Red lips to thick brows: How 25 countries define a beautiful woman

Though some wise men had declared years back that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, in an age where airbrushing, fairness creams and botox are thriving industries by themselves, you’d expect the popular definition of a woman’s beauty to be quite standardised.

To test what the world means when they say ‘beautiful’, freelance reporter and journalist Esther Honig decided to let artists in 25 countries Photoshop a profile picture of hers, according to their country’s ideal of beauty. The results were quite surprising.

Honig’s oval face, big eyes and slightly freckled skin was photoshopped by 40 photo editors in 25 countries and while some changed the shape of her face to make it look fuller, some re-shaped her mouth. Some redid her hair, others put oodles of make up on her face.

E! Online reports: “Honig would message various freelancers around the globe with the above image of her and the following request: “Hi my name is Esther Honig and I would like you to enhance this image using Photoshop. I trust you to take whatever steps you see necessary. Make me look beautiful.”

In their article on Honig’s project titled ‘Before & After’, HuffingtonPost notes how in some cases, the country’s cultural traditions had a significant role to play in their idea of beauty.

For example, the picture photoshopped in Morocco slightly changed Honig’s pale complexion to give her skin a rosy glow. The editors chose to even out her freckles and discolouration and made her lips redder. However, they also gave her a traditional Muslim head scarf.

The UK version of her picture is almost elf-like with her skin being smoothed, eyebrows darkened and complexion made almost shiny. In the US, her face was slightly elongated, eyebrows turned into perfect arches and hair given a glamorous supermodel-like side-sweep.

In Pakistan, on the other hand, made her soft features rugged, squared her jaw slightly and narrowed her eyes.

And while you might have expected this in India, it was Germany that makes her face a pale shade of white, thinned her lips down and makes her face smaller. The editor there even gave her auburn hair.

India, however, comes up with one of the less flattering works of photoshop, thickening her eyebrows to almost unreal proportions. Also, the airbrushed image erases the impression of the collarbones making her look rather like a bad painting rather than a real human being.

Honiger told HuffingtonPost that though the exercise was fun it did make her conscious about her skin tone.

“I voluntarily sought out this opportunity and was pleased with how it turned out, but it did make me more aware of certain things like the uneven tone of my skin which was touched up by nearly every editor. I’ve watched my image subtly soften with filters and cloning brushes as well as radically transform with splicing, stretching and re-angling that completely restructured my face. Seeing some jobs for the first time have made me shriek,” she told HuffingtonPost.

Check out Honig’s project here.