The Most Beautiful Sexy Robots

A gynoid is a humanoid robot designed to look like a human female, as compared to an android modeled after a male. The term gynoid was coined by Gwyneth Jones in her 1985 novel Divine Endurance to describe a robot slave character in a futuristic China, that is judged by her beauty. The term is not common, however, with the masculine term android being commonly used to refer to both “genders” of robot. The word fembot (female robot) has also been used. Gynoids have also been used as a metaphor in feminist discourse, as part of cyborg feminism, representing female physical strength and freedom from the expectation to reproduce.

Female-appearing robots have also appeared in real-life, with early constructions being crude. The first gynoid was produced by one British company, for use as a “pleasuring-aid”. It was called simply “36C”, from her chest measurement, and had a 16-bit microprocessor and voice synthesiser that allowed primitive responses to speech and push button inputs. Female-appearing robots have also generated controversy. In 1983 a “busty female robot” was removed from a display at Berkeley college after a petition was presented claiming it was insulting to women. The robot’s creator called this “censorship” by the “feminist movement” and akin to book burning.

The fetishization of gynoids in real life has been attributed to male desires for custom-made passive women, and has been compared to life-size female dolls. The reaction of people to robots that appeared female to different degrees has been studied. The reaction of people to such robots has been attributed in part to gender stereotypes. This research has been used to elucidate gender cues, clarifying which behaviours and aesthetics elicit a stronger gender-induced response.

Artificial women have been a common trope in fiction and mythology since the writings of the ancient Greeks. This has continued with modern fiction, particularly in the genre of science fiction. In science fiction, female-appearing robots are often produced for use as domestic servants and  slaves, as seen in the film Westworld, the Paul McAuley novel Fairyland (1995), and the Lester del Ray short story Helen O’Loy (1938) as opposed to male-appearing robots who are traditionally warriors, killers, or laborors.

A long tradition exists in fiction, of men attempting to create the stereotypical ideal woman, and fictional gynoids have been seen as an extension of this theme. Examples include Hephaestus in the Iliad who created female servants of metal and Ilmarinen in the Kalevala who created an artificial wife. Probably most famous, however, is Pygmalion, one of the earliest conceptualizations of constructions similar to gynoids in literary history, from Ovid’s account of Pygmalion. In this myth a female statue is sculpted that is so beautiful that the creator falls in love with it, and after praying to Venus, the goddess takes pity on him and converts the statue into a real woman with whom Pygmalion has children.

Fiction about gynoids or female cyborgs reinforce essentialist ideas of femininity, according to Magret Grebowicz. Such essentialist ideas may present as  gender stereotypes. Among the few non-eroticized fictional gynoids include Rosie the Robot Maid from The Jetsons. However, she still has some stereotypically feminine qualities, such as a matronly shape and a predisposition to cry.

The stereotypical role of wifedom has also been explored through use of gynoids. In The Stepford Wives, husbands are shown as desiring to restrict the independence of their wives, and obedient and stereotypical spouses are preferred. The husbands’ technological method of obtaining this “perfect wife” is through the murder of their human wives and replacement with gynoid substitutes that are compliant and housework obsessed, resulting in a “picture-postcard” perfect suburban society. This has been seen as an allegory of male chauvinism of the period, by representing marriage as a master-slave relationship, and an attempt at raising feminist consciousness during the era of second wave feminism.

In a parody of the fembots from The Bionic Woman, attractive fembots in fuzzy see-through night-gowns were used as a lure for the fictional agent Austin Powers in the movie Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery. The film’s sequels had cameo appearances of characters revealed as fembots. Judith Halberstam writes that these gynoids inform the viewer that femaleness does not indicate naturalness, and their exaggerated femininity  is used in a similar way to the title character’s exaggerated masculinity, lampooning stereotypes.