TRON: Legacy.
Disney's neon-infused sequel to the 1982 classic
includes a particularly egregious example of a trope
that has bothered me for years.
"I'm Korra."
It's a gendered convention that will be instantly familiar
to science fiction fans.
The convention shows up over and over again
in speculative media, but it didn't have a name.
So I gave it one.
I call it "Born Sexy Yesterday".
"She's an ISO."
The character of Korra is an isomorphic algorithm, or ISO.
Basically, she's a sentient computer program in the shape of a woman.
"She's the miracle, man."
"Everything I've ever worked for."
"A digital frontier to reshape the human condition."
As the last of the ISOs, Korra is described in this way:
"Profoundly naive."
"Umimaginably wise."
If that sounds vaguely like something someone might say about a child,
it's no accident.
Because that's exactly how TRON: Legacy portraits Korra.
"But between you and me, Jules Verne is my favorite."
"Do you know Jules Verne?"
"Sure."
"What's he like?"
She has the mind of a naive, yet highly-skilled child,
but in the body of a mature, sexualized woman.
She also serves as our hero's love interest.
"Profoundly naive, yet unimaginably wise" captures the essence of this trope.
"Born Yesterday" is an idiom meaning extremely naive, inexperienced, or ignorant.
"He thinks I'm too stupid, huh?"
"Uh, no..."
"He's right. I'm stupid and I like it."
"You do?"
"Sure! I'm happy. I get everything I want. Two mink coats. Everything."
"Activate it."
As a media trope, Born Sexy Yesterday has both the figurative,
and in many cases, a literal meaning.
The 1997 sci-fi cult classic The Fifth Element
is probably the most quintessensial example of Born Sexy Yesterday.
"I told you. Perfect."
Like Korra, Leeloo is whimsical and naive.
But she's also deliberately framed in a sexualized way.
"They really made her-"
"Perfect. I know."
The female characters that this trope is built around
are defined by their innocence of and inexperience with worldly things.
"Pretty!"
Especially when it comes to sex, romance, or basic social interaction.
"Would you mind if I kiss you?"
"Does it hurt?"
Though the use of science fiction conventions,
they're brought into the human world already fully formed.
The mind of a child manifests in a mature female body.
She may be an android, a computer program, a mermaid, an alien, a magical being,
or otherwise raised in an environment isolated from the rest of human society.
Many of these female characters have one very specific thing in common.
They're all deliberately written to be completely unaware of their own sex appeal.
This stance provides filmmakers with an excuse to include at least one scene
in which she disrobes in front of men.
And because she's so naive, she doesn't understand the implication of this action.
"Morning! Come on in."
"Didn't bring my bathing suit."
"What's a bathing suit?"
"Ho oh, murder."
And you might imagine, there's quite a bit of overlap here
"Oh, good morning Robert!"
with the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope,
"This is a magical room. Where did the water come from?"
"Uh, oh, well, the... The water comes from the pipes."
"Where did the pipes get it?"
although characters who were Born Sexy Yesterday
are often highly skilled at something that men will respect.
Frequently, that thing is combat.
Now, so far, we've only focused on the female characters associated with this trope.
But it isn't really about them.
"That doorway spins."
Like most things in Hollywood, Born Sexy Yesterday is written for men.
And ultimately, it's a relationship trope.
"5'9".... blue eyes... long legs... great skin..."
"You know... Perfect."
So that means we need to talk about the other side of the equation.
The male heroes.
Typically, he's a straight, red-blooded man who has, for a variety of reasons,
found himself alone, or unsatisfied in love.
He finds himself disenfranchised, or otherwise directionless.
He either can't find, or doesn't want, a woman from his own world.
A woman who might be his equal in matters of love and sexuality.
He does have one thing going for him though.
He knows all about living life as a normal human being.
"Too bad you don't eat food."
"You might find it to be quite pleasurable."
"How do you get pleasure out of food?"
"Here."
"No, thank you."
"If you want my secret, you'll eat my sandwitch."
Of course, so does every other guy on Earth.
Which should make him unremarkable.
"Chew! Chew!"
Except, to a woman Born Yesterday,
because she's presumably never known another man,
he would seem like the smartest, most amazing guy in the entire universe.
"Mm, this is fun! What is it?"
"Ham and cheese on rye with mayo."
And here where we start to see how the trope is constructed as a male fantasy.
It's precisely her naivety and her innocence
that allows her to see something special in him.
Something that other less innocent or more experienced women cannot.
"System: normal. Estimated resuscitation time: 600 seconds. Commencing countdown."
Now we don't have time to go into it here,
but Born Sexy Yesterday is absolutely everywhere in Japanese anime.
Now I should note that Born Sexy Yesterday is not a modern trope.
In fact, it's been a fixture of classic Hollywood science fiction films
since the beginning of the genre.
"This was intriguing."
"I wonder just how far women would permit this to go."
"It's nothing really personal, just a kiss."
"Hmm. But why should people want to kiss each other?"
"It's an old custom."
"All the really high civilizations go in for it."
"But it's so silly."
"But it's good for you, though."
"It stimulates the whole system."
"As a matter of fact, you can't be in tip-top health without it."
"Really? I didn't know that."
"I'd be only too happy to show you."
"Well, thank you very much, Lieutenant."
"No trouble at all."
Forbidden Planet in 1956 is one example.
The Time Machine in 1960 is another.
"Well, what's your name?"
"Weena."
"Weena?"
"How do you spell it?"
"Spell?"
"Spell! Write! Can't you write?"
Then there's a character of Nova from the original Planet of the Apes.
"Look at that. I..."
"I taught you to smile."
who is the protagonist's love interest despite not understanding
the concept of language.
