Shaking Off the Patriarchy: Taylor Swift, Dignity of Earth and Sky, #GiganticWomen and the Return…

Shaking Off the Patriarchy: Taylor Swift, Dignity of Earth and Sky, #GiganticWomen and the Return of the Goddess to America

It was a prophetic moment when, in The Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007), a goddess named Calypso is set free by a young male pirate, who, speaking “as to a lover”, whispers: “Calypso, I release you from your human bonds”. She grows dozens of meters in height, bursting the ropes that had bound her, and shape shifts into a million crabs who pour themselves into the ocean, but not before all the mortals at her feet have knelt down contritely to her.

The younger generation in America (and elsewhere in the world, but this article focuses on America, where I happened to grew up) is similarly both setting free and honoring the Goddess, the spiritual aspect of feminine power and energy. In the Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End, the older generation, symbolized by the old pirate captain Hector Barbossa, cannot release Calypso; he barked the same command, “I release you from your human bonds”, to her to no avail.

Why are the younger generations more successful at releasing the Goddess? The “Goddess” is the material world, nature, the planet, the cosmos, the oceans, our bodies, and now the material world is in trouble, due to climate change, plastics killing the oceans, soil erosion, poisoning of lakes and rivers with pollutants, declining biodiversity, covering of good land everywhere around with plastic sheets or concrete or roads. It is the younger generations who are suffering and will suffer most due to a planet and natural world that cannot sustain them in a material way. Therefore younger generations are recognizing and addressing the religious and spiritual dimensions of the environmental problem:

Our relationship to the earth and the other species that share it has also been conditioned by our religious models. The image of God as outside of nature has given us a rationale for our own destruction of the natural order, and justified the plunder of earth’s resources. We have attempted to “conquer nature” as we have tried to conquer sin. (Starhawk 34)

And as a result, the younger generations are leaving and ‘deconstructing’ (the term preferred on TikTok) the patriarchal religions, none of which have the Goddess (sacred nature). These patriarchal religions are Christianity, Judaism and Islam, all of which have a strong male “Father” figure, a deity gradually developed from Zeus and other mythical gods to foster obedience to authority. Religious nones (who are often very spiritual about nature, music, astronomy, astrology, science, poetry and such) in America now number about 30% of the population, and this number is rising. Let us try to understand more about the Goddess and why she is appearing these days:

“The symbolism of the Goddess is not a parallel structure to the symbolism of God the Father. The Goddess does not rule the world: She is the world. Manifest in each of us, She can be known by every individual in all her magnificent diversity. She does not legitimize the rule of either sex by the other….The importance of the Goddess symbol for women cannot be overstressed. The image of the Goddess inspires women to see ourselves as divine, our bodies as sacred, the changing phases of or lives as holy, our aggression as healthy, our anger as purifying, and our power to nurture and create, but also to limit and destroy when necessary, as the very force that sustains all life. Through the Goddess, we can discover our strength, enlighten our minds, own our bodies, and celebrate our emotions. We can move beyond narrow, constricting roles and become whole.

The Goddess is also important for men. The oppression of men in Father God-ruled patriarchy is perhaps less obvious but no less tragic than that of women. Men are encouraged to identify with a model no human being can successfully emulate: to be minirulers of narrow universes. They are internally split, into a “spiritual” self that is supposed to conquer their baser animal and emotional natures. They are at war with themselves: in the West, to “conquer” sin; in the East, to “conquer” desire or ego. Few escape from these wars undamaged. Men lose touch with their feelings and their bodies, becoming the successful male zombies described by Herb Goldberg in The Hazards of Being Male: “Oppressed by the cultural pressures that have denied him his feelings, by the mythology of the woman and the distorted and self-destructive way he sees and relates to her, by the urgency for him to ‘act like a man,’ which blocks his ability to respond to his inner promptings both emotionally and physiologically, and by a generalized self-hate that causes him to feel comfortable only when he is functioning well in harness, not when he lives for joy and personal growth.’” (Starhawk 33–34)

As a result of their spirituality being no longer informed by the patriarchal religions, people who have left the patriarchal religions would actively seek culture that participates in the Goddess. It is very likely that the “gigantic woman” theme, seen everywhere from TikTok to pop music to sculpture to gaming, belongs to this rising “Goddess” culture. The “gigantic woman” figure seen so often these days, (mirroring our gigantic planet that feeds and nurtures us and is much older than we are, reminiscent of a mother), is one manifestation of the Goddess.

