Digital Girls & the Taxidermy of the Female Image

It seems as though every day a new digital girl is spawned onto the internet. Kicking it off with the first digital influencer LilMiquela in 2017, to the first AI model in Vogue earlier this year, to the AI actress Tilly Norwood threatening to infiltrate the film industry. They’re on OnlyFans, they’re in our IG reels, they’re in our magazines, and our movies. No place is safe from the digital girl invasion. Digital girls are dominating. And this is just beginning.

The French theorist Jean Baudrillard, in his 1983 book Simulations, explains the concept of simulacra through Borges’s fable “On Exactitude in Science.” as follows…
Let’s say you have a territory of land. Afterwards you create a 1 to 1 scale map, and place it exactly over the territory, covering the land entirely in this map. Decades pass, and the map remains atop the land, eventually growing worn out. As time passes it becomes difficult to discern what is the map, and what is the original land poking through. Those who were alive before the map was placed upon the land are long since dead, and therefore no one can remember a time without the map–nor decipher where the map ends and the land begins. Eventually the map becomes the land, at least in the perception of those who know it to be that way. Due to their perception this is their reality, and their truth. The map becomes real, and the original territory and land is forgotten. The original land is therefore lost. This is a simulacrum, a copy without an original.

The experience of womanhood has become a simulacrum in itself. The woman being the land, and performance of femininity being the map placed overtop the land. We have lost the distinction between the two and we struggle to decipher where the woman ends and femininity begins. We see this in discussions of nature vs nurture, what qualities are inherent to femininity vs learned behaviors that we have come to culturally associate and therefore teach to young girls making them common characteristics prevalent within women and girls. Thus triggering the argument of, for example, are women naturally more nurturing than men or do we just exist within a culture that instills this belief in girls from the moment they are born? We likewise see the simulacrum of femininity prevalent especially within external beauty standards. Where it has come to be seen as feminine is for women to exist in an altered state. For example, for women to exist in their natural state of being unshaven and bare faced, free of makeup, would be seen as unfeminine or even masculine despite this being the natural unaltered state of woman. The masculine exists as the flesh of humanity, and feminity exists as the altering of that flesh. Women have come to be associated with the map on top of and merged with the land, thus existing within the pressure of simulacra.

John Berger’s theory of the gaze sharpens this point. The internalized gaze sets the initial structure for the simulacrum of feminine performance to exist. Women learn to “survey” themselves through the imagined eyes of others—specially a gaze that places women as consumer merchandise. As time goes on this performative version of femininity gets repeated, commodified, and circulated through media. This creates a feedback loop as inevitably these performances start referencing each other. Femininity becomes an echo chamber filled with a series of abstract references. The performance no longer points back to some natural feminine essence (which may never have existed in the first place) but to an endless chain of other performances. Femininity now exists as a copy without an original—a simulacra.

In my essay on The Substance I highlighted Elisabeth’s decent into a distorted abstract monster of feminity as representative of the simulacrum of feminine performance. The representations of the feminine become fragmented and disjointed from any semblance of woman by the end. Though the echo of feminine expectation is still there in monstress Elisasue. By the end Monstress Elisasue is all tits and smiles, as these are the qualities men in the film repeatedly placed emphasis on in their relation to feminine performance and desirability.

Though, this distortion remains organic unlike the digital distortion we are witnessing today.

As AI becomes increasingly popular there is an overwhelming dominance of the expression of the feminine form, over the male form, within this artificial intelligence. This is because—as stated—within consumer culture masculinity is defined by the flesh, whereas femininity is defined by the altering of that flesh—we have gotten to a stage where we have altered the feminine flesh so much that we have removed the flesh entirely. Through AI we see the way in which the masculine and feminine are reduced to their most stripped down roles within consumer culture. The abstract feminine form is further enhanced, becoming more feminine in its superficiality. While the masculine image is not emphasized. If the robot or AI is intended to be “masculine” it takes on a sexless, neutral image. If any qualities are enhanced it is exaggerated in utility rather than aesthetic in order to better perform the tasks of manual labour. This is in direct contrast to the feminine models of robots and AI that only exaggerate the superficial and aesthetic nature of femininity, often with exaggerated proportions such as large breasts—the only utility that is enhanced is their sex appeal. Masculine worth being defined by capital production (manual labour) and feminine worth being defined by the pussy and womb (sex appeal and motherhood).

