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:
“There is not one female comic who was beautiful as a little girl.”
—Joan Rivers (b. 1935)
“When once—which every body must be—you are convinced of the wickedness and deceit of men, it is impossible to preserve untainted your own innocence of heart. Experience will prove the depravity of mankind, and the conviction of it only serves to create distrust, suspicion—caution—and sometimes causelessly.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)
“We cannot and must not get rid of nor deny our characteristics. But we can give them shape and direction.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)