Giantess
From Freepedia
A giantess is a female giant. The word has at least three interpretations:
- A mythical being, resembling a woman of superhuman size and strength.
- A human woman of exceptional stature, often the result of some medical or genetic abnormality. A typical example was Jane Bunford (died 1922) who grew to a height of 7 ft 7 in (2.31 m).
- A giganta, a figure several metres tall representing a woman. It is carried by a strong man in street festivals in Spain.
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Mythical giantesses
Greek mythology
Giantesses are worthy of separate discussion from male giants for a number of reasons. To begin with, although Classical mythology contain many references to giantesses, very little information is given about them. (This is in sharp contrast to the detailed stories of male giants). This may be because of the patriarchal nature of these societies, which was opposed to the idea of female empowerment.
Norse mythology
In Viking society, women had a more prominent position, and this is reflected in Norse mythology, where giantesses influence the course of events and make demands.
Grid was a giantess who saved Thor's life. She was aware of Loki's plans to get Thor killed at the hands of the giant Geirrod and sets out to help him by supplying him with a number of magical gifts. These gifts were: a girdle of might, a pair of magical iron gloves, and a magical wand.
The giantess Gerd was very beautiful and her brilliant, naked arms illuminated air and sea. Freyr fell in love at first sight and the account of her wooing is given in the poem Skirnismál. She never wanted to marry Freyr, refused his proposals (delivered through Skirnir, his messenger) even after bringing her eleven golden apples and Draupnir. Skirnir finally threatened to use Freyr's sword to cover the earth in ice and she agreed to marry Freyr. She became the mother of the early Swedish king Fjölnir.
Skadi journeyed to Ásgard to avenge her father Thjazi, whom the gods had killed. She agreed that she would have that renounced if they allowed her to choose a husband among them and if they succeeded in making her laugh. The gods allowed her to choose a husband, but she had to choose him only from his feet; she choose Njord because his feet were so beautiful that she thought he was Baldr. Then Loki succeeded in making her laugh, so peace was made, and Odin made two stars from Thjazi's eyes.
After a while, she and her husband separated, because she loved the mountains (Thrymheim), while he wanted to live near the sea (Noatun). The Ynglinga saga says that later she became wife of Odin, and had many sons by him.
At Baldr's funeral, his burning ship was set to sea by Hyrrokin, a giantess, who came riding on a wolf and gave the ship such a push that fire flashed from the rollers and all the earth shook.
Upon Frigg's entreaties, delivered through the messenger Hermod, Hel promised to release Baldr from the underworld if all objects alive and dead would weep for him. And all did, except a giantess, Thokk, who refused to mourn the slain god. And thus Baldr had to remain in the underworld, not to emerge until after Ragnarok, when he and his brother Hod would be reconciled and rule the new earth together with Thor's sons.
Eastern mythology
Giantesses are fairly common in Indian mythology. The demoness Putana (who attempted to kill the baby Krishna with poisoned milk from her breasts) is usually drawn as a giantess.
Medieval European literature
A notable example of the depiction of giantesses in art and literature arose in the medieval period. In her book Scivias, St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) used the giantess as a representation of "Ecclesia", the Church as the Bride of Christ. As Hildegard is often seen as an early leader of the Feminist movement, the emergence of the giantess symbol may not be coincidental.
Later European literature
The giantess appears occasionally in more recent European literature. Charles Baudelaire, in his poetic cycle Les Fleurs du Mal (1861) presents the giant woman as a powerfully erotic symbol:
- Once, when Nature's overpowering vigorousness
- Conceived each day children this monstrous
- I would love to have lived with a young giantess
- Around her feet like a cat to a queen voluptuous.
- Would love to have seen the spirit that grew out of her
- Distending as she played her terrible game
- From the damp mist that swam in her eyes to wonder
- If her sullen heart would catch into flames.
In contrast to this, A Voyage to Brobdingnag, the second part of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), describes the hero's revulsion at the female form enlarged to gigantic proportions. This view of the giantess as an anerotic symbol persisted into the 20th Century: C. S. Lewis's short story The Shoddy Lands describes a journey through the mindscape of the "modern woman". The woman herself appears giant-sized and subsequently (in Lewis' view) repulsive; obsessed with her own beauty, she has become oblivious to the way that beauty is perceived by its intended admirers, i.e., men. Similarly Arthur C. Clarke's story Cosmic Casanova describes an astronaut's revulsion at discovering that an extra-terrestrial female he adored on a video screen is in fact thirty feet tall.
Comic book art
But the giantess motif is not always anerotic. The growing popularity of female empowerment is reflected in emergence of powerful comic book heroines. Traditionally, female superheroes have been less well accepted than their male counterparts and have often been limited to supporting roles (the most notable exception was Wonder Woman who appeared as early as 1942). This, however, has changed in recent decades, and the powerful females have gained ever-greater acceptance even among male readers. Size-changing heroines have appeared in such comics as Doom Patrol, Team Youngblood, and Femforce. In the latter series, the giantess-superheroines Tara and Garganta combine immense size and strength with beauty and femininity, and have a cult following among both men and women. Giantesses are even more common in the Manga/Anime comic-book genres of Japan.Motion pictures
A few motion pictures are also worth mentioning. The 1958 B-movie Attack of the 50 Foot Woman formed part of a series of size-changing films which also included The Incredible Shrinking Man and Village of the Giants. The 1993 remake of 50 Foot Woman, starring Daryl Hannah in the title role, was advertised as a comedy; many scenes did parody earlier size-changing movies (most notably The Amazing Colossal Man), although central theme was feminist. The heroine Nancy, formerly a cypher to her domineering father and husband, is empowered by her new-found size and starts to take control of her destiny, and encourages other women to do the same. Both versions of the movie enjoy a cult following.
Adult art and literature
Paraphiliac fantasies of being crushed by giantesses are a frequently recorded, but unusual, sexual fantasy, that is common enough to support a sub-genre of "trampling pornography". Other fantasies involve a normal-sized man having sexual relations with, or merely being in the presence of a giantess. This kind of fantasy is often referred to as GTS (a contraction of "giantess"), though this term also covers situations in which the woman is normal-sized and the man shrunken. It is regarded as a sub-species of macrophilia, or the sexual attraction to gigantic beings (human or animal). A great many Internet websites are devoted to this topic.
Spanish street festivals
In Spanish festivals, it is common to find a procession of gigantes y cabezudos ("giants and big-heads"). The giants are hollow figures several-meters tall depicting the upper part of a person and having a skirt. The skirt covers a strong man that carries a harness linked to the internal structure. The porter turns and shakes the giant to the tune of a marching band. Giants usually parade in couples of gigante and giganta. Rich towns have more than one couple. The figures usually depict archetypes of the town, such as the bourgeois and the peasant woman, or historical figures of local relevance, such as the founding king and queen.
