People With Rare and Unique Beauty Around the World

June 2, 2025
•18 min read
Here are stories of people with the rarest beauty around the world.
The young women in Ethiopia’s Mursi tribe pierce and stretch their bottom lips as a symbol of feminine beauty. Why? Let's delve into it, as not only will we be exploring curious beauty standards from around the world, but also people who have extraordinary conditions that make them uniquely beautiful.
Apatani Nose Plugs
For many Western women, the smaller the snout the better. However, for the women of India’s Apatani tribe, a more distinguished sniffer is preferable. They wear Yaping Hullo, or, put simply, wooden plugs that are pierced into the sides of the nostrils. Talk about having a stuffed nose!
But not only do the Apatani women stretch their noses, they tattoo their faces too. Typically, with a line going from the centre of their forehead to the tip of their nose, and 5 lines going from their lower lip to their chin. Which, by the way, is done by mixing pig’s fat with soot and hammering it into the skin with a thorny plant. And you think western tattoos seem painful?Interestingly, wood-wedged noses and facial tattoos weren’t originally intended to be a mark of beauty, rather the opposite in fact! But why would they deliberately make themselves less attractive? Historically, the Apatani tribe coexisted with numerous other tribes who would abduct the women due to their natural beauty. So, making themselves less conventionally attractive made them less of a target. Over time however, these body-mods became so commonplace that they’re now a hallmark of Apatani beauty. That being said, the Indian government banned nose plugs in the early 1970s to give young Apatani women a better chance of finding employment and avoiding discrimination. So, it’s mostly the older generation that still retain their distinctive look.Mursi Tribe Lip Plates
These days cosmetic procedures such as lip lifts and filler are all the rage; the bigger the lip the better, according to Western beauty standards. However one African tribe has their own version of a lip filler. Dwelling in an isolated region of Ethiopia, you might stumble upon the Mursi tribe. They’re pretty easy to spot considering the tribeswomen wear these huge lip plates!
When a Mursi girl becomes of age at around 15 or 16, her mother will make a hole in her lower lip and hold it open with a sodden plug until it heals. Over the next few months, the young Mursi girl’s lip will be incrementally stretched with increasing sizes of wooden plates. Impressively, these can reach up to 12-inches in diameter! Having experienced this, one can only imagine childbirth to be a breeze to the Mursi woman.Ohaguro, The Japanese Blackened Teeth
By the year 2026, the teeth whitening industry in the US alone is projected to be worth a whopping $8.2 billion! With those numbers, it’s fair to say that a pearly white smile is a big beauty standard. However, you’ll be surprised to learn that in some cultures white teeth are less desirable!
For centuries in Japan, a common beauty practice was what’s known as ohaguro, or, in laymen terms, blackening of the teeth. Both men and women would mix ferric acetate, vinegar, and tannins from tea and vegetables to create a black solution known as kanemizu. This was then applied to the teeth to make them as black as possible. And it would begin around age 15 to symbolize a person coming of age.Scarification In Africa
Almost everyone has at least one scar on their body, and you can guarantee that it comes paired with an elaborate war tale, true or not. But, while scars may often be seen as unsightly, in certain African tribes, scars are deliberately made in the name of beauty!
Hard to believe, but in Ethiopia’s Bodi and Surma tribes, South Sudan’s Nuer tribe, and Uganda’s Karamojong tribe, people’s bodies are intentionally filled with complex patterns of scars, as a way of showing tribal identity. While the process of scarification varies from tribe to tribe, it’s typically ceremonial and is done as a rite of passage when a person meets certain milestones like puberty or marriage. Similar to a charm bracelet, a person will continue to collect scars their entire life, symbolic of their personal journey. As you can probably imagine, the process of being scarred isn’t a particularly pleasant one. The patterns are created over an extended period of time with both razor blades and thorns. Pain is beauty, right? Though, it’s due to this very act of endurance that the scars symbolize a person’s strength and beauty, despite the process potentially leading to a variety of diseases, such as hepatitis-B, tetanus, and HIV. Nevertheless, if the person expresses any pain during scarification, they’ll bring shame upon their whole family. Worse yet, a person who chooses not to be scarred will often be excluded from the tribe and banned from certain duties. Because of all this, the act has proven incredibly controversial.Himba Tribe Hair Rituals
For many people, hair is one of their biggest weapons of self-expression. Hair, it seems is just as important to the women of Africa’s Himba tribe as it is to us.
But first, who are the Himba tribe? They’re a 50 thousand strong semi-nomadic tribe who’ve lived in northern Namibia for centuries. The most distinctive thing about the tribe is its women, whose hair is braided and coated in a red clay-like paste known as otjize.Dayak Women Ear Weights
Ear stretching, while particularly trendy in the West during the early 2010s, has been a fairly common body mod in many cultures since ancient times, from Africa’s Maasai tribe to King Tut himself. Though nobody, arguably, ever did it quite as dramatically as the Dayak women.
