The important role of female choice in sexual selection and evolution itself confirmed some men's worst fears. The Belgian painter F??licien Rops painted several versions of a fashionably dressed woman taunting a broken man-doll.

Rops wrote: "Men! ... you will always seem, to me, no more than feeble puppet to be toyed with by women for their sport."

The Lady with the Doll and a Fan by F??licien Rops (1877)