The Mechanical Bride

In a world in which living women are increasingly surgically modified and artificial love dolls become more realistic every year, the age-old fantasy of creating a “perfect” woman drives a thriving industry. The best erotic dolls are manufactured with the same high-tech materials used for corpses in Hollywood film productions. The crème de la crème is the RealDoll, completely customizable for $6,000. To the men who own them, they are more than articulated skeletons and seamless silicone bodies. From the sweet technosexual who unabashedly loves his RealDoll, taking her out on dates and keeping her photo in his wallet, to the widower who bought a “divorcée” on eBay so as not to burden a real woman with his failing health, filmmaker and media scholar Allison de Fren takes a provocative, incisive world tour of the history, culture and future of fabricated female companions, silicone sex dolls and humanoid robots. Gisèle Gordon