We Need to Stop Trying to Craft the Perfect Woman

Today in "What the hell is the appeal of this exercise:" E! conducted an online poll asking readers to choose their favorite "parts" from different female celebrities, and then cut and paste it all into one horrifying, ever-smiling woman that resides in the Uncanny Valley — she almost looks human, but not quite. "Pick celebrities' best features and then we'll mash them all together for an awful result!," they implored, and boy, did people deliver, because we still live in a world where it's fun to nitpick and scrutinize every single inch of a woman's body. Because, you know, agency, personality, and worth be damned — who has the best abs in Hollywood? That's the important question.

The results: a woman who has Carrie Underwood's hair, Mila Kunis' eyes, Jessica Alba's smile, Rihanna's abs, Sofia Vergara's boobs, Gabrielle Union's arms, and Blake Lively's legs. Altogether. On one mannequin. And would you believe that the results actually look inhuman? Shocking. Contrary to popular opinion, celebrities are not human guinea pigs to be used as a benchmark of the pinnacle of the female body; and even so, if we think that Blake Lively is utterly valueless save for her gams, what the hell does that say about us? Women: we're worth less than the sum of our parts! Here she is:

This, of course, is not the first celebrity-paper doll experiment ever conducted: it happens, unfortunately, pretty often. Another memorable and haunting incident was earlier this year when separate polls were conducted for British men and women, producing these two hacked ideals — one for the boys and one for the girls, because hetero men and women are the only two groups that have opinions on beauty. And then their was this Avatar situation that was an "artist rendering" — the detailed and insightful experiment notes that "Jennifer Love Hewitt's breasts are the most coveted." Congrats, Jen! You can just chop those off, hand 'em to the wolves and throw the rest of your body away.

It's worth it to mention that E! conducted the online poll as a marketing tool for its upcoming new show, Botched, where victims of bad plastic surgery attempt to have the mistakes corrected by doctors Paul Nassif and Terry Dubrow.

So maybe E! is in on the joke — we can't reduce women to one-dimensional body parts to be mashed with other women's better body parts, and the whole thing is a commentary on narrow ideals of beauty and our constant desire for something unattainable. But unless Botched is a warning that perfection is a myth and women are not meant to be cut and paste together, I think that's all just wishful thinking.

Let's put to rest the use of female celebrities as experimental tools to determine "what's best," because it creates such a false, myopic sense of what is beautiful and what isn't.

Plus, it's just downright creepy.

Image: E! Online.