A Collection of Beauty Standards Worldwide

Since forever, the media has criticized and illustrated what a “perfect” woman should look like. Beauty standards have been put on an unattainable pedestal. Women strive for the impossible, working towards unhealthy weights, using harmful diets and other forms of weight loss.

Superdrug, an online drug company based in the U.K., hired Fractl, a marketing agency, to assign 18 graphic designers, from 18 countries, to edit a photo of a young woman according to the beauty standards of each of their countries. “The goal of this project is to better understand potentially unrealistic standards of beauty and to see how such pressures vary around the world,” said a doctor from Superdrug.

The study was inspired by a previous experiment conducted by Esther Honig. The experiment requested that 25 graphic designers, newbies and experts, to “make her beautiful.” The results of the study were intriguing but not as exaggerated as the results of this study.

The Female Perspective

Of the graphic designers, 14 were women and 4 were men. Superdrug really wanted to focus on the female perspective and their opinion on how women’s beauty standards are perceived. “We focused on female designers, as we wanted a woman’s view of what her culture finds attractive and to understand more about the pressures they face,” Superdrug said. The men who participated in the study were required to ask for input from women, in order to get a more accurate image.

The Images Show an Array of Beauty Standards

The interpretation of what is attractive in each country varies. Some depictions are realistic and others not so much. Some are very subtle changes and others are crazy alterations, which turns the woman into a completely different person than she was before. Italy and China showcased the thinnest body images. While Spain revealed the heaviest body image. The images went even further than body shape. Some designers changed the hair color, skin tone, and undergarment color.

The Takeaway

Beauty standards are not the same across the board and they are constantly changing. Women will continue to embrace their bodies, but will always have the notation of what is perceived as beauty in the back of their heads. Furthermore, this study proves that beauty does lay in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I want to see what the beauty standards are for men in different countries. Check out this website for the photos.