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 * Cleanup & Unreferenced|date=October 2006

A giantess is a female giant, a mythical being of superhuman size and strength.

Greek mythology
Titanides... but not so much Gigantes... The Titanides may not have originally been seen as giants, but later Hellenistic poets and Latin ones tended to blur Titans and Giants, ((providing the modern meaning of the word.))

Norse mythology
Jotan...

Grid
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.

Gerd
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, and refused his proposals (delivered through Skirnir, his messenger) even after he brought 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 mythic Swedish king Fjölnir.

Skaði
Skaði journeyed to Ásgard to avenge her father Þjazi, 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 Þjazi's eyes.

After a while, she and her husband separated, because she loved the mountains (Þrymheimr), 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.

Hyrrokin
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.

Thokk
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.

Hinduism
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. (but is she one? seriously, you guys)

Celtic mythology
Giantesses are common in the folklore of the British Isles, particularly Scotland, Ireland and Wales. They were often depicted as loving and beautiful people and, in later versions of myths, seemed to resemble Vikings, who had raided the coasts, in appearance. A notable giantesses in Irish mythology is Bébinn.

Medieval European literature
In her book Scivias, St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) painted an allegory of the Church ("Ecclesia") as the Bride of Christ. Ecclesia is depicted as a giantess carrying the faithful upon her breast. (meh. this is typical post-Roman colossalism. it should go.)

Modern arts
The giantess appears occasionally in more recent European literature. ((Farce, grotesque, eroticism, body consciousness/psychology))

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, however he does have some intimate relationships with giant maids of honor.

English dramatist Henry Fielding's 1731 farce, The Tragedy of Tragedies, or the History of Tom Thumb the Great included a giantess, Huncamunca, "...Thy pouting breasts, like kettle-drums of brass beat everlasting loud alarms of joy, As bright as brass they are, and oh! as hard..." ((though maybe the Shakespeare misquote is better example of farce))

Charles Baudelaire, in his poetic cycle Les Fleurs du mal (1861) presents the giant woman as an 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.

The plot of H.G. Wells' The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth (1904) centers around the discovery of a substance that causes any creature who eats it to grow to colossal size. One character so affected is a princess; her love for a fellow new giant, born a commoner, allows Wells to make a socialist statement about class and equality.

C. S. Lewis's short story "The Shoddy Lands" ((May have some use as an example of grotesque perception, but Lewis' "protagonist's" horror at tan lines is no greater than his disgust at Peggy's fantasy size. Not really about giantesses.))

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. ((Miss the man, but this entry is likely more cruft. I'll try to look up the story, though.))

J. K. Rowling in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Olympe Maxime ((Hagrid's love - a good example of the giantess as seen from the woman's perspective of body consciousness - may be hard to cite, but maybe not: sooo much "Potter studies" out there... ))

Comics
Size-changing heroines have appeared in such comics as Doom Patrol, Mighty Avengers, Marvel Adventures Avengers, Team Youngblood, and Femforce. ((metamorphosis needs to be a distinct set, or part of a distinct set. Unless that's too ORish))

giantess-superheroines Tara and AC Comics' Garganta ((exist and require more than gushy cruft to stay in the encyclopedia.))

size-changing villainesses, such as Wonder Woman foe Giganta,

Giantesses are also common in the Manga/Anime mediums of Japan.

(R. Crumb? This all needs context, lest cruft win the day...)

Motion pictures
The cinema allowed for a revisiting upon giant themes, because of special effects (more)......

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.

In Dude, Where's My Car? (2001), five women merge to become a vengeful extraterrestrial giantess. 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 whilst she lies in bed. ((Well yay.))

Giantess themes have appeared in advertisements and 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 devoured by her at the end, a metaphor for the notion of a woman as "maneater." ((And what could be more subtle a metaphor than Pam Anderson. She's barely a "notion". Jeezus.))

Macrophilia
Macrophilia is a paraphilia, devoted to the sexual fantasy towards giants, primarily giant women. Variants include metamorphic fantasies; the diminution of men so that average-sized women appear relatively huge, or more commonly, ordinary women growing to giant size.

Humorist David Sedaris wrote an essay called "Giantess", reprinted in Barrel Fever (1994), about writing for a magazine specializing in erotic stories about giant women and the particular attention that must be paid to the transformation and tearing of clothes.

Spanish street festivals
In Spanish festivals, it is common to find a procession of gigantes y cabezudos ("giants and big-heads"). These giants are hollow figures, several meters tall, depicting the upper half of the giant with a skirt trailing below. The skirt covers a person who carries the figure on a harness linked to the internal structure, and who acts as a kind of puppeteer, allowing the giant to react to the music and events of the festival.

These giants usually parade in couples of gigante and giganta. 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.