How 18 Different Countries Photoshopped One Woman to Fit Their Idea of ‘Beautiful’

“We’ve had in the excess of 100 interviews, and we still haven’t found that one that doesn’t want it,” said Volvo technical manager Lena Ekelund in 2004. That March, the Swedish car manufacturer debuted the Volvo YCC, “Your Concept Car,” at the Geneva International Motor Show—then one of the most esteemed auto shows in the world. Even though cars had existed for nearly a century, the YCC was, as Volvo shared, “the first car designed and developed almost exclusively by women.”

Two years earlier in 2002, a group of female Volvo designers, engineers, and marketing professionals went to a seminar at the company to learn how they could improve their reach to female consumers. What they learned, Volvo shared, was that “women purchase about 65 percent of cars and influence about 80 percent of all car sales; yet, for a century, men have made most of the decisions in the design, development and production of a car.” Something needed to change. After all, if women were making the decisions, if they were buying their own cars, shouldn’t cars also reflect their needs? They petitioned Volvo to let them create a concept car, a prototype, informed by women’s driving decisions and desires. Not only did they make it, as Volvo shared, they did so “faster and at less cost than most concept cars.”