The trope usually involves a white woman, but Born Sexy Yesterday is an offshoot
of a much older media convention.
One in which white adventurers discover indigenous women.
Although in this case, science fiction replaces colonialism
as the mechanism driving that narrative.
"Big... Bada big boom."
"Big! Boom!"
"Yeah, big badaboom."
"Badaboom."
"Big boom. Big badaboom."
Still, sometimes it's a little of both.
Born Sexy Yesterday fetishizes the stark power imbalance
between a wiser, more experienced man, and a naive, inexperienced woman.
It's the ultimate teacher - student dynamic.
"It's the custom of my people to help one another when we're in trouble."
Star Trek is famous for making frequent use of this trope.
Perhaps, "infamous" is a better word, because the trope shows up
in the original series, and then in every other series afterwards.
"And this. Is this also helping?"
"You could call it that."
"Please, help me once again."
"Let's start by doing something different with your hair."
Seven of Nine's relationship with The Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager
is a prominent example.
Especially as depicted in the episode Someone to Watch Over Me.
"Try shaking your head a little bit."
"Is this more appropriate?"
Fans of that series will remember that The Doctor's own social naivety
is never framed by the show as something sexy.
"How shall I choose?"
"I think you'd look very nice in this one."
"I am uncertain how to wear such a garment. Assist me."
"Oh, I, I, I'm sure you'll manage. I'll go prepare the Holodeck."
"Remember, the idea is to have fun tonight."
"I'll expect a full report in the morning."
Although Born Sexy Yesterday was a major part of Seven's character,
at least to begin with, she is ultimately made much more than than that.
And outside of a handful of rather cringe-worthy episodes,
Seven's story is largely one of self-realization and self-discovery,
which manages to transcend the constraint of the trope.
To a large degree, this is also true of a character like Sonmi-451 from Cloud Atlas.
Like Seven, her romantic relationship is downplayed,
while her character development is made central.
"Knowledge is a mirror. And for the first time in my life,
I was allowed to see who I was, and who I might become."
Which brings me to this point.
The problem with this trope
is not necessarily with the female characters themselves.
If these were simply stories involving naive, extraterrestrial women
who learn about love, and humanity, then that wouldn't be an issue.
Likewise, if the male hero was also inexperienced, and our two protagonists
could discover love and sex together,
then that would avoid most of the troubling power dynamic issues.
"What's going on?"
"We need to understand how it works."
"What?"
"This chip. This body."
So for example, Cameron from The Sarah Connor Chronicles TV show
fits the trope.
But her relationship with the young John Connor
is framed as much more of a mutual exploration.
Since Born Sexy Yesterday hinges on a lopsided power dynamic,
it almost never portraits the other way around.
It's extremely rare for a more experienced female character
to teach a naive man about sex.
"I think I better go home now, Mary Sue."
"Why?"
"I think I might be... ill."
"Something's happening to me."
"That's supposed to happen."
"It is?"
"Yeah, trust me."
"Wait, no, no. No!"
"That's your dessert."
"You eat that with forks."
Perhaps that's because most grown women don't find the idea
of dating an inexperienced adolescent boy all that appealing.
"No, no, erm... Leave that last. Sandwitch first, dessert last."
On the rare occasions when the genders are reversed,
male ineptitude then becomes the butt of the joke.
"Hi. This is the woman from the baseball card store. Remember me?"
"Oh yes! Hi! Hello! Hot-diggity-dog!"
"Thanks for calling me on the telephone."
She may even end up falling for him.
But she falls for him despite his inexperience,
not because of it.
"Oh I'm so sorry! I forgot about the autowash."
Born Sexy Yesterday is about an unbalanced relationship.
But it's also very much connected to masculinity.
The subtext of the trope is the rooted in a deep-seated male insecurity
around sex and sexuality.
The crux of the trope is a fixation on male superiority.
The fixation with holding power over an innocent girl.
But in order to make that socially acceptable,
science fiction is employed
to put the mind of that girl into a sexualized adult woman's body.
It's a fantasy based on fear.
Fear of women who are men's equals in sexual experience and romantic history,
and fear of losing the intellectual upper hand to women.
In Woody Allen's 1973 comedy Sleeper, the protagonist is frozen,
and when he wakes up in the future, he's suddenly, and very conveniently,
the only man left on Earth who still remembers how to have sex.
That same exact thing happens to Stallone's character in Demolition Man.
"Oh my."
"Are all fluid transfer activities like this?"
"Better."
"Better?"
"Oh my."
So Born Sexy Yesterday is a science fiction trope
that's designed specifically so male heroes get to automatically be
the most extraordinary man in a woman's life,
again, because they are basically the only man to have ever been in her life.
As such, the trope rests on some troubling patriarchal ideas
about female purity and virginity.
By definition, characters Born Sexy Yesterday have no past lovers,
and no previous sexual experiences.
She's framed as pure and innocent, sexually and romantically,
unchanged and uncorrupted by the attention of other men.
The male hero therefore avoids even the possibility of being compared,
of being judged, of not measuring up.
At the end of the day, this is a male fantasy
about escaping the humiliation and projection.
Since he's the first and only man in this woman's life,
he gets to be the best by default.
Which means he doesn't even have to try to be a better partner, a better boyfriend,
or a better lover.
"That's what we call a kiss."
Of course, the reality is that life experience is a plus,
and not a minus in relationships.
And we need more media to reflex that.
We need media where men enthusiastically embrace women who are their equals.
Equals in everything, including in matters of love and sex.
So to all you would-be science fiction writers out there,
I'll leave you with this.
Innocence is not sexy.
Knowledge and experience, on the other hand,
now that, that's extremely sexy.
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