zHEIGHTgeist

You’re reading peacefully in the food court of an open-air mall. The sky is blue, the air carries the smoke of grilled food, pleasing to the gods, and you found a reasonably clean table to park at and mind your business. You’re making good time with your book, concluding a chapter and deciding you have time for a second, but you set it down for a moment to stretch your neck. Your firecracker shrimp and fried rice are long gone, but your cup of soda is still cold and bubbling. You draw a long swig through the bendy straw, picking up on a thick, sweet flavor like unmixed syrup … then you recall that you didn’t order a soda. So where’d it come from, and why’d you just put it into your mouth? As your molded plastic seat expands in all directions and your clothes enlarge and collapse around your shrinking body, you look up into the shadowy form of your grinning ex, looming over you, reaching for you, chuckling over your inattentive nature.

Welcome to the show! It’s funny, as I elaborate on the various areas of macrophilia, I’m educating myself as much as anyone else. I started with the stuff I knew, went into the stuff I kinda knew, and now I’m deep into someone else’s territory, that of gigantic men and tiny women. It’s totally reasonable that that every interest must have a flip-side: I’m into giant women, so others must necessarily be into giant men. They don’t do anything for me: if I saw a giant man I’d probably pack up some essentials and drive as quickly out of the city as possible. The only reason I would ever approach a giant man and try to talk to him would be to ask if he comes from somewhere there are giantesses.

And if I want to be a tiny man, there must necessarily be women who also wish to be so shrunken. Again, if I encountered a tiny woman, I wouldn’t know what to do with her but try to protect her. I’d set up a shoebox with food, furniture, supplies, and then I’d put out notice on my Size networks that I’ve obtained a tiny woman, does anyone want her. I would be so terrified of accidentally hurting her, I don’t even think I could dip my toe into sexy funtimes with her. I’d keep her in a cage and try to entertain her while I found a more suitable custodian, to be fair to her.

So to learn more about this aspect of Size Fantasy, I reached out to the message board Daddy’s Dollhouse, I’ve mentioned them before. I set up a questionnaire, politely introduced myself, and asked volunteers to please answer some questions about their interests. And you know what? Their answers were just like mine. I don’t think I could have reasonably expected anything else. As a tiny man, I have a lot in common with shrunken women (I believe “shrunken” is the preferred adjective, and SW is the common abbreviation). By and large, we want the same things. Perhaps it stands to reason, but if I would’ve been tasked to guess why a woman would want to be tiny and what she’d want to happen to her while she was tiny, I think I would only have guessed about 40% of the reasons I found when I asked.

You want to hear about this? I know some people do.

My questionnaire was targeted at giant men and shrunken women, to start with. Then I was really curious as to whether there were normal-sized women who fantasized about giant men. You’ll recall Dr Helen Friedman, quoted in that Salon article “Urge: A Giant Fetish” back in 1999. She’s a clinical psychologist in St. Louis, MO, who holds some very limited opinions on sexual fantasy and relationships. Germane to this episode, she suggested, “We live in a patriarchal culture. Women already see men as larger and more powerful. They don’t need to fantasize it.” This simplistic view couldn’t have come from client experience. Seventeen people answered my questionnaire, and a third of these respondents were tiny women or women attracted to giants. That’s not zero, whatever Dr Friedman thinks, so we’ll toss her opinion into compost and learn what people said.

There was a lot of overlap in inspirational media, something people saw that helped them identify this urge inside them. Many people cited the 1992 independent animated musical FernGully: The Last Rainforest, based on the FernGully stories by Diana Young. In it, a fairy living in an Australian rainforest accidentally shrinks a human logger down, and he learns about environmental concerns as the adventure unfolds. One shrunken woman, Chloe, cited the scene where the logger, Zak, catches the fairy Crysta in his hand. It was that moment, seeing him speak to a tiny woman held in his palm, that spoke to her and others.

Likewise, Arrietty, also known as Arrietty the Borrower or The Secret World of Arrietty, was also a common answer. This 2010 anime film by Studio Ghibli (pron. jibbly or chibbuly) based on Mary Norton’s 1952 novel The Borrowers, centered on a family of tiny people who secretly live in the structures of larger, normal-sized people. The shrunken women who responded related with the tiny women, who got plenty of screen time and attention, providing great material for anyone with this fantasy. After this, Peter Pan and its 1991 reboot Hook came up. Tiny woman Skysayl called this out for giving Tinkerbell a speaking part, at long last. The educational kids’ show The Magic School Bus came up frequently, with all of its shrinking scenes as the free-spirit Ms Frizzle guided her young wards into ears, nostrils, and human cavities, among other adventures.

