Three years ago, photographer Sara Melotti was working as a fashion photographer — shooting tall, waifish model after tall, waifish model. It was 2015 when it occurred to her that these images, which offered only the most narrow definition of beauty, could have a lasting negative effect on women. "I realized the work I was producing was contributing to very unrealistic standards of beauty — killers of self-esteem — that made my friends and countless other women suffer," she tells Refinery29. So, as a counterpoint to the fashion industry's standards, Melotti started her ongoing series, Quest for Beauty This search "to rediscover and redefine the meaning of Beauty," as she describes it, has taken her around the world, photographing local women about what beauty means to them. Melotti says she approached all types of women — "daughters, mothers, sisters, friends, strangers, students, workers, young, old" — during her visits. And, when a language barrier wasn't an issue, she'd interview them as well.One question she made sure to ask everyone was, "What makes a woman beautiful?" She told us that this one, of all her questions, brought up the most surprising answers: "No one really [had] an answer regarding appearances. Every single one of them responded with, 'kindness, confidence, a big smile...' that, to me, is fucking amazing!"The women in Melotti's photos barely discuss appearance in their interviews. In some of the more remote areas she visited in Morocco, Vietnam, and Mexico, the women didn't seem to bother with concerns of exterior beauty. "At one point [in Vietnam]," she said, "one of the ladies grabbed some leaves and made a cute, heart-shaped object with them, and handed it to me and said, 'heart is what's important.'"