(left) Artificial womb growing a lamb fetus (right) Grok’s AI girlfriend

In 2017 a lamb fetus was successfully developed within an artificial womb system—a techno womb. With this we witness a digitization of the madonna archetype. But mostly we bear witness to the digitization of the whore archetype, as our feeds become flooded with digital girls expressing the increasingly abstract representations of femininity.

As our world becomes increasingly digitized, our ideas of femininity become increasingly abstract. Baudrillard also coined the term hyperreality which describes the loss of distinction between reality and simulation. When the culture is saturated with these self-referential performances and images, we’re in hyperreality: femininity is experienced primarily as its mediated representations, not as lived reality. The use of AI generated models in Vogue for example is a representation of the acceleration into this hyperreality. Not only are these AI models designed as Frankenstein-esque copies of pre-existing women, they exist as an expression of the feminine without the woman to even express it. The AI models exists as pure superficial femininity under capitalism. I look at these AI generated models and I see echoes of real women. In one I see a mirage of Megan Fox, in another Irina Shayk, in another Angelina Jolie. But even so, they have taken the image of these real women who are praised for being the most beautiful women and “enhance” their image further. The skin is now poreless, as the digital woman has no use for them. Her skin only exists to simulate human beauty not to sustain the life of an organism. She smiles without smile lines. For us smile lines are evident of a life lived–but for the digital woman the absence of smile lines are representative of the life she will never live. Her smile exists to make the consumer feel something, rather than to express emotions she feels. The digital woman becomes an echo of femininity without the spirit of woman.

The social expectation and pressure to be beautiful under the pressure of consumer culture is representative of the detachment from true beauty. The cultivation of the superficial feminine was created as a medium in order to sell products. We saw this emphasized in the early 20th century with the emergence of teen culture. And as the years passed the idea of the young girl as a manufactured vessel and target to be sold to became more prominent. The Young-Girl exists as both a commodity to sell and a vessel to sell commodities to—another feed back loop in the simulacrum of feminine performance.

Our idea of womanhood and girlhood has been co-opted so extensively by consumer culture that we have come to define girlhood almost exclusively in relation to our place within this consumer culture. Girlhood is false eyelashes, and boy bands, and shopping, and shoes. Except it isn’t. But it kind of is. This is the simulacrum of girlhood, which exists in truth of our experience of girlhood but not in the core of what it means to be a girl. Like Baudrillard’s map overtop the land, we have lost distinction between the real and the illusion. All these things look like girlhood, but it isn’t. But it is in our experience and perception. The recent use of AI models in Vogue reinforce the image of femininity as an abstraction. The feminine form as a spectacle in order to sell commerce. The disembodied expression of femininity.

In his essay Otherness Surgery Baudrillard argues that cosmetic surgery is not about restoring or repairing, but rather about an endless pursuit of “otherness”—a simulated image of beauty that no longers refers to a real, natural body. Surgery becomes a “performance of difference,” where the individual chases a new identity that is always already artificial. AI models being used in magazines act as the next stage in this pursuit of otherness. Just as surgery produces an “otherness” detached from the organic body, AI models embody beauty with no biological anchor at all.

One of the first “AI models” to take off was what came to be known as the AI Old Money Girl. I remember when I first saw photos of this “girl” on Pinterest. She reminded me of the Hollywood sex appeal of Denise Richard combined with with the equestrian aristocratic quality of Grace Kelly’s grandaughter Charlotte Casiraghi. When you look up AI Old Money Girl you are immediately met not only with images of this AI generated girl, but also of various makeup tutorials on how to look like her. This highlights the further deterioration of feminine performance into a series of references. We aren’t even referencing real women anymore we’re referencing a simulation of a woman that was algorithmically generated using reference images of other women.

Baudrillard highlights in Otherness Surgery the way in which the individual body is reworked to meet an ideal external self which creates a gap between the lived self and one’s artificial projection. This shows up in the way that certain features that can be attributed to certain ethnic groups come to be “on trend.” This was prevalent during the Kardashian era of the 2010s in which the Kardashians and their followers sought to co-opt Black features through fashion and the intervention of plastic surgery. They wanted the aesthetic of Blackness without the lived experience of Blackness—and they abandoned this aesthetic when it was so financially viable to them.

This abstraction of lived experience likewise becomes further distorted with AI models. The gap is widened, as there is no “lived self” behind the image at all. In the 2010s Lil Miquela became the first digital it-girl influencer. Max Wolf Friedlich wrote for iD this year “Apparently, I am now “story lead” for an influencer named “Lil Miquela.” I am in charge of her lore, of honing her voice. Miquela requires a story lead because she is a fictional character: a digital body transcribed onto real photos. Her face is designed to perform well in the Instagram algorithm––freckles, fringes, and racially ambiguous skin…Brands are excited at the idea of a woman who can’t say no.” She’s conveniently racially ambiguous because she can perform well within the online world, and have the aesthetic of marginalization without having the responsibility to any specific ancestral lineage or community that comes with being a racialized person.

