For instance, in the article DeVoss includes some images from the World Wide Web female cyborgs in sexualized poses. One is a picture of a robot woman where the only facial features are sensuous lips. She is kneeling, holding the front of her thong bodysuit open, almost revealing her breasts. This unrealistic body figure, with full-size breasts attached to a tiny body may attract human males, even if the cyborg image does not include any autonomy or anatomy of a female body. This increased popularization in women cyborgs is a bit intimidating. Males become attracted to these unreal metal coated cyborgs, without any exposure to human skin and natural body.
On the other hand, another picture in the article exposed the “‘artificial girls’ designed for sexual pleasure…[fake] women [bodies] partially or completely nude, some of their body parts replaced or removed, and metal subsurface showing through.” (DeVoss 840) Although the images themselves are disturbing, the text that accompanies the images is equally as disturbing. For example, the text comforts that “Andrea comes with removable limbs for better storage” (DeVoss 840) in case she breaks. Therefore, some males take pleasure in these technological and mechanical women’s bodies— whenever an arm or a leg is not attractive they can simply replace it. Women throughout centuries were portrayed as objects to males, but now with the advanced technology males have created the womanly object they always craved for.
Media revelation of the cyborg absolutely can lead our society to believe that this is how a real female body should look and act. Women observing these sexualized female cyber dolls might feel as though the cyborg women are directing the society away from being attracted to real women’s bodies by fascinating, attracting, and eventually winning over male’s attention. Consequently, our future is in danger due to the media and technology; soon we might be so detached from one another that women might not have a role in society at all. Perhaps these “high- tech” cyber bodies will have a mechanical reproductive system that could reproduce, so real human women will become absolutely insignificant in the world.
Cyborgs Leading to a Development in Beauty Technologies
Due to our technology advancement and media influence about cyborgs, women have had the urge to become extra beautiful, extra thin, and extra womanly by using many different technologies such as bodybuilding, cosmetic surgery, and more. As Marleen Barr proclaims in “Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women,” “although technology enables us to remake and reconfigure the body its spatial locality, old cultural standards prevail: cosmetic surgery allows women better to conform to female beauty standards and women are harassed in cyberspace.” (Barr 131) Women’s harassment by cyberspace might be interpreted by how social and cultural expectations force women to become a certain way.
A woman in her 60’s that undergoes a cosmetic surgery to become young and beautiful as the cyber body, only leads me to believe she is an insecure, vulnerable woman— she is incapable of dealing with the natural cycle of life. Then again, women in society are exposed and threatened by this young anorexic provoking media. These technologies, such as plastic surgeries, have only developed because of our media, slowly tricking us to believe that only a certain type of body is attractive and accepted. Furthermore, women start to believe that this is the only way to be accepted and therefore heard in our society. Even though many women might be aware of their opportunity to simply ignore the media, they are already steeped in this idea that cyber women are the image to follow instead of their image.
Theories of Cyborg Feminism to Contemporary Media and Technology
Mechanical and artificial women are not the only form to negatively represent the women’s bodies. Other forms of media and technologies have portrayed women bodies negatively and threatened women’s attitudes toward their bodies and self conscious.
Video/ computer games
Some video games include characters that have become fictional cyborgs. Although only in some video games, women characters are in a prominent role within the storyline of the game, women characters are still in video games usually as supplementary . Despite the fact that women characters in video games are not as popular, what is more distressing is that the women characters in video games are unrealistically portrayed. The shape of a fictional women body on some video games is very masculine, sexualized, and covered with metal; such as the cyborg.
In Kamala O. Norris’s article on “Gender Stereotypes, Aggression, and Computer Games: An Online Survey of Women” she expands on her survey where 33 most popular video games were examined. She found that “fully 33% had male characters but no female characters at all. In this sample, 15% of the games portrayed women as heroes or action characters. Of these, many portrayed women in stereotypical ways, such as wearing pink or revealing clothing….The women in the games were portrayed… frequently as sex objects or as evil.” (Norris 715) In a way, the video games portray women as innocent vulnerable beings. The male character in the games need to protect them, help them, or save them as though they are too weak and incapable of protecting themselves. Perhaps, our society’s is still stuck in the ancient thought that the male needs to protect and provide for the female.
Though, what’s odd is that now in these video games the women are armed, masculine, covered with clothing made out of metal, very similar to a cyborg. The metal is almost a metaphor to protection. Therefore, when women wear metal-made clothing not only do they look sexualized, but tough and strong; completely opposite from the usual sweet, vulnerable image of a women. Perhaps the metal is seen as an alternative way to protect a woman, plus giving her the feeling that she is capable of protecting herself while covered with it. However, the metal women image can trigger the children playing to develop a new fascinating sense of a female. The males who play might become attracted to these masculine, sex object characters and believe that this is the way women should be. While female players might want to become tougher compared to these fighter women protected with metal, and conclude that this is the figure and image to follow.
Media – MOVIES
Movies and TV media had not seized to also explore the area of women and cyborgs. Remember the movie that premiered in 2004, which was based on the book The Stepford Wives? It adapted into a thriller that focused on gender conflict and the sterility of suburban living. The wives in the movie are being replaced by a form of robot, closer to an idealized . In the movie they emphasized how the males enjoy this form of women robots and are actually the ones that developed the process of making them robots. This further stresses that males begin to worship the idea that women are robot dolls with the perfect cyber bodies, and perfect qualities and behaviors as housewives. This movie depicts women not only in terms of appearance but in behavior and judgment toward women’s accomplishments and opinions. In this movie, women’s opinions are not significant; the women have no option to have a career. Only the men have the career, further stressing that they are the only ones that are able to provide financial support and dominant over the house.
Another TV show is the show Small Wonder was an American sitcom that aired from 1985 to 1989. The show chronicled the family of a robotics engineer who, after he secretly creates a robot modeled after a real human girl, tries to pass it off as their daughter. This scary show shows how humans, can simply substitute a human being. Perhaps in the future real humans would not even need to be present and only robots can control this world, as the movie Wall-E observed.
Our media and technologies predict our future philosophies on women’s bodies and attitude towards them. Even though, the movement toward feminism started many years ago, it is far from being achieved with the “help” of our media and technology representing women’s bodies as cyborgs. Soon women’s bodies will reveal no skin, only metal; wires and buttons males can press on for their own sakes and pleasures. Real women will not be necessary. Perhaps males would not be either. Let these Robotic human surrogates simply take over our world, reproduce for us, think for us, and survive for us. We need to be aware of our own invention with media and technology because soon in our near future we might find ourselves destroying civilization and our earth.
Work Cited
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DeVoss, Dànielle. "Rereading Cyborg(?) Women: The Visual Rhetoric of Images of Cyborg (and Cyber) Bodies on the World Wide Web." CyberPsychology & Behavior 3.5 (Oct. 2000): 835-845. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 9 Aug. 2009 <http://search.ebscohost.com.oca.ucsc.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=5323629&site=ehost-live>.
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Barr, Marleen. "Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women." Utopian Studies 8.1 (June 1997): 130. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 9 Aug. 2009 <http://search.ebscohost.com.oca.ucsc.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=4788752&site=ehost-live>.
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Senft, Theresa M. ,
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Balsamo, Anne. Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996.
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Norris, Kamala O. "Gender Stereotypes, Aggression, and Computer Games: An Online Survey of Women." CyberPsychology & Behavior 7.6 (Dec. 2004): 714-727. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 23 Aug. 2009 <http://search.ebscohost.com.oca.ucsc.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=15897141&site=ehost-live>.
