Exploring the “most searched fetish of 2023” through the eyes of people who have lived it.
My doomscrolling habit has led me to multiple corners of the internet where I never consciously decided to be. I have visited steaming glassblowing hot shops, looked in on raucous tractor auctions, been subjected to intense slime ASMR, and now, for better or worse, I have been virtually stepped on by a giant woman.
The latter was most definitely a thumb-stopper, and before I could gather my thoughts and comprehend what had just happened, the video repeated, and the video creator, SwedishGiantess, stomped on me again.
Let me explain: the video was taken from a low angle, recording device on the floor, to give the appearance that the creator was looming over the viewer.
As the creator moved forward, her foot hovered above the camera and came down over the lens. Basically, SwedishGiantess was playing with perspective to ‘crush’ those of us watching under her feet.
Curious as to what the actual fuck I had just witnessed, I did what any sensible person would do – I read the comments.
Oh. I wasn’t expecting that.
The comment section was filled with horny TikTok users who were apparently finding this content incredibly arousing: “Oh, to be in your shoes under those socks as you work out… the dream,” one user commented, while another simply said, “step on me.”
The deluge of compliments and sexually charged comments was unexpected to say the least. I was taken aback, shocked, and a little uncomfortable; so, again, I did what any sane person would do – I clicked the first hashtag below the video: #giantess. Before I knew it, I was neck deep in the home of the big and small.
Why giants?
Size fetishes, also referred to as macrophilia and microphilia, refer to a fascination with or a sexual fantasy involving giants or shrunken people. There are many nuances within the fetishes, as well as links to other kinks such as foot fetishes and vore fetishes (being ‘eaten’).
It is important to note that although SwedishGiantess had indeed pulled an Aladdin and introduced me to a “whole new world,” size fetishes are not novel to everyone. In fact, according to research done by Clips4Sale, an online kink and fetish content distributor, the giantess kink was the most searched fetish of 2023.
So, it turns out size kinks are not that niche – and they are also not new.
As a layman in the world of size fetishes, I was desperate to find out why the horny TikTok users were so attracted to the idea of giants.
I spoke to Dr Joe Kort, a board-certified clinical sexologist and clinical director and founder of The Center for Relationship and Sexual Health in Michigan.
“A lot of our erotic interests come from childhood”, he said, “so a lot of people will tell me ‘oh yeah, I watched Land of the Giants, and I liked it so much and when I became prepubescent, I started getting turned on by people who are giant and me being small.’”
During my research, I spoke to a lot of people who engage with size content. One 25-year-old male, John G, had the exact experience that Dr Kort described.
“Growing up I always had a fixation on it. Movies like Thumbelina and Fern Gully, made me quite intrigued with the concept as a little kid, and then when puberty hit, I found an erotic story someone wrote and I was fixated on it.”
Dr Kort confirmed, “it definitely has a childhood thread, some clients say they had a really big, ever-present mother or father, and they always felt so much smaller than them, so sometimes that pain turns into pleasure by your unconscious eroticising it.”
One anonymous source who enjoys roleplaying as a giant confirmed Dr Kort’s observations. He told me that he and other size fetishists he knows were “usually dominated non-sexually by women with authority from an early age.”
It seems that the initial seeds of these fetishes tend to be planted early, with childhood experiences strongly influencing interests in size fetishes.
The untold tale of tinies
Even though I had now developed an understanding of the psychology behind size fetishes, I had more questions. So, I ventured bravely into the labyrinth of Reddit to find at least one person who engages with this fetish.
To my surprise, I found a whole community.
Within hours of posting on the group I had more than 10,000 views and comments flooding in. The first thing I noticed was the welcoming nature of the members; each one answered the questions I asked with care and openness, eager to share their experience with size fetishes.
“Pain turns into pleasure by your unconscious eroticising it.”
DR Joe Kort
Although Dr Kort had noted that it is “mainly men” who tend to engage with size fetishes, it became clear to me that all genders, ages, and sexual orientations are a part of the size fetish community. And not everyone is into the same giantess fantasy that gained media attention in 2023.
“Giantesses are just a subset of size kinks,” says 34-year-old Justin Bailey. He describes himself as a ‘tiny’, which I came to learn is the colloquial name for those with size fetishes that relate to being incredibly small or shrunken in comparison to their surroundings.
Justin says that size kinks “involve every combination of size and gender. There’s always someone who’s into some combination of it.”
“Giantess is often used as short hand term for this kink which, honestly, sucks,” says Tad, a 36-year-old who enjoys roleplaying as both a giant and tiny. “It’s a size kink, not a giantess kink.”
Similarly, one helpful ‘giant’ gave me some advice to widen my comprehension, “learn about the other size kinks than just ‘the giantess fantasy,” they said, “there are a lot of variations, it’s not a monolith, and some of us like the complete opposite: shrunken women.”
So, I did just that. I chatted to several ‘tinies’ who felt underrepresented, all of whom were forthcoming about their fetish. One such ‘tiny’, who prefers to go by the name F-Man223, is a 23-year-old male who told me about his experience with the kink.
Talking to a tiny
Before chatting to F-Man223, I had assumed that being ‘crushed’ by a giant foot, or ‘consumed’ by a giantess were the main ways people preferred to engage with size fetishes.
However, many of the people I spoke to were eager to make the “more gentle side of things” known. “A lot of content does tend to be on the domination or masochistic side of things,” F-Man223 said.
He mentioned that he enjoys seeing a giant and tiny “having more of a romantic/lustful relationship rather than a master/slave relationship.”
