song but with the word "short" where the word "dick" used to be.
• The song was first released in 1994 on Gillette's debut album On the Attack, with 20 Fingers noted as producers. After the success of "Short Dick Man," 20 Fingers released their own version, On the Attack and More, which was the same album but with the one added track, "Lick It," featuring Roula on vocals rather than Gillette.
  
  Despite the successes of "Short Dick Man" and its similarly low-brow successor "Lick It," both of which sold well thanks to the house-music scene so popular in that era, 20 Fingers made only more album. Released in 1995, it was self-titled 20 Fingers everywhere except France, where it was called L'album, and in Asia, where it was called The Best of 20 Fingers (the album is just their old songs remixed or in original form). It didn't sell very well and the group faded away. Gillette made two more albums: Shake Your Money Maker in 1996 and Did I Say That? in 2000. Neither did well enough to sustain a career.
• In addition to hitting #14 in the US and #11 in the UK, "Short Dick Man" hit #1 in Brazil, France, and Italy, and was top 10 in Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. It achieved gold record status in both the US and Germany and silver status in France.
• The music video features a photo shoot with Gillette slyly photographing various ridiculous men. Daniel Zirilli directed it. He's done other videos, notably for Montell Jordan, as well as many films with varying budgets and receptions.
• Gillette performed "Short Dick Man" on Brazil's Xuxa Hits, a short-lived (January 8 to April 16, 1995) companion to the longer-lasting children's music show Xuxa Park (1994 – 2001). Yes, we said "children's" music show. She didn't do the "short short man" lyrics, either. She used the D word.
• The song wasn't always appreciated in the house-music scene of which it was, at least theoretically, a part. In a 1995 i-D piece titled "My Kind Of town: The History of Chicago House," journalist Frank Broughton lamented, "With a near-dead club-scene and a musical landscape dominated by the ugly commercial 'sucky-f--ky' tracks epitomized by 'Short Dick Man,' Chicago has little space for innovative house-inspired techno."