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Why a woman is never beautiful enough

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Image source: priscillaywilson.wix.comPhoto credit: Che Langdon
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A couple of months ago, journalist Esther Honig did a project titled 'Before and After' through which she attempted to understand the degree to which a country's culture could influence public perception of beauty. She sent a photo of herself to photo editors across the world with just one instruction — Make Me look Beautiful.  

She got a great response with 40 photo editors sending back edited photos of herself as per what they construed as beautiful. She found images 'intriguing and insightful in their own right; each one is a reflection of both the personal and cultural concepts of beauty that pertain to their creator'. 

The project was carried forward by another journalist Priscilla Yuki Wilson.

Wilson is half Black and half Japanese. Her uncommon biraciality and unconventional looks lead to questions about her identity. 

At a time, when society that has unrealistic and conditioned perception of beauty, especially for women, Wilson wanted to know how someone with her looks would be seen and how her image would be altered to fit the supposed norms.

Calling her project 'Before and After 2' she followed Honig's footsteps and sent across her photograph to editors around the globe.

The results are astounding.

Some editors in order to 'beautify' the image did a few relatively innocuous changes such as adding make-up, accentuating features and bringing proportions and changing hair colours. 

While others gave her appearance a complete turnaround — by completely altering skin complexion, facial features, and even bone structures — to the extent that she was not even recognisable anymore.

Following are a more drastic alterations to her image from various countries

European Union (Image source: priscillaywilson.wix.com)

India (Image source: priscillaywilson.wix.com)

Macedonia (Image source: priscillaywilson.wix.com)

Mexico (Image source: priscillaywilson.wix.com)

Montenegro (Image source: priscillaywilson.wix.com)

The Netherlands (Image source: priscillaywilson.wix.com)

The results of both experiments and especially Wilson's shows that different nations have may have different perceptions on beauty, but the 'standards' remain universally unattainable and regressive ones. making women across the world feel inadequate about the way they appear.

The degree of changing Wilson's natural looks by not only changing her face but making her thinner in some cases shows how dangerous these 'standards' are to a woman's self image.

They are simply a testament to the existing sexist notions in every part of world.

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