We discussed various aspects of his particular size fetish. “I personally prefer the idea of being shrunken so it allows me to see the world and details of certain things more,” F-Man223 said. “It’s combining a fantasy world while also not escaping from reality too much.”
The “fantasy” world that F-Man223 detailed intrigued me. How could something so impossible ever be enacted in ‘real life’?
“Unfortunately, the physical with a partner is extremely difficult, I mean, it’s not like I can physically change our size,” he said. He told me he had engaged with multiple forms of content, even writing his own erotica.
However, he said that “online would be the best way to find content, from pictures, animations, and videos with different camera angles and effects.”
Salem, a 34-year-old ‘switch’ (someone who enjoys roleplaying as both a giant and a tiny) also reflected on this: “While it’s frustrating that this can never be realised in real life, at least there are ways around that,” they said.
“I’ve really gotten into photo editing in the past year; taking full-body pictures of myself or other people (with their consent) and then editing them into a photo to make them look giant or tiny – it’s a lot of fun!”
Another method that size fetishists I spoke to seem to look to is virtual reality. VR has become a huge phenomenon in recent years with 171 million global users.
“I am a full time pro-domme, so I consider Giantess content as a part of my work. I love it.”
Mistress Juniper
Alongside many others, F-Man223 is hoping that VR will soon be able to accommodate size fetishes to make them feel even closer to reality. He says VR “makes the experience much more immersive and captivating,” while Degen, 21-year-old male tiny, said he occasionally engages with “role-play on Discord, sometimes in VRChat.”
VR can simulate an interaction with beings much larger or smaller than oneself in a much more tangible way than playing with the perspective of TikTok or written erotica can manage.
Justin also spoke about Discord’s VRChat, on which people have created “a custom script that allows players to pick each other up. I was absolutely giddy the first time I joined and someone picked me up.”
A tiny who goes by the name of TheVoidCreeper also said that “VR already has the visual aspect down, but I’d love to see further developments.”
The UK will have an expected 78.3% growth rate in spending on AR (augmented reality) and VR from 2019 to 2024; with this level of economic input, who knows what the future of VR holds for size fetishists?
A day in the life of a giantess
I found Mistress Juniper (@juniperwoodsy) while scrolling through the giantess hashtag on TikTok. In her bio, she describes herself as “Dommy Mommy” (“Dommy” meaning dominant), and a lot of her content engages with the giantess fetish.
A quick scan of her profile invites curiosity, I found myself overwhelmed and slightly uncomfortable, yet so intrigued that I had to keep clicking.
I came across a wide variety of content, from close-up videos of her swallowing a miniature plastic doll to barefoot stomping videos. “I run a business as a professional dominatrix,” she told me, “I am a full-time pro-domme, so I consider Giantess content as a part of my work. I love it.”
Juniper was very open about her job, telling me that a typical working day in her life “is chaotic with in-person sessions, consultations, media marketing, content creation, and messaging so many people throughout the day.”
She makes bespoke videos for clients who will pay her to enact their fantasies via perspective play or erotic talk.
Juniper also divulged her camera secrets which help to make the giantess fantasy seem more real, “I use perspective and/or 0.6x lens on my phone for my videos as well as several props like tiny dolls to play with, and tiny jars for the tiny dolls.”
Much like my own experience when I was welcomed warmly to “the home of the big and small”, one thing that Juniper noticed about the size fetish community is how “kind, fun, and creative” the members are.
“I don’t think I’ve ever received any negative or unwelcome engagement,” she said, “this is a large part of why I love giantess content so much.”
The overwhelming positivity and kindness seem to sit in contradiction to the harsher sides of size fetishes. As I scrolled down Juniper’s TikTok profile, I noticed that I was seeing far too much of another human’s uvula than I would normally expect.
“Vore” (full name, Vorarephilia) is a fetish which revolves around the desire to consume, or be consumed by, another person or being (it can also just relate to the eroticisation of the process of eating in general).
Size kinks often overlap with other fetishes and vore/size fetish combinations are common. Male tiny, John. G said, “I think that the size kink is one of those kinks that is easy to overlap with other kinks and thus, gets a lot of attention from both sides.”
Juniper has found this to be true, saying that she estimates her content engagement is “about 70% stomping and 30% vore.”
Thoroughly enlightened by Juniper’s answers, I asked her whether there was anything she wanted people to know about being a giantess. “You don’t have to be six feet tall,” she said, with a wink.
‘The home of the big and small‘
I began my journey into the world of size fetishes by being stomped on somewhat involuntarily by a towering woman and ended it by getting the inside scoop from a practising giantess – it seemed I had come full circle.
At the beginning of my voyage, I was entirely unsure what I was in for, and to be honest, I expected to be completely uncomfortable the whole time. But the people I spoke to along the way welcomed me with open arms and minds.
What I had once considered to be a minute portion of the world was actually a community of hundreds of thousands. Mike, a 26-year-old tiny, even thanked me for writing an article about them and “showing an interest in this community.”
To anyone who has wrinkled their nose in disgust at the thought of what society deems ‘weird kinks,’ or exclaimed, “What the fuck” as I did, I would suggest you take a moment to engage with the community themselves, as I’ve found they have a lot of interesting things to say.
And, big or small, you will always be welcome.
Featured image by Great Beyond via Flickr
I appreciated this article, lots of good sources and conversations. Thank you for not treating macrophilia like a freak show. It really has a lot in common with popular and ordinary sexual interests, it’s just the dressing that’s different. And kudos on finding an experienced medical professional to share their opinion, where previous articles haven’t been so diligent or lucky.