To me they did a good job of emphasizing the contrast between the self-perception and the third-party perception of these womens' faces.
I'm not sure I follow the stigma you seem to convey about "traditionally beautiful adjectives". Some of these women had long faces, large teeth, wrinkles. All attributes that were the center of their attention despite never being the focus of the people who looked at them.
I have a hard time understanding how it is exploitative — this terms still bothers me in itself because it's utterly vague — for this video to compare and contrast how strangers synthesize a woman's physical presence against the way they see themselves.
"The lesson for these women is that they aren't as ugly as they thought, and in fact they fit right in with traditional beauty standards."
No, that's your — actually cynical, in this instance — interpretation. What is shown in the video is the clear emphasis of several of these women on their lesser physical traits (wrinkles, unease, tired eyes, impe