Pygmalion Resources

Check out this awesome slideshow about the Pygmalion myth and the pop culture it inspired. From Project Runway to Toddlers and Tiaras, this has it all.

Watch as Eliza Doolittle sets something on fire during her speaking lessons. Oops!

Julia Roberts is a prostitute with a heart of gold in this modern My Fair Lady adaptation.

Starring the one and only Ryan Gosling, this surprisingly sweet movie is about a man who falls in love with a life-sized plastic doll.

As far as zany 80s movie go, you really can't get more absurd than Mannequin, a film about a window dresser who falls in love with a (you guessed it!) plastic mannequin.

Two nerdy boys use computers and supernatural "science" to create their idea of a perfect woman. She ends up teaching them a thing or two!

Cycle 15 featured the models dressed up as "living statues." This is so weird, you kind of have to watch it.

This 1960s TV series about a sexy female android pre-dated I Dream of Jeannie, but it's got some similar subservient themes. Creeptastic!

Check out this hilarious animated comparison between the Greek Pygmalion myth and George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion. Stick figures explain it all.

With their ability to craft women into ideal beauties, Photoshoppers are basically modern-day Pygmalions, right? Watch how a Photoshopped image gets made.

Check-out Galatea, an interactive videogame/story told from the point of view of Pygmalion's statue after she comes to life. That's what we're talking about.

In "Coin-Operated Boy," the Dresden Dolls flip the Pygmalion myth on its head and have a woman obsess over a plastic man. Sample lyrics: "Can you extract me/from my plastic fantasy?"

Aerosmith's video for "Hole in My Soul" features a college-aged scientist inventing his perfect woman in a lab.

In Wharton's House of Mirth, Lily Bart is referred to as "malleable" and often treated like an object. Hmmm, problematic?

In Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady, Isabel Archer is transformed into a high-class woman when her uncle leavers her a ton of money.

Before My Fair Lady, there was Pygmalion. Read George Bernard Shaw's original story of Professor Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle.

Check out the poster from the original 1956 production of My Fair Lady. Lady as a puppet—sound familiar?

This is cool: Rodin's sculpture of the Pygmalion myth.

Here's a poster for the play Pygmalion, featuring a before and after shot. Eek!

Take a look at Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle after she's been transformed in the movie version of My Fair Lady.