Creative photo series examines how conventional standards of beauty vary across different cultures on a global scale.
American journalist Esther Honig asked 40 photo re-touchers from more than 25 countries to enhance her portrait and show their vision of beauty.
“Make me Beautiful.”
Argentina
Bulgaria
Philippines
Kenya
India
Morocco
Chile
Italy
Bangladesh
Pakistan
Greece
Israel
Bangladesh
United Kingdom
Sri Lanka
Vietnam
Indonesia
Serbia
Ukraine
United States
Original Photo
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Erin
original is definitely the most beautiful!
Jul 2nd, 2014
Kathy
Of course, Ms. Honig is beautiful in the original picture, natural beauty.
But the interpretation of ‘beauty’ of each country artist is very interesting. In many cases, the artist left Ms. Honig’s natural beauty to shine through, with a few slight modifications which I find refreshing. In a number of cases, it’s interesting that the artist applied key traits that are common in that culture (more olive-toned skin, thicker eye brows, etc.)
To be honest, I was the most disappointed by the US artist, but not surprised, at the ‘glamorous’ make-over that reminds me of the Beverly Hills 90210 babes.
Thank you, Ms. Honig for this eye-opening exploration!
Jul 2nd, 2014
Chase
What a cool study! Whats up with United States changing so many features?…how rude :)
Jul 2nd, 2014
jimbo
Fascinating, such simple changes making such dramatic looks.
Jul 2nd, 2014
Thunder
An online freelancing platform like fiverr (where she hired the freelancers who retouched her orginal photo) is not a place to define beauty standards around the world. There are better ways to research and visualize this.
Jul 2nd, 2014
Barrie Hall
Great project.
Jul 2nd, 2014
Swiper Fox
They should have made the Philippine picture a light brown (kayumanggi) in color; not whitish in color.
Who ever made her US picture doesn’t know how to make her beautiful.
Jul 3rd, 2014
Shilov
How come Bangladesh gets two entries?
Jul 4th, 2014
Caleb
They finally did something with her hair. That was bothering me nd come to find out it was my country that made that change. The Italian concept is the one I like most besides the original that is.
Jul 5th, 2014
Fajar Satria
I’m an Indonesian with Pakistan beauty standards hahahaha
Jul 6th, 2014
Alex
Surprise surprise the thing that’s consistent throughout all the images is supple, youthful skin.
As interesting as this is, I do question how effective this particular method was. The skin hue barely changed throughout the images, yet we know people don’t hold the same tones in their views of beauty. How about hair colour and style? Weight? These are all important factors that couldn’t really be explored in this example.
This is really more of a study about cosmetics and makeup, which is interesting in itself, but hardly representative of beauty.
Jul 7th, 2014
zany
The ability to make her beautiful lies primarily in the graphic artist’s skills (and it shows big time), plus it’s very subjective – it it the artist’s own opinion of beauty.
Jul 9th, 2014
NSF
Original is always the most beautiful , USA Mmmmmm not really .
Aug 8th, 2014
Nirina
It’s kind of sad how a fair few of the retouchers changed her skin tone, her hair and airbrushed out a lot of her natural features. India though…what happened to her body?? It looks like the Vietnamese person is the only one who left the photo almost untouched. Wow.
Aug 18th, 2014