Beauty standards have existed for as long as humans have lived in societies. These ever-changing ideals for beauty have given rise to some of the most influential and recognizable figures in history – such as the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, and Lisa del Giocondo, also known as the subject of da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
However, these beauty standards can also have a negative impact on the way that we view ourselves – particularly in the case of women, who often face much more rigid and often unrealistic standards.
Around the world, each country has its own definition of beauty. While there may be some similarities between neighboring countries, the overall differences are quite striking. As humans, we are generally aware of these beauty standards and often feel the weight of them if we feel that we’re unable to meet the expectations set for our appearance – but what about A.I.?
Artificial Intelligence has been on the rise for the past few years, with new software being made available constantly. Many of the latest A.I. tools consist of image generators, which begs the question – do they, also, perpetuate these global beauty standards? To find out, we at Great Green Wall used A.I. to generate the ‘ideal’ beauty standard for each country.
Methodology:
The reserachers used the A.I. image generator, Midjourney, to create a beauty pageant representative for each country in the style of the ‘Miss World’ pageant. We used what the A.I. believes to be the beauty standard, based on what it thinks the general public perceives to be the ‘ideal’ for that country.
For each country, the same prompt was given, with only the country name being changed.
The prompt given to the A.I. was: ‘Create a realistic photo of what the [country name] public consider the ideal woman’s body to be Miss [country name], please show a full length photo of the woman in a dress. No text in the image.’
According to A.I., the ideal ‘Miss Ethiopia’ has a glowing deep skin tone, a thin body type with broad shoulders and toned arms, and black or brunette hair worn in a natural curly style. The facial structure has a very clear beauty standard, with a long, thin face and sharp jawline – alongside a long nose, full lips, and a high forehead.