IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2020 - 11

Rachel Maines

My Fair Ladies
My Fair Ladies: Female Robots, Androids and Other Artificial Eves
By Julie Wosk. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015, 221+xi pp.

ulie Wosk's My Fair
Ladies is an engaging historical account
of female automata,
with sidelights on
dolls, disembodied electronic female
voices, masks, make-up, and the
sexual and gender implications of
efforts to create artificial humans.
Wosk focuses mainly on the Western cultural context, although
recent Japanese and Korean explorations of the female-robot theme
are presented toward the end of the
book. The impressive filmography
serves as the archival database
from which she draws, along with
citations to many works of art.
Some print sources are cited as
well. There are numerous black and
white illustrations, and a very welcome and well-chosen section of
color plates.
Wosk's narrative takes us from
the Pygmalion myth of antiquity
through 17th century images of
women made of household utensils, to full-size 21st-century dancing pink "plastic-fantastic" Asian
female robots with Mickey Mouse
ears. Along the way we learn much
about why so many real and fictional creators of artificial women are,
like the prototypical Pygmalion,
men haunted by techno-erotic fantasies of creating the perfect
woman. A significant component of

this historical phenomenon is that
cal counterexample, however, in
there have been very few women
the "Rights of Women" automaton,
clockmakers, engineers, and sculpmanufactured by Renou in 1900.
tors to design and build male
As Wosk points out, the caring
automata for any purpose, let alone
and nurturing aspects of women's
for the fulfillment of romantic fantatraditional roles are occasionally
sies. Most fictional designers or
included as fictional characteristics
imaginers of artificial male humans,
of female robots and androids, as
including Frankenstein's monster,
in the case of Rod Serling's robot
as Wosk points out, have been
grandmother in his 1961 Twilight
males themselves.
Zone episode, "I Sing the Body ElecConsistent with the book's title,
tric." These and a few other exammale automata are not a major
ples in My Fair Ladies prefigure
theme, although a few are
mentioned for gender contrast. Wosk makes the point
that in most of the cases
she examines, little beyond
Little beyond congeniality and
congeniality and good looks
were expected of female
good looks were expected of
automata, whereas male
robots more often were
female automata, whereas male
assigned technical caparobots more often were assigned
bilities and competences.
Mindless docility, loyalty,
technical capabilities and
and selfless helpfulness are
the dominant characteriscompetences.
tics of Wosk's historical
artificial women, with the
Stepford Wives movies being, of
contemporary Japanese efforts
course, a notorious example. Both
to produce caregiving robots for
the 1975 and 2004 films by this
the elderly.
title are discussed in detail. It is,
Another appealing quality of
significantly, the humanity missing
many of these "virtual women" to
from these engineered females that
their designers and/or owners is
seems to make the fantasy of them
that, unlike real women, they can
attractive to their male creators.
be turned on and off at will. Star
They do not nag, criticize, or argue;
Trek Next Generation fans will recall
indeed, many cannot talk at all.
(continued on page 86)
Wosk presents an amusing histori-

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2020.2972239
Date of current version: 2 March 2020

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