Let me pause and say I hope I don’t make anyone uncomfortable by using their names or handles. I gave people the option of responding anonymously, so I would guess that providing a name brings permission to use it. I hope this isn’t my error.

How small do these shrunken women like to be? Well, in talking with the Daddy’s Dollhouse community, I became familiar with the “1:12” radio, which hadn’t been in my terminology before. As I understand it, it’s a scale of miniature that represents one inch for every twelve inches. If you have a two-foot-tall stool in real life, it would be a two-inch-tall stool in a miniature setting. I’m six feet tall, so a 1:12 scale version of me would be six inches tall, and that’s about twice as tall as I like to be. One woman said she likes to be about the size of her man’s finger, but she could be shrunk by him to micro sizes, turning him into a vast playground for her. Another pictured herself between one and six inches tall, as long as she could fit into a man’s hands. Yet another placed herself at four inches tall, with the option to grow or shrink in order to deal with situations, but shorter than one inch was an uncomfortable idea.

It’s important for me to note that being a shrunken woman is not necessarily a sexual experience, but it’s also not-not. A lot of the time, it has to do with being vulnerable, and feeling safe enough to experience vulnerability. Tiny women relish curling up in a broad, warm palm or being toted around in a pocket, kept close to a giant body like a possession. Some women said they found the shrunken state to be a source of comfort, that the condition of falling outside of notice made them feel safer. You could get that effect out of turning invisible, but then you would lose the fantastic aspect of gigantic furniture, seeing a cavernous room spreading so far around you, and then the one gigantic man who can scoop you up and shelter you with his body, lift you away from your concerns, hold you when you’re weary. One woman suggested that her origin story came about as a defense mechanism, creating a safe place for herself, which eventually translated into her Size interests.

The giant partner exists in a flux state between protector and darker sexual tones. Some only want the big strong man who will take care of them, someone they can collapse into when life gets overwhelming. But some shrunken women said they savored that ever-present threat that they were in the possession of someone who is completely in control. The user Miss-Lillipants brought this up—she doesn’t see herself as a tiny woman, she’s attracted to giant men and enjoys growth content. She recognized the persistent risk that she would be at the mercy of a much larger being, of course—the threat of being overpowered is always there with giant men, but at least in her fantasies she’s with someone she can trust.

I suppose that’s like wanting to cuddle a lion, and the lion knows you and likes you and it’s well-fed and all its needs are met, but even as you’re digging into that flesh and all that fur, there’s still the persistent note in the back of your head that it could easily catch your head in its jaws and sever your neck with a bite. It doesn’t, it’s not going to, but in the midst of cuddling you can’t help thinking of that, and the fact that it could is exciting. Or maybe it’s nothing like that at all. When I think about myself in the possession of a giant woman, in my fantasies, I guess I don’t think about the fact that she could pop my head off with her thumbnail like a dandelion. The risk in my daydreams is that she would suddenly grab me and use me for her carnal pleasure—which of course I would want, though the fantasy necessitates that I pretend to be outraged and violated.

And that’s the same with shrunken women and their sexual fantasies. Some just want a giant man for comfort, protection, and an atmosphere of trust. Some women get a thrill out of simply watching a man grow to incredible dimensions, especially if he seems to be enjoying it. And then some tiny women want to lose control, to have control taken away from them, to be used as a sex toy however the man can imagine doing so. To have sex forced upon them, as I’ve often said about my own fantasies. To be weak and powerless as a desirable partner toys with us however they wish, to be used for someone else’s pleasure is a common sexual fantasy, regardless of the dynamics of scale. It just happens that Size Fantasy lends itself very, very well to this end, without the need for straps or handcuffs.

