Describing someone as average-looking is rarely seen as a compliment.
But most of us would be quite happy to look like a computer-generated depiction of the 'average' English woman, Welsh woman, or even the average Burmese.
More than 100 women of 41 different nationalities and ethnicities were photographed in cities all over the world in an effort to find common regional features.
The photos were carefully laid over each-other using a computer program to create an individual image for each area - and the biggest surprise is that the 'common' faces are all quite beautiful.
There are, of course, regional differences in face shapes, colours and features.
Peruvians and Iranians have bigger mouths, Ethiopians and Samoans have curlier hair, and fringes seem to be big in Latvia and Poland.
It does make sense that the common women are pretty, both in evolutionary terms, and because averages rule out blemishes.
But most of the photos depict a woman who seems to be in her early twenties - which definitely is not the average age of any nationality.
The study also throws up other results that suggest that maybe the samples weren't quite as wide-ranging as they could have been.
The average South African, for example, definitely shouldn't be pale-skinned - only 9.2 per cent of the population define themselves as white.
Some anomalies can be explained by how the pictures were compiled. The prevalence of mousy hair is a result of blondeness being easily 'diluted'.
South African Photographer Mike Mike - who inspired the images with a web project called The Face of Tomorrow compiling the faces of various cities - explains: 'Blonde hair gets lost pretty quickly when you start averaging.
'You'd need a population 75 per cent blonde to get it visibly remaining. You'd probably have to go to Iceland for that result.'
Mike, who lives in Istanbul, travels the world taking photos of the first 100 people he can persuade to pose in each place - noting their nationality every time.
The 46-year-old got the idea for his project when he was studying at London's Goldsmiths College.
He said: 'Sitting on the underground train, I was intrigued by the sheer diversity of the place – Somalis, Indians, Americans, Zimbabweans, Scandinavians and a hundred other nationalities vying for their place in the metropolis.
'I thought: “What is this place, what is a Londoner?”
'I thought if one could merge all the people in a place like London one would be looking at the future of that place – one would have some notion of what a Londoner is or will become.'
But most of us would be quite happy to look like a computer-generated depiction of the 'average' English woman, Welsh woman, or even the average Burmese.
More than 100 women of 41 different nationalities and ethnicities were photographed in cities all over the world in an effort to find common regional features.
The photos were carefully laid over each-other using a computer program to create an individual image for each area - and the biggest surprise is that the 'common' faces are all quite beautiful.
There are, of course, regional differences in face shapes, colours and features.
Peruvians and Iranians have bigger mouths, Ethiopians and Samoans have curlier hair, and fringes seem to be big in Latvia and Poland.
It does make sense that the common women are pretty, both in evolutionary terms, and because averages rule out blemishes.
But most of the photos depict a woman who seems to be in her early twenties - which definitely is not the average age of any nationality.
The study also throws up other results that suggest that maybe the samples weren't quite as wide-ranging as they could have been.
The average South African, for example, definitely shouldn't be pale-skinned - only 9.2 per cent of the population define themselves as white.
Some anomalies can be explained by how the pictures were compiled. The prevalence of mousy hair is a result of blondeness being easily 'diluted'.
South African Photographer Mike Mike - who inspired the images with a web project called The Face of Tomorrow compiling the faces of various cities - explains: 'Blonde hair gets lost pretty quickly when you start averaging.
'You'd need a population 75 per cent blonde to get it visibly remaining. You'd probably have to go to Iceland for that result.'
Mike, who lives in Istanbul, travels the world taking photos of the first 100 people he can persuade to pose in each place - noting their nationality every time.
The 46-year-old got the idea for his project when he was studying at London's Goldsmiths College.
He said: 'Sitting on the underground train, I was intrigued by the sheer diversity of the place – Somalis, Indians, Americans, Zimbabweans, Scandinavians and a hundred other nationalities vying for their place in the metropolis.
'I thought: “What is this place, what is a Londoner?”
'I thought if one could merge all the people in a place like London one would be looking at the future of that place – one would have some notion of what a Londoner is or will become.'
