Artificial Women

You paint your head,
Your mind is dead;
You don't even know
What I just said--
That's you,
American womanhood!

-- The Mothers of Invention

Bearded ladies. Female bodybuilders. Flat-chested women. Celebrities without makeup. Butch lesbians. Female-to-male transsexuals. Effeminate males. Men in makeup and lingerie. Cross dressers. Drag queens. Feminized men. Male-to-female transsexuals. Hermaphrodites. Gays, lesbians, and bisexuals.

These individuals all have something in common. They're gender benders, defying traditional and conventional notions as to what constitutes masculinity and femininity. They suggest that the true nature of gender is not only ambiguous but contrived, or socially constructed, rather than innate. It's artificial, not natural.

Just as Pygmalion created Galatea to reflect his own idea of the perfect woman, Hollywood moguls, the fashion industry, actresses, models, and others (most of whom are men) create and recreate the ideal woman of this, that, or another period of time. Usually, she bears little resemblance to most real, flesh-and-blood women. However, since she is held up as the epitome of womanhood and femininity, those who do not share her attributes often seek to emulate her by attaining the same, or very similar, traits and features.

Everywoman wants to become Her, the Ideal Woman. From this desire is born a string of industries offering Plain Janes goods and services which are more or less guaranteed to make their buyers the equivalents of the present-day Galatea, to make them, in short, artificial women.

A less-appreciated expression of the ambiguity of gender, mentioned above, is celebrities without makeup, for such individuals clearly demonstrate just how much help the use of cosmetics provides them in "enhancing" their appearance and show the degree to which their use of makeup transforms them from Plain Janes to contemporary Galateas.

Often, the side-by-side differences in photographs of the same celebrities with and without makeup is astonishing.