Female body shape or figure is the cumulative product of a woman's skeletal structure and the quantity and distribution of muscle and fat on the body. As with most physical traits, there is a wide range of normality of female body shapes.
Human beings and cultures have perennially focused attention on the female body as a source of aesthetic pleasure, sexual attraction, fertility, and reproduction. There are, and have been, wide differences on what should be considered an ideal or preferred body shape, both for attractiveness and for health reasons. These have varied among cultures simultaneously.
Women's bodies occur in a range of shapes. Female figures are typically narrower at the waist than at the bust and hips. The bust, waist, and hips are called inflection points, and the ratios of their circumferences are used to define basic body shapes.
Read more about Female Body Shape: Impact of Estrogens, Fat Distribution, Muscles, Changes To Body Shape, Measurements, Female Shapes, "Dimensions", Social and Health Issues, Bodies As Identity, Alteration of Body Shape, See Also, References
Famous quotes containing the words female, body and/or shape:
“In life, then, no new thing has ever arisen, or can arise, save out of the impulse of the male upon the female, the female upon the male. The interaction of the male and female spirit begot the wheel, the plough, and the first utterance that was made on the face of the earth.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“And deep into her crystal body poured
The hot and sorrowful sweetness of the dust:
Whereof she wanders mad, being all unfit
For mortal love, that might not die of it.”
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)
“Bid her paint till day of doom,
To this favour she must come.
Bid the merchant gather wealth,
The usurer exact by stealth,
The proud man beat it from his thought,
Yet to this shape all must be brought.”
—Francis Beaumont (1584-1616)