What The ‘Ideal’ Female Body Looks Like In 18 Different Countries. The Results? May Surprise You!

Every day women around the world are bombarded with advertisements, links, pictures, and all sorts of different media forms from TV to direct mailings, which depict unrealistic standards of beauty. The people, especially the females, in such photos are often beautiful, happy, glowing, and seemingly perfect in every way imaginable. The reality is that these targeted ads and links have almost all been Photoshopped and airbrushed to a dramatic extent. What you are viewing is not real and it’s becoming increasingly obvious as the beauty standards reflected in them seemingly become more and more out of touch with reality.

Women are constantly being exposed to these unrealistic images and pressured to live up to them. Plastic surgery rates are skyrocketing, the beauty industry is booming, and women are suffering mentally and emotionally because of the negative impact unattainable images of women have on their psyches. In an attempt to gauge and examine how women from different areas of the world perceive beauty, the website Superdrug Online Doctor asked female designers from 18 countries to Photoshop a picture of a woman. They specifically asked the designers to alter the image so that it reflected what the citizens of their country would regard as the “ideal female form.” The results varied widely across the globe and reveal intriguing insights into what different cultures value and desire, in terms of women’s bodies.

On one end of the body image spectrum is China. They appear to like women who are long-legged and extremely thin. Italians like their ladies to resemble supermodels, while Venezuelans prefer large breasted women with tiny heads. The U.K. seemed to be the most realistic country, since it appears that they regard average, healthy size and proportions as comprising the ideal female image. Check out the video to see how each country changed the original photo and to see little quirks within several of them (The Netherlands like their ladies in boots!).