Beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder! A journalist and blogger based out of Kansas City named Esther Honig revealed what different countries find as “beautiful” with an experiment she dubbed “Before & After.”
“In the U.S. Photoshop has become a symbol of our society’s unobtainable standards for beauty. My project, Before & After, examines how these standards vary across cultures on a global level,” Honig explained on her blog of the goal of her project, which revolved around having diferent people photoshop her face based on what they thought would make her look attractive.
The human interest reporter went on to explain she contacted “nearly 40 individuals, from more than 25 countries such as Sri Lanka, Ukraine, the Philippines, and Kenya” and asked them to enhance a bare-faced photo of herself with the sole request to “make me beautiful.”
In a series of 22 images, Honig is transformed from having a full-on blowout and rosy cheeks for USA’s rendition to wearing a colorful headdress and red eyeliner in Morocco’s.
Each photo “is a reflection of both the personal and cultural concepts of beauty that pertain to their creator,” Honig noted. “Photoshop allows us to achieve our unobtainable standards of beauty, but when we compare those standards on a global scale, achieving the ideal remains all the more illusive.”
Check out all the photos here to see what each country finds to be “beautiful.”