#also. i'm Extremely Aware that there are Stereotypes and Coding in how jotuns dress in canon

[tyrannuspitch]

thinking about jotun culture again

as it currently stands my headcanon on why the jotuns we see (all adult men + warriors) are wearing very little is that it's basically posturing, which is expected of warriors specifically, and even then probably not 24/7.

it's not clear exactly how impervious jotuns are to the cold. a lot of people assume that abandoned jotun babies would die of the cold, but it's not actually stated - they might be left to starve. and even if they are, we're still talking about babies, often ones already judged as "weak", so... your average jotun adult might have basically no lower limit on the cold they can endure.

and if that were the case, there wouldn't be much reason for them to wear clothing at all. after all, there are plenty of real life cultures where the traditional clothing is as little or less than we see on mcu jotuns, or nothing at all, because the climate is such that it just isn't necessary.

but if jotun's practical need for clothing is zero, and their everyday clothing is minimal but not zero... then why wear it? modesty taboos, sure - but where do those taboos start? i'm not an expert on these things at all, but i kind of feel like they have to be outside influence...? and if jotunheim and asgard do have a long and closely intertwined relationship, as they do in my headcanon, then that's a possibility...

but we should also consider the armour. mcu jotuns don't just wear little clothing - they wear little armour. they have a sort of short, fitted, armoured skirt/kilt, and then high status warriors like laufey have tiny, decoratively arranged metal pieces over the arms, torso and head that are probably better described as jewellery than as armour.

deliberately making yourself vulnerable can be an effective intimidation technique. it's not very tactical, though, and if it were a new idea it would probably cause panic/loss of trust... which suggests it's deeply engrained in jotun culture. it's not, for example, the jotuns getting desperate after the war and their subsequent isolation left them with a total dearth of resources to make armour with.

and then. there's the fact that the jotun warriors we see aren't only minimally clothed or armoured - they're also all completely hairless.

we know jotuns grow hair. loki in his jotun form keeps all his hair, including eyebrows. but the jotuns raised on jotunheim have neither. all jotuns, including loki, are also beardless, in contrast to the norm for asgardian men.

i've seen it suggested that loki doesn't have a beard because he can't grow one, possibly because jotuns in general can't grow them. but then why the hair, and why the eyebrows? i think it's actually the opposite - both loki and other jotuns choose to shave their beards.

(and incidentally - surely the presence of any hair, from an evolutionary perspective, suggests that they aren't actually 100% impervious to the cold...)

i think, for most jotuns, it's part of their male gender role, and a point of pride, to have as little protecting them from the cold / the elements / harm in general as possible. no armour, no warm clothing, not even their own hair. they actively choose to remove even what naturally occurs - perhaps symbolically linked to actively choosing to face the dangers of battle for their people?

it might sound odd on the surface to say that removing a "male" characteristic like a beard is a male gender role, but there's plenty of real-world precedent. iirc, ancient rome was pretty strictly (socially) anti-beard and thought shaving was a sign of Civilisation. and modern europe has emulated this at various points, although we're not currently strict about it.

which gives jotun men an interesting possible perspective on asgardian men. having hair on their heads could be seen as weak and feminine. but having hair on their faces could, potentially, be seen as barbaric, animalistic, and hypermasculine in a threatening way...

and on the flipside - i think asgardians probably find clean-shaven men intimidating, because they look like enemies such as jotuns and dark elves. but then they're simultaneously being cast as powerful, probably hypermasculine "beasts", and as womanly, and therefore weak...

and in fact, beyond connotations, thor actually canonically views jotuns simultaneously as super powerful monsters who could overrun asgard any day now, and as cowards.

and of course, if we remember half of what's going on with loki... often "weakness" and "cowardice" and "effeminacy" are pretty clearly seen as threatening in and of themselves, even while people claim the opposite...

so. demonisation for contradictory things at the exact same time. the enemy is both weak and strong. this is a very common part of bigotry, but it's always kind of psychologically fascinating to me.

#space viking tag #meta #th: ethnicity #the: worldbuilding #th: gender + sexuality #long post #god this is rambly. this has twists and turns. whatever it's my blog #also. i'm Extremely Aware that there are Stereotypes and Coding in how jotuns dress in canon #but tbh. since they're value neutral things. i feel like you can unproblematise most of it by just. giving it depth and internal logic...? #like. treating people like people. who do things for actual reasons #idk. i'm just musing here