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Artificial Women

By: Cal Y. Pygia



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. Of course, the use of cosmetics to "enhance" one's facial features is usually complemented by the wearing of sexy lingerie and fashionable outer clothing to add "glamour" and "sex appeal" to these same individuals' often-less-than-spectacular anatomies. Of course, lighting, photographic tricks, airbrushing, and plastic surgery finish what makeup, hairstyles, and fashionable clothing start, likewise emphasizing the fact that so-called glamour girls are often less glamorous than they appear to be. The end result? Artificial women.

Makeup typically starts with the application of foundation makeup, which Wikipedia defines as "a flesh-toned cosmetic applied to the face to create an even, uniform colour [sic] to the complexion, and, sometimes, to change the natural skintone [sic]." Such makeup is also known as "body paint" or as "pancake makeup," after the brand name Pan-Cake, introduced by Max Factor.

According to Wikipedia, foundation makeup is available in four degrees of opacity: sheer, light, medium, and full. Each is able to conceal a greater degree of skin problems, from "contrast between" skin "discoloration and the rest of the skin tone" (sheer) or "slight blotchiness" (light) to "freckles, discolorations, blotchiness, and red marks left by pimples" (medium) and "birthmarks, vitiligo, hyper pigmentation, and scars" (full). Essentially, foundation makeup is a mask.

After applying foundation makeup, women or shemales should apply face powder "to set" the foundation, Wikipedia informs its readers, and they may apply it again, as a touchup, "throughout the day to minimize shininess caused by oily skin." (Yuck!)

Once milady or miladyboy has donned her "foundation" makeup and perhaps powdered her nose, she's ready to construct the rest of her artificial face. Eyeliner "is used to define the eye" by outlining the organ's "contours." Mascara allows her to "darken, lighten, colour [sic], thicken, lengthen, or define eyelashes." It is applied with a brush, or magic "wand." Eye shadow, "applied on the eyelids and under the eyebrows," helps "the wearer's eyes stand out or look more attractive" by adding "depth and dimension to" her "eyes" (Wikipedia). Typically, it is applied by using a brush.

To give milady's or miladyboy's cheeks a rosy hue, suggestive of health and youth, women resort to the use of rouge, or, as it is more often called today, blush. This cosmetic also highlights the cheekbones.

Women and shemales use lipsticks or lip glosses to color and highlight their lips. "New types of 'plumping' lip gloss contain ingredients which make the lips appear softer and plumper"--at least temporarily, Wikipedia observes. Lipstick or lip gloss can also be used, like eyeliner, to emphasize the contours of the lips.

Now that the face has been powdered and painted, women and shemales may turn their attention to their foundation garments: bras, girdles, panties, and hosiery or stockings.

Brassieres, or bras, as they are called for short, have a simple purpose. They cover, lift, and support the breasts, just as, in times past, the corset did. Wikipedia points out some of the other reasons that women wear bras, including "to improve the shape of the breast, to preserve modesty by minimizing or restraining them, to enhance their cleavage, to minimize movement during exercise, to facilitate nursing, or to enlarge the perceived breast size." Anyone who's seen Cruel Intentions has a pretty good idea how effective a Wonderbra is in amplifying the minimal assets of Sarah Michelle Gellar's bosom. The brassiere actually gives the impression that the actress has an imposing pair of pert and pretties. (Could the miracle bra perform the same feat for the likes of a Selma Blair or an Alyson Hannigan? one wonders.)

Panties transform milady's or miladyboy's buttocks, hips, and crotch into a veritable wonderland of possibilities. Typically lightweight, flimsy, and legless, panties are often made of silk or satin and may be adorned with lace or ribbons. They may also be crotchless or seatless, exposing more than they cover. Common styles of panties include classic briefs, hipsters, high-cut briefs, bikinis, thongs, and boyshorts. They are typically classified according to such considerations as "amount of rear coverage, width at the sides, and height at which they are worn" (Wikipedia).

Made of nylon, spandex, and (at the waist) elastic and (at the crotch) cotton, pantyhose cover the waist, crotch, hips, buttocks, legs and feet. According to some, pantyhose are worn to "be fashionable, [to] ease chafing between the foot and footwear" and to "keep the legs and feet warm ," but, of course, in reality, they are worn to "hide physical imperfections such as blemishes, bruises, scars, hair, or varicose veins" (Wikipedia).

Stockings are an alternative to pantyhose. Lightweight, skin-tight leggings made of nylon, they are rolled onto the leg from the toes of the foot to mid-thigh and their tops are secured to clips on a garter belt, which is worn around the waist, or held in place by circular garters that slip over the thigh. Some individuals consider stockings and garter belts to be sexier than pantyhose; others take the opposite view.

Shoes are considered to have high heels when the heels are more than three and a half inches high. Podiatrists list a number of reasons as to why women and shemales should not wear high heels, including "foot pain," "Morton's neuroma," "foot deformities" such as "hammertoes and bunions," "blisters and corns," "degenerative joint disease of the knees," a shortening of the Achilles tendon, lower back injury and pain, "damage to the underlying soft tissue which supports the foot," and other problems. However, these serious medical problems and health risks are more than matched, women and shemales seem to think (because they continue to wear such shoes) by the aesthetic benefits that are derived from sporting a pair of high heels, which include a "change [in] the angle of the foot with respect to the lower leg, which accentuates the appearance of calves," a "change [in] the wearer's posture, requiring a more upright carriage and. . . [an alteration in] the gait in what is considered a seductive fashion," the illusion that "the wearer" is "taller," the appearance that "the legs" are "longer," "the foot" is "smaller, "the toes appear" are "shorter. . . . the arches of the feet [are] higher and better defined. . . . the lower leg muscles [are] more defined," and "the Gluteus Maximus [sic] [is] more defined" (Wikipedia).

Although cosmetics and fashion have come a long way, baby, they're still mostly about covering up unsightliness, "enhancing" natural features, and highlighting one's own assets. Throw in a little hairstyling, airbrushing, lighting, trick photography, and "cosmetic surgery," and milady or miladyboy is a modern-day Galatea, every bit as beautiful (and artificial) as Pamela Anderson in makeup or Selma Blair in a Wonderbra. To see the true miracle of glamour photography, catch a photograph of a celebrity who's dressed in a tousled T-shirt, a pair of faded, "holy jeans" (or, better yet, naked), her hair a mess, and wearing no makeup. The freckles are back; so, too, is the blotchiness, the discolored skin, the pimples, the wrinkles, the leathery skin, the puffiness, the coarseness, the angularity, the loose and sagging skin.

It's a sad thing to see the "natural beauty" of even the most glamorous woman or a shemale." It's even more awful to realize that this is the true girl and that the glamour girl is much more fake than real. It's refreshing, too, though--or should be--to real women and shemales, for the illusion of beauty that makeup, fashion, airbrushing, lighting, styling, and trick photography create show that real beauty is truly skin deep and that many ordinary girls are better looking than the celebrities they're supposed to emulate. The exposure of this truth is, indeed, what makes websites that expose the plain Janes hiding inside celebrity divas popular among mortal women and trannies.

To call actresses and models, whether they're female or shemale, "statuesque" is truer than we think; like Galatea, they're statues, or artificial women, come to life.