I am surprised that no one mentioned Lily Tomlin in The Incredible Shrinking Woman. There were a couple scenes in that movie that might have redirected my path, if I’d seen it before Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. However, my reference is very old, but as it happens there’s a very recent shrunken woman reference that runs unquestionably sexual. That would be Gen V, the spinoff from The Boys, a gleefully violent take on superpowers and antiheroes. The Boys was already famous in the Size community for the scene where a tiny man takes a running leap into a woman’s vagina at a bar, and then when a shrunken man crawls into the urethra of his lover’s penis. Gen V presented Emma Meyer, a woman who can grow or shrink by binge-eating or triggering her gag reflex (or so we think). I remember my thrill at seeing her waking up after a raucous party, floating in a pool and filling that pool with her gigantic body, even the blurry phone videos of a naked giantess slamming a keg, towering over college students. But then viewers got to see this tiny woman embracing and working a man’s erection, and… who could have guessed we’d see anything like that in our lifetimes? Especially by a studio with a budget. It definitely spoke to some of the shrunken women taking my questionnaire, not to mention the men who fetishize them, but more on that later.

I was lucky to hear from a couple giant men. It’s too bad I built this questionnaire, or even this podcast, so long after the heyday of Twitter. I think the SizeTwitter community would have provided a plethora of responses: as it is, only two men identified as giants, one of these being only a little larger than a regular person. I’m reminded of Travis Tritt’s “Ten Feet Tall and Bulletproof,” but without so much whiskey. The other saw himself between fifty and eighty feet tall, or even taller. But if he was in a context where giants did not exist, he’d be perfectly fine playing with tiny people. To be a giant, they report, is to be in control. This is both a response to a chaotic world and a desire to influence and dictate what tiny people will feel, during an interaction, not only to be overwhelming but to see and enjoy the effect one has on littler people. One of our giants said he found satisfaction in a tiny person’s transition from terror to learning to feel comfortable and to trust him, that this transition could be very comforting for him in fact.

Fully half of the responses were not from giant men or tiny women, but normal-sized men who appreciate tiny women. One thing these people have in common with giant men is that they’d like it known their interests aren’t misogynistic or power-tripping. They recognize this is a common misconception from outsiders. I can say from personal experience, meeting them at SizeCon, I never got the impression that their interest in shrunken women was cruel or mean-spirited, like a latent desire to put women in their place or a craving to keep another person helpless. It was always affectionate, it was always a kind of fascination, wanting to hold something beautiful in one’s hands, a wide protective streak, things like that. During the Size Riot writing contest, the stories I received about tiny women centered on love and protection, an abundance of care, wanting to help and support a tiny woman while prizing their fine features as well as their vulnerability.

The inspiration for the shrunken woman fetish, as reported in this questionnaire, shares a lot with the answers from the other folks, just looking through the other end of the microscope. People found their whiff of familiarity in the Honey I Shrank the Kids franchise, in The Magic School Bus and The Littles series. Giants, the women who love them, and the fans of shrunken women all cited King Kong, with forced perspective and green screen portraying the gigantic grasp around a wilting damsel. One of the giants said he was likely inspired by the toys he played with, growing up, and one of the shrunken women lovers cited scale models and dioramas as keying into his interests. Likewise, many TV shows both old (I Dream of Jeannie, Dr Shrinker, Land of the Giants) and new (Wizards of Waverly Place, Strange Days at Blake Holsey High) had episodes that featured characters getting shrunk for an episode or the series with lots of risky situations and interactions with larger people.

Not for everyone is this a sexual scenario, having a tiny woman in one’s possession, but some respondents said it played a part, to one degree or another. Only one person admitted to relishing absolute control over a tiny woman in this way, as honest a confession as a tiny woman insisting she wants to be taken advantage of. Others said, if they had a tiny woman, they might flirt with control and dominance in a light-hearted way. Still others hoped for as consensual a relationship as a same-size coupling would operate under. One respondent, mreddie, described a fantasy in which the tiny woman actually tries to control him, however she may. This sounds like an intriguing dynamic, and along this line I’ll direct listeners to consult the show notes for a link to Manuel Gonzales’s short story “The Miniature Wife.”

For that matter, I’m a little sorry I didn’t forward this questionnaire to one of my writing compatriots, Syrus Durham. I’m sure he would have had a lot to say on this topic. I’ll link to his DeviantArt account, so you can read his incredible oeuvre of loving shrunken women, and you can find his works for sale on Amazon. Unfortunately, I won’t provide any links to Amazon, but he’s easy to find.

