Thanks to Daniel Richter for contributing this great link about Mimu, the robot model recently unveiled in Japan. She is designed to look as life-like as possible, and the designer admitted being “as nervous as a father of the bride” at the fashion show in Tokyo where the cyber-bride walked the runway alongside flesh-and-blood women (or what passes for flesh-and-blood in fashion’s very thin universe). Is the Japanese bride-of-Frankenstein Mimu breaking down barriers between cybernetics and humanoid standards of beauty? Will this android lead the way to a paradigm shift, just as Nogaret’s automatons and Shelley’s creature did some 200 years ago? The models interviewed in Japan are anxiously waiting to see what will transpire. For our part, it seems like a humane intervention. Maybe automizing the process of selling clothes will help real-life women see through the beauty myth.
I thought you would enjoy that link! While I was watching it, I was almost expecting a child with bow and rosebud-tipped arrow to emerge from underneath her enormous dress.