Taylor Swift is the superstar pop singer and the first person to become a billionaire due to success in singer-song writing, and her recent Eras tour produced a gigantic and statistically measurable surge of economic activity in the American economy. During her tours, she is often seen as a “gigantic woman” on the large screen onstage.

As well as endorsing Biden in 2020, she takes brave and admirable liberal political stands for LGBT rights and abortion access that are particularly dismaying to Donald Trump, his MAGA followers, and other conservatives. Donald Trump has long been supported by patriarchal-themed supporters: Christians and Orthodox Jews, fossil fuel business interests, men, big agriculture, big pharma, etc. Swift’s outsize presence in popular culture, music, feminism, the economy and politics expresses the rise of the patriarchy-fighting Goddess as a cultural force.

Artistically, Swift’s lyrics steadily support the freedom and agency of women to live as we want: “No deal, the 1950s shit they want from me/ They bring up my history” (“Lavender Haze”); “The only kind of girl they see is a one-night or a wife” (“Lavender Haze”). She also perceptively and courageously takes aim at right-wing American politicians (the kind who send thoughts and prayers after a mass shooting while blocking gun laws), while she clearly understands that they are just one recent manifestation of the patriarchy: “Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism/ Like some kind of congressman/ A tale as old as time” (“Anti-Hero”). Taylor Swift’s lyrics sometimes become the voice of a wiser older sister helping women to find strategies to beat the patriarchy: “You see all the wisest women had to do it this way/ ’Cause we were born to be the pawn in every lover’s game” (“Mastermind”). In that sense, Taylor Swift’s fans, known as Swifties, become part of an informal pop music-based community to help each other to “shake off” the patriarchy, whether in politics, their romantic relationships, or elsewhere, one little victory at a time. The Goddess is more implicit, not so explicit, in Swift’s art, though Swift does wear a witchy cape, has a male partner who is Asian or Native American (Asian and Native American spiritual traditions never burned witches), and dances under a full moon in the forest in the music video “Willow”[1]. The song begins with the lines “I’m like the water when your ship rolled in that night”: The female narrator identifying with the material world of nature, here water, resonates with the Goddess. Witches are spiritually connected to materials, most commonly crystals, flowers, tarot cards, and so forth.

Recently, with the war raging in Gaza and nearby areas in the Middle East, Taylor Swift has come under attack for expressing support neither for the Palestinians nor the Jewish Israelis. But the likely reason is simply because both of these sides are dominated in this war by the patriarchal religious forces of Islam and Judaism. Both of these religions traditionally tend to encourage women to focus primarily on child-bearing and covering their heads to show obedience. Both have a “God the Father” deity who encourages strong loyalty through psychology and an “us vs them” tribal mentality, easily leading to war. Both have clerics and leaders who benefit greatly from all the mayhem, money, weapons, groupism and angst. It is also interesting that neither Israel nor the Palestinians have legalized civil marriage ceremonies, meaning that people who want to marry those of other religions cannot. Intermarriage and civil marriage is obviously one way that the strong Abrahamic religions become naturally diluted and weaker over time in democratic countries which have civil marriage. It is as if the clerics and lawmakers (in some Middle Eastern countries they are the same people, and all men) intuitively understand and anticipate possible routes to the natural quiet dissolution of their religions and seek to prop up their religions and their power.

The birthrate in both Israel and among the Palestinians is quite high, due to the religious forces encouraging large families in order to ensure more followers. With a planet in dire environmental crisis, it is quite imperative for everyone, regardless of their religion, to understand the importance of having no more than one or two children (replacement rate).

