Giantess
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A giantess is a female giant. The term may refer either a mythical being resembling a woman of superhuman size and strength or a human woman of exceptional stature, often the result of some medical or genetic abnormality (see gigantism).
In Lewis Carroll's story Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, there are several scenes where the heroine Alice grows to gigantic size by means of eating something (like a cake or a mushroom). Similarly Arthur C. Clarke's story Cosmic Casanova describes an astronaut's revulsion at discovering that an extraterrestrial female he adored on a video screen is in fact thirty feet tall.
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Modern fictional giantesses
Comic book art
Size-changing heroines have appeared in such comics as Doom Patrol, Mighty Avengers, Marvel Adventures Avengers, 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. Conversely, size-changing villainesses, such as Wonder Woman foe Giganta, use their strength and beauty for less altruistic purposes as a weapon to dominate their foes. Giantesses are also common in the Manga/Anime mediums of Japan such as Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm , when Sakura's ultimate jutsu makes a gigantic form of herself and smashes down on her opponents.
Motion pictures
The giantess theme has also appeared in motion pictures, often as a metaphor for female empowerment or played for absurd humor. The 1958 B-movie Attack of the 50 Foot Woman formed part of a series of size-changing films of the era which also included The Incredible Shrinking Man and Village of the Giants. The 1993 remake of Attack of the 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 the central theme was feminist. The heroine Nancy, formerly a cipher 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.
More recent movies with giantess themes are the 2000 film Malèna, the 2001 movie Dude, Where's My Car?, the 2002 Hable con ella a.k.a. Talk to Her, and 2009's Monsters vs. Aliens. In Malèna, there is a scene where the young protagonist, Renato Amoroso, fantasizes about being a few inches tall and having Monica Bellucci (Malena), pick him up and take him to her bosom. In Dude, Where's My Car?, five nubile female characters morph into an extraterrestrial giantess played by Jodi Ann Paterson (Playboy Playmate of the Year 2000). Talk to Her features a sequence in the style of early silent cinema called 'The Shrinking Lover,' where an accidentally shrunken scientist is rescued from his mother's clutches by his lover, who carries him home in her handbag. The shrunken scientist then roams his lover's body while she lies in bed. Monsters vs. Aliens features a satirization of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman in which the main protagonist, Susan Murphy, is clobbered by a radioactive meteor that causes her to grow up to 49 feet, 11½ inches, becoming Ginormica.
Outside of Hollywood, giantesses have also appeared in special interest films. AC Comics giantess Garganta is featured in a live action DVD movie available from accomics.com entitled Gargantarama, which also includes giantess scenes from many movies as well as the feature length 1958 B-movie Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Embracing the use of the giantess in popular culture, AC has made it a frequently recurring theme in their products.
Giantesses have also appeared in advertisement campaigns, with similar erotic/humorous intent. In 2003, a commercial for the Italian company Puma featured the theme. The giantess, played by model/actress Valentina Biancospino, stomps around town causing havoc and swallowing a man whole before finally picking up a man (played by Italian footballer Gianluigi Buffon) and kissing him. The following year, Lee Dungarees commercials used the giantess theme alongside the slogan "Whatever Happens, Don't Flinch," hiring model Natalia Adarvez to play a 90 foot tall giantess. Also that same year, Victoria Silvstedt (1997 Playboy Playmate of the Year) posed as a giantess for an advertisement for Max Power London, a car show held in London in November 2004. In the February 12th, 2005 edition of the UK newspaper, The Sun, Miss Silvstedt again posed as a giantess of Godzilla height next to various London landmarks.
The giantess theme occasionally manifests in music videos as well, notably Pamela Anderson's role as a giantess in the video Miserable for the rock group Lit. In the video, the band members perform on Anderson's body and are eventually eaten alive by her at the end, a metaphor for the notion of a woman as "maneater."
Adult art and literature
Given that macrophilia is a paraphilia, it is unsurprising that there is a wide assortment of adult art and literature devoted to the fantasy of giant women. Often, artists will produce collages, in which an image of a woman is placed into an image of a cityscape of differing scale, or an image of one or more small men is inserted into another image of normal scale. Additionally, drawings have been produced, as well as works of erotica and even some pornographic movies. As in the examples of the giantess theme in popular culture, the macrophiliac interest in the concept is influenced by notions of female empowerment, eroticism, femdom, and the idea of feminine beauty on an exaggerated scale, and can be related to sadomasochism.
See also