When I asked everyone when they first realized this interest of theirs, whether it was being a giant man or a tiny woman or admiring either, most people mentioned childhood, a few said it emerged in their teenage years. Sometimes they knew what it was and accepted it unquestioningly, and sometimes it was a mystery they carried around until it was clarified during puberty. Often it was still much later before they realized they weren’t the only one with their interests. About half the people have only been able to discuss this with their peers in the Size community. Others have made a practice of being open about their interests, whether to whomever they were dating or even talking about it with friends. None of these people reported a negative situation, where they were shamed for their interests. Some said their friends might tease them about it, but warmly, and others said they didn’t get much of a reaction, but they all felt accepted. If you’re on the fence about sharing this aspect of yourself with people you know and trust, I hope this is an encouraging message.

If anything, any conflict came from within the Size community, which historically has been dominated by the male gaze, discouraging women from participating. As some people tend to believe their interests are the common interests, the community of giantesses and tiny men may not have been as welcoming and inclusive to tiny women, giant men, and the people who love them, as it should have been. The user foreverlurk, someone who enjoys shrunken women, brought up that he’d received some flack on DeviantArt by people demanding that he create giantess work, outside of his realm of interest. And his sense of feeling unwelcome at Giantess City is sadly too common; women, whether giant or tiny, often report really ugly accounts of harassment and abuse. The moderators do their best to foster an open environment, but the user base is large and uncontrollable, unwilling or unable to self-moderate.

Necessarily, alternative communities have had to form and reinforce themselves, places like Daddy’s Dollhouse for giant men and tiny women, Coiled Fist for giant and tiny men, Eka’s Portal for vore and Furries, and others. It’s unfortunate that we can’t all sit in a room together, but at the same time, I don’t think it’s awful that we have more websites and more communities finding each other and building each other up. Like, is it better to have one mega-apartment complex, or to cover the land in houses and smaller buildings? Well, gods know I’m the last person to know what the answer is, and my answer isn’t likely anyone else’s.

The only way around that is to talk to as many different people as possible, and so I really want to express my gratitude for the lovely people at Daddy’s Dollhouse for opening their door to me. One of my favorite things about hearing your perspectives was learning how deeply you’ve thought about your world-building and stories. It’s not just a fetish: it’s an entire creative concept into which you’ve invested so much imagination and emotion, the hows and whys of your preferred sizes, the depths and conditions of your relationships. It was fascinating and encouraging to hear from you, and I hope I represented you well to anyone from the outside listening to this show. Feel free to comment on the zHeightgeist website, on Spotify, or even to email me directly.

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Questionnaire

It’s time again for the questionnaire—how’d you get into Size and what’s it mean to you—and this week it’s answered by my good friend Solomon G, he/him. Let me tell you, Solo is a powerhouse of essential Size content. When you’re done looking for the easy rub and free porn and you want to delve into the more thoughtful aspects of Size Fantasy, you’re going to find yourself spending time at his website. His writing is split between substantial interviews of a great range of content creators, and media reviews of books, comics, movies, anime, and anything that contains Size content. Not only that, he’s a fantastic Size Fantasy writer, so find his link in the show notes and treat yourself.

SolomonG describes himself as primarily a fan of Size Fantasy going back to the ’90s. He pours one out for Acotto’s FTP site: IYKYK. The site was focused on breast-expansion, but it was his first induction into mature GTS media, as he puts it. After this he became a reviewer and writer of Size Erotica. He has a broad Size appetite, but if he were forced to pick only one scenario, he would be at normal height, just under six-foot, with the traditional 50-foot woman. But he wants it known there are many other Size scenarios he would be unhappy to lose.

Hello, everyone, I’m SolomonG. I first became interested in Size Fantasy during the early 1990s. It’s difficult to recall how I first acquire d this love for growing women. While I can’t remember the particulars of how the fantasy began, I do recognize that the growing is vital. Let’s never skip the clothes-bursting and building-destroying process by which a normal person becomes a giant. That’s a key component of my fantasy, and it’s a disappointment when the giantess merely appears without a preceding transformation.

Also, if I may, the word “giantess” should never be used in scenarios when the woman is regular-size and the man is shrunk. “Tiny man,” “tiny woman,” or “tiny person” should be used instead. You wouldn’t call a woman super-strong just because her partner was tiny and weak, so please do not clog up search engines with misleading descriptions.

As far as what does Size Fantasy mean to me, it gives me the chance to exercise unparalleled creativity in the bedroom. It’s fun to imagine new scenarios via the lens of macrophilia and explore shifts in power dynamics.

Episode Links

• Daddy’s Dollhouse
• Manuel Gonzales, “The Miniature Wife“
• Syrus Durham (Scidram) – DeviantArt
• SolomonG: ThereSheGrows