Until both the Israelis and the Palestinians individually “shake off” their patriarchies (their Abrahamic religions), and turn to pantheism and more nature based female-empowered spiritual traditions, like the religious nones do in the United States), erasing their differences to marry and live in peace like the admirable and heroic “@BorderlessBelik” on TikTok[2], they will live in separate “us vs them” conditions and mindsets which can at any time flare into wars. Israel came about partly as the result of the Holocaust, where Christians, who had traditionally persecuted Jews for centuries, decided to persecute Jews even more mercilessly. Historically speaking, the Crusades, Inquisition, witch hunts, Holocaust, and now the deaths of thousands of Palestinians, plus many other destructive wars and genocides fall under the responsibility of the Abrahamic religions.

While history is past and cannot be changed, still, when viewing this same painful cycle starting up again with yet another war in the “Father God’s name”, Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” offers some wisdom:

Hey, hey, hey

Just think, while you’ve been gettin’ down and out about the liars

And the dirty, dirty cheats of the world

You could’ve been getting down to this sick beat

The wisdom of the Goddess aspires to live joyfully on our finite and sacred planet with acknowledgment of the realities to do with science and limits: We need the oceans (ocean plankton provides us with a majority of our atmospheric oxygen), soil, biodiversity, arctic ice. We should try to live harmoniously within planetary boundaries, “getting down to this sick beat” of joy (“sick” here carries the slang meaning of ‘outstandingly good or impressive’), and enjoying what we have instead of flaring up wars and dehumanizing others, wasting resources and watching our planet slowly die.

Superstar pop-singer, Beyoncé, has often been paired with Taylor Swift as another superstar who refuses to take a stand on the conflict in Gaza: “As Israel’s Genocidal War Rages On, Why Won’t Taylor Swift or Beyoncé Speak Up?”[3] Perhaps if we consider and compare their “Goddess” activity, we can see that probably neither one of these female stars is interested in supporting patriarchy of any kind, though of course I’m sure they feel terribly sorry for all the victims.

If Taylor Swift sometimes performs in a cloak reminiscent of a witch, Beyoncé, through clothes and messaging, takes on the persona of the goddess Oshun:

In the Yoruba cosmology of southwestern Nigeria and Benin, Oshun is the goddess, or orisha, of love, sensuality, and femininity. She is a river goddess, and one of her attributes is to bring forth sweet and fertile waters. Oshun is a mother: Her waters were central to the creation of humanity, and she looks after small children before they can speak. She’s also associated with wealth and is said to love shiny things. She’s often represented draped in yellow.[4]

Beyonce became famous for her Oshun performances especially back in 2017, while she was pregnant with twins, her enormous belly resonating with the “gigantic woman” theme. One writer noted the “deep spiritual meaning beyond the glitz and glamour of this Queen”:

With Beyoncé wrapped in golden yellow materials, immersed in water, and showing the fullness of her belly pregnant with twins, the connections made within the photos show deep spiritual meaning beyond the glitz and glamour of this Queen. And just when we thought we were looking at this concept at its peak, Beyoncé graced the stage at Sunday’s 2017 Grammy Awards in a golden dress, adorned with a crown of gold, and her belly showing through. The stage flooded with flowers and beauty, and that moment she took the stage the internet exploded.[5]

Next, turning our attention towards a gigantic statue of a woman, the sculpture “Dignity of Earth and Sky” (shortened to “Dignity”) is a 15.24 meter (50 ft) high statue of an “Indigenous woman in Plains-style dress receiving a star quilt”. “Dignity” was sculpted by South Dakota artist laureate Dale Laude Lamphere to honor the culture of the Lakota and Dakota peoples who are indigenous to South Dakota:

Norm and Eunabel McKie announced their gift of Dignity to the State of South Dakota in 2014, in honor of the 125th anniversary of South Dakota statehood. The statue was erected in September 2016 at a site near Interstate 90,where it overlooks the river.

