Actually, in many parts of Africa obesity is the beauty ideal for women. Check out Mauritania. Thomas Morton's HBO bit on it is fascinating.

Obesity is the ideal, there are even 'feeding camps' young women are sent to with the goal of gaining massive amounts of weight. Often there is a bonus if the girls develop 'desirable' stretch marks. Of course this practice says quite a bit about women's place in Mauritanian society, though the obvious parallel are "fat camps" in the us.

I'm not endorsing this practice or endorsing the ideal, but come on people. Just a very little investigation reveals that beauty is not an objective truth but a societal construction - and that (shockingly!) diversity in social norms exists the world over.

As for the artist, I have to say I find it pretty boring. The women are beautiful of course and I have zero criticism to make of them. What I dislike is her stated purpose "our differences are what make us beautiful" - a very milquetoast statement for an artist. Followed by pictures without any real differences! The women all occupy a narrow age range, they're all very slim, prominent eyes, small noses, defined cheekbones... Very beautiful according to our western standards. And all women! No beautiful men the world over? If that doesn't say something about women's roles in society.... It's not shocking really, the artist curated the collection so we're seeing her vision of beauty, and how it can be found all over the world. Still very much true, but not so indicative of "our differences make us beautiful".

Frankly, I would have been far more interested in seeing beauty from the native cultures eyes. For example if she had asked local populations about the most beautiful people and presented a collection from any given place. Would be very interesting to compare and contrast the overall trends.