My Fair Ladies [Book Review]

Julie 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.