Three Native American women from Rapid City, SD served as the models for the sculpture. The artist began by first drawing the form and then sculpting a one-eighth-scale model. The sculpture was created in an isolated area near the Cheyenne River, east of Rapid City, SD, and later moved to the installation site. The statue boldly proclaims that South Dakota’s Native cultures are alive, standing with dignity.[6]

The name of the sculpture, “Dignity of Earth and Sky” contains the material words “Earth” and “Sky”, resonating with the Goddess, who is the material world. In 2017, an instructor in Native American social systems named Susan Claussen Bunger wrote in the South Dakota newspaper The Argus Leader:

As is evident through history, humans will ultimately disillusion and betray. As is such, I have a new role model who is solid and sturdy. She literally owns a spine of steel and reminds me of the injustice in the world, but also of strength, perseverance and survival. She signifies people who have prevailed through the centuries. She represents all who resist and strive forward. She portrays a rallying cry for those who wish to be heard and valued. She stands strong and proud, meeting the morning sun and bracing against the nighttime cold. She contemplates the world through a poise of conviction and fearlessness. Her name is “Dignity”.[7]

This idea of a “new model” could imply also a new social system and economy based on living within our means of the earth, without wasting resources and violating fundamental planetary boundaries. This statue represents a new appreciation for the culture of the Sioux, whose ecologically sound way of life meant the land was left whole and undamaged for subsequent generations, without being polluted by the nuclear waste, plastics, abandoned concrete, landfills, dangerous chemicals, broken down cars and the other detritus of modernity that the disillusioning culture of the European newcomers finds it impossible to avoid. Is it better to have high, exponential population growth that finally ends, some generations later, in massive population declines and economic shrinkage when the fossil fuels finally run out? Or is it better to avoid such an outcome by staying away from fossil fuels and unsustainable economic practices altogether? The presence of “Dignity of the Earth and Sky” implies that people are finally realizing the important wisdom of indigenous cultures, such as the Lakota and Dakota people, that respect the dignity of the earth and sky.

Meanwhile, on TikTok, the hashtag #giganticwoman has been a trend, with various different plot twists and camera techniques, such as a small woman handing a gigantic woman a cup of tea to drink, for example, which recalls the idea of serving and honoring the Goddess. In another meme, the #giganticwoman peers down and then plants her huge foot on her camera in effect pretending to stomp on the face of the viewer. This could resonate with the immense power that goddesses in various pagan myths have had, or also, the power of storms, wildfires and the disastrous effects of climate change.

Next, in the world of gaming, giantesses and gigantic girls and women stalk the scene: The character of Lady Dimitrescu has sparked “a wildfire of interest across social media. What is it about the apparently 9ft 6inch vampire that has so thoroughly charmed her audience?”[8] Or take Urbosa, “the leader of the Gerudo, a race of women who are almost all gigantic, with some reaching heights of 8 feet”[9] Crossbreed Priscilla is 4 meters tall. Riho Futaba in “Demolition Girl” is a human who grows to a gigantic height when she is accidentally zapped by an alien, but many of the gigantic female characters feature supernatural or religious elements: Crossbreed Priscilla is half dragon, Vicar Amelia, a religious officiant in her own church, is a fox-deer lady, and Cala Maria is first a mermaid, a folk character from pre-Christian times, who then becomes a gorgon, a character from Greek mythology. My favorite one (though I have not tried any gaming) is probably Super Mario Galaxy’s Queen Bee, who is:

a gigantic bee overseeing the Honey Hive Galaxy. She speaks using the royal “we” and is a kind, welcoming presence to Mario during his interstellar journey. She’s also absolutely enormous, easily 10 times Mario’s size. It makes sense that all the bees around her worship the ground she hovers over. The concept of bees and their queens is nothing new, but this Queen has a clear gravity all her own.

There are dozens more, too numerous to list, but it’s clear that the supernatural and religious elements, enormous size, relationship to nature, such as honey and bees, and female gender of these characters make them goddesses on some cultural and psychological level.

Finally, and a bit esoterically, I will discuss the song and YouTube video[10] “Maybe” (2009) by the pop singer Ingrid Michaelson. I include this video as an example of the theme of “gigantic women” because it features Michaelson as a giant woman striding through an artful drawing of a landscape while tiny anonymous stick figures of men whirl around and disappear from view, then reappear again in the frame. She wears a flouncy long dress with a flower pattern, emphasizing her femininity and giving her a “Goddess” association with plants and nature. Her hair is long and beautiful, adding to the goddess vibe. The lyrics[11] sound like a standard love theme until you listen closely to the way the phrasing in the refrain could also stealthily be referencing reincarnation:

