My Fair Ladies

Female Robots, Androids, and Other Artificial Eves

By Julie Wosk

Rutgers University Press

Runner-up for the 2015 Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies Book Prize

The fantasy of a male creator constructing his perfect woman dates back to the Greek myth of Pygmalion and Galatea. Yet as technology has advanced over the past century, the figure of the lifelike manmade woman has become nearly ubiquitous, popping up in everything from Bride of Frankenstein to Weird Science to The Stepford Wives. Now Julie Wosk takes us on a fascinating tour through this bevy of artificial women, revealing the array of cultural fantasies and fears they embody.

My Fair Ladies considers how female automatons have been represented as objects of desire in fiction and how “living dolls” have been manufactured as real-world fetish objects. But it also examines the many works in which the “perfect” woman turns out to be artificial—a robot or doll—and thus becomes a source of uncanny horror. Finally, Wosk introduces us to a variety of female artists, writers, and filmmakers—from Cindy Sherman to Shelley Jackson to Zoe Kazan—who have cleverly crafted their own images of simulated women.

Anything but dry, My Fair Ladies draws upon Wosk’s own experiences as a young female Playboy copywriter and as a child of the “feminine mystique” era to show how images of the artificial woman have loomed large over real women’s lives. Lavishly illustrated with film stills, artwork, and vintage advertisements, this book offers a fresh look at familiar myths about gender, technology, and artistic creation.

An engaging historical account of female automata....Wosk’s innovative and readable approach to gender and technology issues in history might make her book a provocative supplementary text for courses that address gender and sexuality in a technological and scientific context. IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

Wosk presents a riveting portrait of simulated women, female robots, and robot technology in media and art from ancient generations to modern-day creations. The author provides insight about generational interpretation of the 'perfect woman' and the depiction of simulated women to reconcile societal fears of changing gender roles and emerging technologies. Library Journal

This is the 'cyborg manifesto' for technology, gender, and art in the twenty-first century. The search for the 'perfect woman' in film, art, photography, and technology collides with the reality of the complex and imperfect that is the essential human experience. Arthur Kroker, author of Exits to the Posthuman Future

The clarity and the engaging style of Wosk's descriptions—not to mention the images included in the book—make of My Fair Ladies a veritable trove of resources for teachers and students of gender, culture, and the media, particularly in introductory level courses. Besides making explicit the intimate connection between patriarchal ideals of femininity and Western ideas about technology, Wosk's carefully selected examples track how adaptations of the Pygmalion myth evolved alongside social and technological changes ... Wosk's singular perspective as an art historian, and importantly, as an artist, stands out for its freshness and originality. Feminist Media Studies

Wosk's elucidation of the play of paradox in discussions of real and artificial women is at its best when it forces readers to reconsider their own assumptions about the value of authenticity and the function of artifice. Women's Review of Books

The central success of this study... has to do with the truly remarkable and diverse range of material to which Wosk’s interpretation is brought. Indeed, the range is so broad as to render any review paltry in its attempt at coverage. In terms of both material culture and the arts, My Fair Ladies shows an impressive grasp of the history of the ‘artificial woman...’ The scope of Wosk’s knowledge of films, mannequins, and other cultural objects and texts is impressive, as is the discussion of the technical side of these various figures Jason Haslam, Professor at Dalhousie University, American Literary History

Why are automatons so attractive? And just what is this 'perfect woman' anyway? Rounding up a veritable sorority of artificial Eves, Julie Wosk delves into the issues in her latest book My Fair Ladies, casting an analytical eye over female depictions, both physical and fictitious, to explore the history and the future of Woman 2.0.'

Read the full article 'Living dolls: sci-fi’s fascination with artificial women' at: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/13/living-dolls-artificial-women-robots Nicola Davis, The Guardian

From Ovid's Metamorphoses to The Stepford Wives, from Enlightenment automata to 21st century robotics, Julie Wosk takes us on an amazing tour of ideas about technology, about human perfection and about gender.

This is the 'cyborg manifesto' for technology, gender, and art in the twenty-first century. The search for the 'perfect woman' in film, art, photography, and technology collides with the reality of the complex and imperfect that is the essential human experience. Arthur Kroker, author of Exits to the Posthuman Future

Wide-ranging, lively, and thoroughly researched, Julie Wosk’s book expertly guides us through the cultural meanings of artificial females in myth, literature, movies, television, art, and photography, among other fields.

An engaging historical account of female automata....Wosk’s innovative and readable approach to gender and technology issues in history might make her book a provocative supplementary text for courses that address gender and sexuality in a technological and scientific context. IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

Wosk presents a riveting portrait of simulated women, female robots, and robot technology in media and art from ancient generations to modern-day creations. The author provides insight about generational interpretation of the 'perfect woman' and the depiction of simulated women to reconcile societal fears of changing gender roles and emerging technologies. Library Journal

The clarity and the engaging style of Wosk's descriptions—not to mention the images included in the book—make of My Fair Ladies a veritable trove of resources for teachers and students of gender, culture, and the media, particularly in introductory level courses. Besides making explicit the intimate connection between patriarchal ideals of femininity and Western ideas about technology, Wosk's carefully selected examples track how adaptations of the Pygmalion myth evolved alongside social and technological changes ... Wosk's singular perspective as an art historian, and importantly, as an artist, stands out for its freshness and originality. Feminist Media Studies

Wosk's elucidation of the play of paradox in discussions of real and artificial women is at its best when it forces readers to reconsider their own assumptions about the value of authenticity and the function of artifice. Women's Review of Books

The central success of this study... has to do with the truly remarkable and diverse range of material to which Wosk’s interpretation is brought. Indeed, the range is so broad as to render any review paltry in its attempt at coverage. In terms of both material culture and the arts, My Fair Ladies shows an impressive grasp of the history of the ‘artificial woman...’ The scope of Wosk’s knowledge of films, mannequins, and other cultural objects and texts is impressive, as is the discussion of the technical side of these various figures Jason Haslam, Professor at Dalhousie University, American Literary History

Why are automatons so attractive? And just what is this 'perfect woman' anyway? Rounding up a veritable sorority of artificial Eves, Julie Wosk delves into the issues in her latest book My Fair Ladies, casting an analytical eye over female depictions, both physical and fictitious, to explore the history and the future of Woman 2.0.'

Read the full article 'Living dolls: sci-fi’s fascination with artificial women' at: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/13/living-dolls-artificial-women-robots Nicola Davis, The Guardian

From Ovid's Metamorphoses to The Stepford Wives, from Enlightenment automata to 21st century robotics, Julie Wosk takes us on an amazing tour of ideas about technology, about human perfection and about gender. Ruth Schwartz Cowan, author of More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology

Wide-ranging, lively, and thoroughly researched, Julie Wosk’s book expertly guides us through the cultural meanings of artificial females in myth, literature, movies, television, art, and photography, among other fields. Susan Ostrov Weisser, author of The Glass Slipper

JULIE WOSK is a professor of art history, English, and studio painting at the State University of New York, Maritime College in New York City. She is the author of Women and the Machine: Representations From the Spinning Wheel to the Electronic Age and Breaking Frame: Technology and the Visual Arts in the Nineteenth Century.

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Simulated Women and the Pygmalion Myth

2 Mechanical Galateas: Female Automatons and Dolls

3 Mannequins, Masks, Monsters, and Dolls: Film and Art in the 1920s and 1930s

4 Simulated Women in Television and Films 1940s and After

5 Engineering the Perfect Woman

6 Dancing with Robots and Women in Robotics Design

7 The Woman Artist as Pygmalion

Notes

Index