Are you dressing for Your Body Type?
Part 1: Identifying Your Body Type
- Tip 6: Know that body shape is largely pre-determined, but can be modified somewhat by diet and exercise
Your genetics do determine how body fat is carried on the body, and cannot be altered. However, if you are not carrying around excessive weight, your body type will not be quite as exaggerated or obvious. Slender women look more similar to each other than obese women.
- You cannot “Spot Reduce”. Toning a certain body part is possible–you can do core exercises to help flatten abdominal muscles. But your body will not do it in just one place. On women, the change is most dramatic around your chest, hips, and posterior, whether you want it to be or not.
- You cannot “Spot Increase”. Muscle tone can be increased, and can cosmetically make a difference. Doing chest exercises or using skin creams will not make your bust larger. While chest exercises firm and tone up the bust line, this will not actually increase breast tissue.
- Certain body types have a predisposition to gain or lose weight in certain areas. For example, a woman with an hourglass figure will tend to gain or lose weight in the bust and hips, and not the waist. But a woman with an apple shape will tend to gain in the hips, and not so much in the bust–even if it is the same amount of body weight.
- Cardio and resistance training are most commonly used to alter body types. By knowing if you retain fat more or lose it quicker, you can create an exercise plan to cater to your bodily needs.
- Remember that clothes are meant to flatter your body, so take care when choosing garments. Even a model with an “ideal” body type will not look good in everything. When a designer is putting together a photoshoot or runway show, they pick the model that best shows off the clothes…models are not interchangeable.
- What is the ideal body type changes through history. In America during the Victorian period, the “Hourglass” was perfection, and required women to don corsets to get that look. In the 1920s, the ideal woman’s body was the boyish “Rectangular” type requiring women to wear girdles and flattening larger chests.
- Different cultures and subcultures see different body types as ideal. An African-American woman in America may be praised for a shapely, round posterior. However, the same quality in a woman in Japan may not be.
Part 1: Identifying Your Body Type
- Tip 7: Look at your genetics
Family genes play a large role in your body type. Look at other women in your family to see a common trend. If the women in your family tend to have a certain body type, chances are good you do as well. Remember, it is not just your mother’s family, but your father’s as well!