Interestingly this point of her being algorithmically designed in reference to the digital girl’s racial presentation is also prominent in Seraphinne Vallora, the company responsible for the first AI model to be featured in Vogue earlier this year. When asked by BBC about the lack of diversity in their AI models, the company’s founder Valentina Gonzalez states “We’ve posted AI images of women with different skin tones, but people do not respond to them - we don’t get any traction or likes, at the end of the day, we are a business and use images on Instagram that will create a conversation and bring us clients.” What Gonzalez describes here is a an exaggerated version of the process magazines and brands already go through—looking at humanity through the lens of algorithmic and commercial performance racial presentation is treated like a trend cycle, though the digital models amplify this.

When Lil Miquela was created in 2017 she was 19 years old, and today she is 22. When she was created I was younger than her, and now I am older than her. A digital girl is not constrained to the same expiration date as real women. Friedlich writes “As long as she remains a novelty, Miquela will grow. My job is to keep her new, forever.” I wonder if LilMiquela will ever be permitted to “age” past 25. Or if in the same way a brand loves working with a girl who can’t say no, they love the idea of a girl whos frontal lobe will never fully develop. Mummified in a simulated lobotomy of youth.

In May they gave LilMiquela leukemia. This digital girl is sat in what looks like a real hospital bed. Her digital arm extended to create a vlog for TikTok. She simulates the emotions of fear and stress as she breaks the news to her audience that she has cancer. But we know she won’t “die”, because it’s not in her creators best interest for her to die. A digital girl can’t die from natural causes, she will only die when she fails to generate capital for her creator.

“The Young-Girl becomes demonetized when she goes out of circulation. When she loses the possibility of re-entering the marketplace, she begins to rot.”

Baudrillard describes the way in which the “other” pursued within plastic surgery is always elusive, and fleeting, producing a cycle of continual modification. The ideal feminine is never achieved because it is always shifting, and always abstract. AI models can be endlessly remixed, reshaped, and re-styled at no cost nor risk. They are, in a sense, the completion of the surgical fantasy—beauty without limitation or decay. Femininity becomes further defined by and manufactured for algorithmic performance. This is slightly different from, or rather a continuation of, the current feminine model as these AI models can be built from the ground up.

This increases the nature of planned obsolescence inherent to the feminine. These digital women can be created and deleted at rapid speeds. If suddenly it becomes more profitable to design AI women with plus sized figures or darker complexions, they will do so, but these AI women will come without the lived experience of what it means to exist within a marginalized body outside of advertisement. And when the tides shift and these bodies are no longer profitable to companies–these women will be deleted.

In Theory of the Young Girl it is written “The Young-Girl covets commodities with an eye filled with envy, because she sees her prototype in them, that is, she sees herself, only more perfect. What remains of her humanity is not only what she lacks in commodity perfection, it is also the cause of all her suffering. It is this remaining humanity, therefore, that she must eradicate.”

This notion becomes increasingly relevant as we enter an age where AI is advancing rapidly. The digital girl, exists as a taxidermy of the female image. A replica of the shell with a gutting of humanity. In The Second Sex Simone De Beauvoir expresses the idea that women are stripped of their humanity when they exit girlhood. The adolescent girl is exposed to a world where she is no longer affirmed as a human being but as a female. The digital girl doesn’t need to be stripped of humanity in order to become a woman as Beauvoir describes, but instead exists purely as feminine expression in absence of humanity.

With digital girls there can exist this concept of the Young-Girl however no longer needing the fleshed vessel of the real life Young-Girl in order to perpetuate this phenomenon. Through digital girls and fembots the Young-Girl can exist without falling victim to the inevitable aging qualities of time, or at least not as quickly as human girls do. Nor can they rebel against the inherent servitude related to the perpetuating of the Young-Girl. In this sense digitized femininity expressed through digital influencers such as LilMichaela or the AI models in Vogue exist as the next stage of the simulacrum of girlhood prior to the digital. Continuity has been ruptured. It looks like girlhood, but it isn’t. It is an image of the image of the image of girlhood, creating a labyrinth that becomes detached from what was being referenced in the first place. The woman is lost and it is only the echo of “girl” that remains.