Artist Esther Konig is a freelance journalist based in the United States. She was interested in examining how beauty standards morph and vary around the world, so she embarked on a creative project. How might different cultural notions of beauty impact how a woman's beauty was received?


For Before & After, Konig took an original unaltered self-portrait and sent it around the world to professional photo retouchers in more than 25 countries. Each retoucher was given the same instructions: simply "make me beautiful," said Konig.

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The results are stunning in their variety and skill. So far, Konig has collected more than 40 images that demonstrate how vastly different beauty is perceived across a number of national borders. In some, hair was added, or eye color was changed. In others, entire outfits were Photoshopped onto her frame.

Konig continues to reach out to photographers around the globe, and is always stunned by the results. "What I've learned from the project is this," she said. "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 [elusive]." [BuzzFeed]