’Cause maybe in the future, you’re gonna come back

You’re gonna come back around

Maybe in the future you’re gonna come back

You’re gonna come back

The song seems also to stealthily reference death: “If you have the last hands that I want to hold/ Then I know I’ve got to let them go”, as well as the opening stanza:

I don’t want to be the one to say goodbye

But I will I will, I will

I don’t want to sit on the pavement while you fly

But I will, I will, oh yes I will

Why would anyone playfully use ambiguous language to seem to leave listeners wondering if the song is about reincarnation or going back to a former lover? The answer lies, of course, in the fact that the Abrahamic religions, particularly Christianity and Islam don’t have reincarnation. “Judaism retained traces of the reincarnation doctrine” (Walker 848), but:

The concept of reincarnation made nonsense of the Christian doctrine of reward and punishment after death. If all souls returned to the same Cauldron of Regeneration, including animal souls mingling with human ones, logically they were not differentiated for eternity into “good” and “evil” souls. The West’s traditional denial of soul-stuff to animals, and its insistence that man alone was immortal and stood at the pinnacle of all creation, led to abuses contributing to the present-day ecological crisis. (Walker 849)

Similarly, on the website Islam Question and Answer, reincarnation is called:

“the falsest of false beliefs, and one of the worst forms of disbelief….For belief in the Hereafter, the Reckoning, Paradise and Hell is among the things that are well-known in the teachings of the messengers and in the words of the Books which were revealed to them. Belief in reincarnation is tantamount to disbelief in all of that.[12]

Reincarnation is an ancient belief, and it was the “standard belief of all ancient nations” (Walker 848) until the “late development” of the “patriarchal principle of eternal stasis” (Walker 848).

Of course, there are many convincing and amazing stories of reincarnation to be found on YouTube and in books, and the University of Virginia carries out reincarnation research and verification in its Division of Perceptual Studies because it has overwhelming evidence suggesting the phenomenon is more than likely.

Therefore, the song “Maybe” is mischievously and subversively but stealthily questioning the Abrahamic religions by undercutting their patriarchal doctrines against reincarnation. Furthermore, do these religions perhaps claim that they are gatekeepers to the spirit world because it is convenient and profitable for them to make such claims?

Michaelson’s innocent little simple song brilliantly implies that the answer to this question is yes, yet no one can accuse her of heresy; her song remains ambiguous.

And we are back to Taylor Swift’s lyrics about women having to do clever strategizing and taking a low profile: “You see all the wisest women had to do it this way/ ’Cause we were born to be the pawn in every lover’s game”. One thing that remains true is that Dignity of Earth and Sky and the giant female gaming characters are not explicitly goddesses. Song lyrics can be interpreted several ways. Calypso is just a movie character. The various and ingenious disguises of the “gigantic women” contributing to the Goddess vibes will probably continue, and in my opinion, it’s more interesting and fascinating that way.

References

Starhawk. Spiral Dance. Harper One: New York, NY. 1979.

Walker, Barbara. The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. Harper & Row, New York, NY. 1983.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsEZmictANA

[2] https://www.tiktok.com/@borderlessbelik/video/7306655143502662913

[3] https://truthout.org/articles/as-israels-genocidal-war-rages-on-why-wont-taylor-swift-or-beyonce-speak-up/

[4] https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/7/31/21349403/beyonce-black-is-king-oshun-osun-yoruba-goddess

[5] https://wildhunt.org/2017/02/column-oshun-on-the-altar-of-pop-culture.html

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dignity_of_Earth_and_Sky

[7]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dignity_of_Earth_and_Sky#cite_note-8

[8] https://culturedvultures.com/best-giant-women-in-video-games/

[9] https://culturedvultures.com/best-giant-women-in-video-games/

[10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKU3UuJhIxU

[11] https://www.google.com/search?q=maybe+ingrid+michaelson+lyrics&rlz=1C1CHZL_jaJP716JP726&oq=Maybe+Ingrid+Michaelson+lyri&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCwgAEAAYDRgTGIAEMgsIABAAGA0YExiABDIGCAEQRRg5MggIAhAAGBMYHqgCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

[12] https://islamqa.info/en/answers/14379/reincarnation-in-islam