Well, this is eye-opening: Esther Honig, a freelance journalist from Kansas City, Missouri, sent an untouched self-portrait to 40 Photoshop gurus-found through the freelance-sourcing website Fiverr-from more than 25 countries (including Italy, Argentina, and Kenya). She paid them between $5 to $35 to do one thing: make her "beautiful."
Interestingly, all of the edited photos that came back were totally different. "Seeing some jobs for the first time made me shriek," she told BuzzFeed. "Other times images, like the one from Morocco, took my breath away because they were far more insightful than I could have expected."
You can check out Honig's Web site for all of the photos she's collected so far, but here's a sneak peek of what you'll find.
Here's her un-Photoshopped before picture:
COURTESY OF ESTHER HONIGNow take a look at what experts (and some clearly amateurs) from other countries did to the original.
COURTESY OF ESTHER HONIGMorocco
COURTESY OF ESTHER HONIGBangladesh
COURTESY OF ESTHER HONIGGreece
COURTESY OF ESTHER HONIGUkraine
COURTESY OF ESTHER HONIGPhilippines
COURTESY OF ESTHER HONIGU.S.
We'll give you a moment to pick your jaw up off the floor. "What I've learned from the project is this," says Honig. "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 illusive."
You got that right, Esther. Instead, what you should focus on is building your confidence, making healthy choices every day, and living your life in total bliss.
