In Paolozzi's early collages of film stars, as in de Kooning's concurrent collages and paintings of women, a gap is exposed between glamour and daily life in which ideal beauty is confronted with ugly reality. Both Paolozzi and de Kooning engage with ideals of womanhood and of female sexuality. In this collage from 1950 the face is a composite portrait assembled from torn strips of photographs of different glamorous women to produce a generic portrait that denies individuation. The caption below it reinforces this. Giving the work its title it declares that the female of the species is Deadlier than the Male.