Woman Has Body Photoshopped in 18 Countries to Examine Beauty Standards

Since forever, the media has criticized and illustrated what a “perfect” woman should look like.

In an effort to explore varying beauty standards from around the globe, an online doctor service based in the United Kingdom asked 18 graphic designers to alter a woman’s body to reflect their country’s ideal woman.

“The goal of this project is to better understand potentially unrealistic standards of beauty and to see how such pressures vary around the world”, the project says.

The study was inspired by a previous experiment conducted by Esther Honig.

You can check out the study’s results below.

“The experiment also included a small sample study that asked 35 people what the Photoshopped woman’s body weight in the image might be, assuming a height of 5’4”.

From Marilyn Monroe to Jennifer Aniston, celebs and models – and magazine editors, fashion designers, of course – have set beauty standards for American women.

Some countries gave her an exaggerated hourglass figure, while others gave her an apparent BMI of 17.5, or near anorexic. China and Italy had the thinnest submissions, at about 101 to 107 pounds, while Spain had the heaviest at about 153 pounds. Some designers changed the hair color, skin tone, and undergarment color.