Photoshop beauty experiment produces surprising results

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but a recent experiment shows that eyes don’t just vary from person to person – they vary from culture to culture. Journalist Esther Honig of Kansas City, Missouri sent an unedited image of herself to roughly 40 photoshoppers in different countries. The 24 year-old accompanied the photo with a simple request: ​“Make me beautiful.” With varying degrees of skill, some artists changed her skin color while others added a face full of makeup and defined eyebrows. Others left her virtually untouched. While her face structure remained largely unaltered, some cultures saw fit to add clothing – namely Morocco, who added a hijab. Honig’s test further elucidates the difficulty of finding a universal standard of beauty: ​“Photoshop allows us to achieve our unobtainable standard of beauty, but when we compare those standards on a global scale, achieving the ideal remains all the more elusive.” Check out the interpretations of several cultures below and visit Honig’s website for more of her Before & After collection.