Woman asks different cultures to photoshop her picture into their ideal of beauty....

[Velaniz]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0...n_5534062.html

Honig found that individuals from every country applied a distinct perspective on beauty to her image. She was surprised by the degree to which a country's cultural values could show up as aesthetic preferences. Specifically, an image she received back from Morocco was "a bit of a shock initially." She told The Huffington Post via email, "[It] definitely highlighted my own lack of cultural awareness. Of course, someone from a country where the primary religion is Islam might elect to add a Hijab to my image as that aligns with their own cultural customs. For me it really added depth to my project by touching on the concept of religion and custom, not just aesthetics."

Honig is reluctant to draw a "moral of the story" from the project, which is ongoing. "Flipping through the collection of Before & After, one may spot trends in models of beauty that represent each designer’s culture of origin, but that is entirely based on our interpretation," she said.

Still, the project dispels the myth of a singular beauty norm. "Overall what I’ve learned from this project is this; 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. "

So standards of beauty are partly culturally ingrained, and as a result subjective. Probably not very surprising.

[Rukentuts]

Those photoshops are just...bad.

And of course beauty is cultural. There's a reason why overweight people were found attractive during historic times when food was scarce, where nowadays healthy people are generally found more attractive, for one example.

[Redlokyldoreifanggore]

As has been said on other sites where it was posted, this seems less about standards of beauty and more about random people with cringe worthy photoshop skills manipulating her head. That USA one is completely ridiculous and barely recognizable as a human.

[Deleted]

What people made those photoshops?

[Fahrenheit]

The person who did the US one can't be serious, it looks more like a doll.

Where's Quint when you need him... "...lifeless eyes, a doll's eyes..."

[Reeve]

Best looking one is Ukraine imo.

What the hell did the American do to that poor girl. She's very pretty without photoshop. I bet it would have been more interesting if they started with a more average looking girl.

[Deleted]

What is with the pictures from Germany and the US? They are just...bad and really strange.
That said, I think she looks best on the original picture and pretty much everyone made her look worse. Sometimes a LOT worse.

[Deleted]

What is with the pictures from Germany and the US? They are just...bad and really strange.
That said, I think she looks best on the original pictures and pretty much everyone made her look worse. Sometimes a LOT worse.

Look at Australia, where did the pink cheeks come from?

[Aspect of Death]

Hahaha at the USA and Germany.. Although the photoshops where bad, and most of them came under "funny", I'm just not sure if that is serious.

[Jaojin]

I understand germany's actually, but not the US one (aside from the terrible photoshop, green eyes, and blonde hair... shorten her face, really?) Most are quite good at understanding the cultural aspects of beauty. I see a lot of indian hollywood actresses with dark eyebrows for instance, never really registered as a cultural thing til now though. Some hardly have any alteration at all, which is rather surprising. I see that as an indication of cultural enlightenment, where beauty is more natural and less artificial.

[Aspect of Death]

I understand germany's actually

My first thought about the Germany one was "Ooh they try to make them(Germany) look like racists." Since she is ghostly white, though not blond aryan or germanic. Anyway I don't think any of this is serious, more like just a bunch of bullshit.

[Vagician]

Eww, I'm English and that UK one is not good. Dat German one though...10/10 wud smash

[Dezerte]

Seems like a pretty shoddy test, so I'm glad she didn't draw any other conclusions than those we already know - beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think I expected too much from those photo-shops to be honest, the Philippines being the most WTF-worthy.

[tumppu]

I like the Vietnamese one, mostly because they didn't change around the original too much. Artificial "beauty" is not beauty.

[Thessik-Irontail]

A lot of things that we consider natural or biologically built in, are in fact culturally constructed. Anthropology is a real eye opener in this regard.

[zealo]

Where did her bones go in the one from India? o.O

[Slaskra]

They don't represent any culture's standard of beauty so much as they represent an individual photoshop artist's standard of beauty, limited by their photoshop skills.

If she wanted to see how cultural values affect standard of beauty, this accomplished nothing.

[Cosmic Janitor]

It's more shocking to me that only the Phillippines attempted to fix that mess she calls hair .

They also obviously didn't poll a large enough sample size, I have yet to see a widespeat mass fetish for that kind of reddish hair in germany and that pale of a skin (usually people frequent tanning salon's at an alarming rate) so it is like asking what my neighbor Klaus finds attractive in a women, chances are he has a different ideal than me.

But the winner is definetly how bad people are with photoshop. I mean in which country are these massive dark circles around the eyes attractive? Only a couple used a tool to fix that... and the US one will give me nightmares, lol. Finding so many people who are bad at photoshop to that extend requires quite a bit of search I guess.

[Deleted]

If she fixed her hair the original pic would be the best one, bed hair rarely looks good on anyone.

[Reeve]

It's more shocking to me that only the Phillippines attempted to fix that mess she calls hair .

They also obviously didn't poll a large enough sample size, I have yet to see a widespeat mass fetish for that kind of reddish hair in germany and that pale of a skin (usually people frequent tanning salon's at an alarming rate) so it is like asking what my neighbor Klaus finds attractive in a women, chances are he has a different ideal than me.

But the winner is definetly how bad people are with photoshop. I mean in which country are these massive dark circles around the eyes attractive? Only a couple used a tool to fix that... and the US one will give me nightmares, lol. Finding so many people who are bad at photoshop to that extend requires quite a bit of search I guess.

Let's see what you come up with using the original photo.