Science shows that we all feel this way — that we’d be much happier with the way we looked if we could adjust a few things just a little bit. Photographer Scott Chasserot investigated what it means for us to feel “ideal” through his project Original Ideal. He took straight-on photographs of a bunch of different people and the manipulated them digitally, offering each of his subjects dozens of manipulated photographs (plus their original photographs) to choose from. Some of these photographs had been manipulated to conform to traditional beauty standards, while others were manipulated so that they conformed less.
Obviously, everyone picked a more ‘ideal’ version of themselves. How was Scott sure their choices were honest? Through science, of course! He hooked each participant up to an EEG headset, which detected brainwaves related to positive emotional reactions as they viewed each image.
Multiple Identities of a Face 