On March 2, 1972, NASA launched Pioneer 10, the first probe destined to leave our solar system. Carl Sagan, the renowned public scientist, frequent NASA collaborator and proponent of the search for extraterrestrial life (SETI) convinced the agency to affix a 6-by-9-inch plaque to its antenna engraved with, as he put it, “a little bit of where we are, when we are, and who we are” on the off chance that an alien intelligence might find the probe. But when and if they do, aliens won’t be getting the whole picture.

The most famous image on that plaque is of a naked cis man and woman. But while the man’s penis is on full view, the drawing omitted any sign of the woman’s vulva. In other words, as the scientist-artist Joe Davis puts it, we sent aliens an image of “a man and a Barbie.”