Giantess
A giantess is a female giant. The word has at least two 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 (d.1922) who grew to a height of 7'7".
- A giganta, a several-meters-tall figure representing a woman. It is carried by a strong man in street festivals in Spain.
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Giantesses are worthy of separate discussion from male giants for a number of reasons. To begin with, although Classical and Norse mythologies contain many references to giantesses, very little information is given about them. (This is in sharp contrast to the detailed stories of male giants such as the Utgardaloki in the Eddas). This may be because of the patriarchal nature of these societies, which was opposed to the idea of female empowerment.
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 "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.
The giantess appears occasionally in later European literature. Charles Baudelaire, in his poetic cycle "Les Fleurs du Mal" (1861) presents the giant woman as a powerfully erotic symbol:
Mythical being
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 30ft. tall.
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 Fremont and Garganta (Dr. Carol Heisler) 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.
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. The 1993 remake of this movie, (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.
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."
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 portor 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 founder king and queen.
