Technosexual is real? Fcuk Android Today!!

A designer I’ve never heard of, but am probably meant to know, called Manish Arora (flash site, beware!) has been putting on shows at London Fashion Week (extreme narcissism, beware!). As an Indian, he has, of course, been patronised by the press.

This fashion nonsense isn’t the kind of thing that would normally raise the slightest interest from me. The only thing that keeps me from calling most fashion (and related parasitic pursuits) “utter wank” is the fact that I get up every day and pull a pair of jeans on. Ergo I’m clothed, and somehow be-fashioned. But then this image came via Boing Boing, of one of Arora’s models, backstage at, er, LFW:

It’s a beautiful shot of a beautiful woman, even if she’s done up like an extra from Farscape. It was only in the morning I’d learnt there was a term “technosexual“. So I found this great site, which features Hajime Sorayama’s Gynoids, of which this is the least masturbatory:

Read this early tale of implied robot-sex, if you can find it: Helen O’Loy by Lester del Rey (1934) – my copy is in the US version of this 1974 anthology. It’s edited, with visionary commentary, by Norman Spinrad. Plot: Home-spun domestic service unit discovers love, drives away creator. Creator discovers sex with domestic service unit, lives happily ever after. (Some fan-fiction here, but saying I’ll read it is commonly known as a lie.)

If you think I’m being selective, then be alert for any possible connections: it’s the 1982 Pris pleasure-model vs the 2007 Re_Vamp model (snapped at LFW yesterday). “Celebrity Fembot Match” is on later, after Horrific Tele-Surveillance Accidents: the Ant & Dec Years.

It’s the Silver Jubilee, the 25 years between Blade Runner and today. I wonder if the future is closer, or whether our perception of the future has become mired in stereotypes. Surely not.

Some say: fucking machines. I say: machines fucking.

[Anies, dude, happy birthday - hope the missus doesn't mind you surfing robot-porn]

Update: the day after … today’s Urban Dictionary Word of the Day is technosexual. How’s that for coincidence?

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