One Woman and Photoshop Define The Global Beauty Standards From Pakistan To USA

The Engineer

10 years ago

How do you define beauty? Something that pleases your eye would be the most generalized definition of it. However, that definition makes it a term that is relative to culture and geographic location. Meet Esther Hoing who is a freelance journalist working from Kansas City who sent her picture to more than 40 Photoshop enthusiasts with the request to make her beautiful.

The project was titled as Before & After and she was struck by the idea when she realized how prevailing Photoshop is becoming. In her own words; ‘It immediately occurred to me that in this pool of workers, each individual likely had an aesthetic preference particular to their own culture.’

Her response when the images came in is best described in her own words; ‘It immediately occurred to me that in this pool of workers, each individual likely had an aesthetic preference particular to their own culture.’

She further tells that; ‘What I’ve learned from the project is this: Photoshop [may] allow 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’. What follows are the results she got from different country’s Photoshop enthusiasts. More than one image per country suggests more than one user working on the image. Enjoy!