page_title: Gynoid
section_title: The perfect woman
hierarchical_section_title: Gynoid / In fiction / The perfect woman
caption_attribution_description: English: Étienne Maurice Falconet: Pygmalion &amp; Galatee (1763) Hermitage, photography by abakharev, April 2006
context_page_description: A gynoid, or fembot, is a feminine gynomorphic humanoid robot. Gynoids appear widely in science fiction film and art. As more realistic humanoid robot design becomes technologically possible, they are also emerging in real-life robot design.
context_section_description: A long tradition exists in literature of 
  the construction of an artificial embodiment of a certain type of 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 Aphrodite, the goddess takes pity on him and converts the statue into a real woman, Galatea, with whom Pygmalion has children.
  The first gynoid in film, the maschinenmensch ("machine-human"), also called "Parody", "Futura", "Robotrix", or the "Maria impersonator", in Fritz Lang's Metropolis is also an example: a femininely shaped robot is given skin so that she is not known to be a robot and successfully impersonates the imprisoned Maria and works convincingly as an exotic dancer.
  Such gynoids are designed according to cultural stereotypes of a perfect woman, being "sexy, dumb, and obedient", and reflect the emotional frustration of their creators. Fictional gynoids are often unique products made to fit a particular man's desire, as seen in the novel Tomorrow's Eve and films The Perfect Woman, The Stepford Wives, Mannequin and Weird Science, and the creators are often male "mad scientists" such as the characters Rotwang in Metropolis, Tyrell in Blade Runner, and the husbands in The Stepford Wives. Gynoids have been described as the "ultimate geek fantasy: a metal-and-plastic woman of your own."
  The Bionic Woman television series coined the word fembot. These fembots were a line of powerful, lifelike gynoids with the faces of protagonist Jaime Sommers's best friends. They fought in two multi-part episodes of the series: "Kill Oscar" and "Fembots in Las Vegas", and despite the feminine prefix, there were also male versions, including some designed to impersonate particular individuals for the purpose of infiltration. While not truly artificially intelligent, the fembots still had extremely sophisticated programming that allowed them to pass for human in most situations. The term fembot was also used in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (referring to a robot duplicate of the title character, a.k.a. the Buffybot) and Futurama.
  The 1987 science-fiction cult film Cherry 2000 also portrayed a gynoid character which was described by the male  protagonist as his "perfect partner".  The 1964 TV series My Living Doll features a robot, portrayed by Julie Newmar, who is similarly described.
  More recently, the 2015 science-fiction film Ex Machina featured a genius inventor experimenting with gynoids in an effort to create the perfect companion.
caption: Étienne Maurice Falconet: Pygmalion et Galatée (1763). Although not robotic, Galatea's inorganic origin has led to comparisons with gynoids.
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