#Indonesië : prachtige natuur, rituelen en mensen! Wij presenteren: een lid v/d Dayak #Kenyah stam.
Māori Tattooing
Sure, that tat on your arm might “represent” your family’s dead dog. However, for many cultures, specifically Māori culture, tattoo designs date back centuries and can literally represent a person’s whole ancestral background.
The Māori people, if you didn’t already know, are the indigenous people of New Zealand, who arrived there from East Polynesia in the early 1300s. Settling there, isolated from any other cultures, they developed their own unique way of life, language, crafts, performing arts, and mythology.The Long-Neck Kayan People Of Myanmar
It might sound odd, but having a long neck is often considered attractive, exuding a sense of elegance and giving balance to a person’s proportions. The Kayan people take the length of a woman’s neck very seriously!
Who are they? Well, the Kayan people, not to be confused with the Kayan Dayak people from Borneo, are a tribe that mainly reside in Myanmar and are a subgroup of the Red Karen people. As mentioned, neck length is particularly important to Kayan women, so they do something pretty bizarre. Starting around age 5, multiple heavy brass rings are fitted to their neck. More and more are gradually added until eventually the weight of them pushes down their collar bone, which compresses the ribcage and creates the illusion of a longer neck.Harnaam Kaur, The Bearded Woman
Self-love is unfortunately something many struggle with. Our next uniquely beautiful person is someone who knows the struggle of self-love all too well. Meet Harnaam Kaur, a Punjabi woman from the UK.
Harnaam has polycystic ovary syndrome, which in simple terms is when the female body produces an increased number of male hormones known as androgens. This means Harnaam is able to grow a rather impressive beard! And while that, of course, can be one of the most distinctive symptoms, the condition also causes irregular menstruation, fertility issues, weight gain, and even hair loss.Harnaam was just 12-years-old when she was first diagnosed with PCOS, and as she gradually developed facial hair throughout puberty, she sadly found herself a victim of bullying. She relentlessly attempted different ways to remove her beard, but nothing worked, leaving the poor girl severely unhappy.Fortunately though, Harnaam eventually realized that what seemed to be a curse might actually be a blessing. And with that, she began to embrace her beard! In fact, she now makes a living championing body positivity. And Harnaam is certainly making waves, as not only was she the first bearded woman to walk the runway at London Fashion Week in 2016, but she even holds the world record for youngest woman with a full beard!Winnie Harlow: Supermodel With Vitiligo
Oftentimes we assume supermodels are quote unquote perfect in every way. However, one model who’s tearing up the rulebook of Western beauty standards is Miss Winnie Harlow! Winnie, who is of Jamaican ancestry, was first diagnosed with the condition vitiligo at just 4 years old. This, if you didn’t know, is a chronic autoimmune disorder that causes patches of skin to lose color.
The condition can be segmental, whereby it only affects one area of the body, or, as in Winnie’s case, non-segmental, meaning it affects multiple areas of the body and is somewhat symmetrical. In either case, vitiligo occurs when melanocytes, those being skin cells that create pigment, are attacked and destroyed, resulting in the skin developing to be a milky-white color. Vitiligo equally affects all races and roughly 0.5 to 1% of all people have it, but it’s more noticeable on people with darker skin tones, such as Winnie’s. As mentioned, vitiligo is an autoimmune disorder, which is when a person’s immune system incorrectly attacks healthy tissue. Unfortunately, this makes people with vitiligo more at risk of developing other autoimmune disorders.Still, despite this, plus the constant bullying during her childhood that eventually led to depression, Winnie never gave up. Nope, instead she decided to use her unique condition and natural beauty to her advantage when she appeared on America’s Next Top Model in 2014!Sophia Hadjipanteli's Unibrow
For many women, and men, manicured eyebrows are extremely important. And while styles come and go, a neat, kempt brow is typically the desired look. Well, that is for most. Sophia Hadjipanteli likes to do things a little different.
The Rare Beauty Of Amina Ependieva
They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and while that might be true, this next girl’s beauty is in her own eye! Meet Amina Ependieva. The young girl from Chechnya has distinctly different colored eyes, one a piercing icy blue and the other a deep and warm-toned brown.
Caitin Stickels & The Cat Eye Syndrome
From their striking eyes to their natural poise, cats, despite their defiant attitude, are often revered for their beauty. Be that as it may, you wouldn’t wanna actually look like a cat, right? Well, this next uniquely beautiful person might change your mind about that! Meet Caitin Stickels.
Russian Barbie Doll
Despite setting utterly unrealistic beauty standards, for many women, the Barbie doll has the dream body. So lots of women strive to have glowing blemish-free faces, luscious locks, and teeny-tiny waists. But taking this to the extreme is this next lady. Meet 35-year-old Angelica Kenova, or, as she’s better known, the Russian Barbie doll!
