In an experiment aiming to take a look at beauty standards around the world, a journalist had her image photoshopped in over 25 countries to see how beauty ideals vary from culture to culture.

Esther Honig, a journalist based in Kansas City, Missouri, sent a photo of herself to 40 people in 25 countries with the request: 'Make me look beautiful.'

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The 24-year-old journalist, who titled the project 'Before & After', reportedly came up with the idea while she was working as a social media manager at a small startup.

While browsing Fiverr, an international freelancing website, Honig noticed a prevalence in individuals with Photoshop skills.

'It immediately occurred to me that in this pool of workers, each individual likely had an aesthetic preference particular to their own culture. If you sent, say five of them, the same image they were bound to alter it in drastically contrasting ways by influence of their cultural concept of beauty,' she says.

Working with freelancers in countries like the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Morocco, and elsewhere, Honig was able to see how beauty aesthetics varied according to where the freelancer photoshopping the image was from. She then revealed the series on her personal website.

The journalist said that the image she received from Morocco surprised her the most, while the photo she received back from the US made her shriek.

Photos were widely varied with some choosing to lighten Honig's skin tone and color her hair, and others narrowing her eyebrows and adding makeup in order to make her look more feminine.

Honig says that what she truly learned from the project is this:

"Photoshop allows 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."

Perhaps the saying 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder' holds more truth than most of us realize.

Tagsbeauty, different, countries, woman, ideal, photoshop, Esther Honig