Topic: body types

Not A Pre-Existing Condition: Why Body Types Don’t Make You Athletic (Or Not Athletic)

Not A Pre-Existing Condition: Why Body Types Don't Make You Athletic (Or Not Athletic)

Nearly every fashion magazine features a regular spread offering to help women “Dress for Your Body Type.” They’re about finding the right jeans, or the best pencil skirt, or the optimal top for various body types: apple, rectangle, curvy, wedge, triangle, full figured, boyish, curvy, hourglass, and athletic, to give a sampling. But aside from the obvious problem of reducing women’s bodies to geometrical shapes, fruit metaphors, and thinly veiled insults, there are some deeper issues sparked by this framework. More »

My Body Gallery: The Site That Shows You What “Real” Women Look Like

My Body Gallery: The Site That Shows You What "Real" Women Look Like

Discovered via The Hairpin, a new website where you can view photos of real women the same height, weight and body type as you. Fill in any or all of the categories—in addition to height and weight, you can enter shirt size, pant size or whether you’re ‘apple,’ ‘pear,’ ‘banana,’ or ‘hourglass’ shaped—and My Body Gallery will pull up a gaggle of user-submitted images from women within that same range. The idea is to provide a place for women “to see that the world is not a place of cookie cutters,” according to the site; to show not how women ‘should’ look, but ‘how we DO look.’ And unlike those ‘hot-or-not’ or guessing game sites, there’s no rating or guessing involved (thank goodness). More »

The Body Positive: Fearing The Butt My Mama Gave Me

The Body Positive: Fearing The Butt My Mama Gave Me

My extended family is mostly women, and a lot of us share the same body type. We are not a particularly tall people, nor of ample bosom. What we lack up top, however, we make up for in hips. Most of us also have very prominent rear-ends. It’s a body type that can start out in life bringing all the boys to the yard but, without proper maintenance, it all goes south—literally. And that, my friends, is what scares me. More »

Tracy Anderson Can’t Really Change Your Body Type…Or Can She?

Tracy Anderson Can't Really Change Your Body Type...Or Can She?

Tracy Anderson is known for molding the bodies of Hollywood celebrities (Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna have credited the trainer for getting their post-baby bodies back in check), and her long list of A-list clients has built her a nice bicoastal biz. But now she’s taking her workouts to the masses, claiming that she can even morph the bodies of mere pleabians with her new (aptly named) DVD set: Metamorphosis by Tracy. “With metamorphosis by Tracy, you can actually design the body you’ve always wanted, defy your genetics, and redefine your body type,” promises the promo, below. We don’t doubt that Tracy can help a couch potato slim down, or even help an exercise buff see results with her DVDs and diet plan. But change our body type? We doubt that she can make everyone’s hips as slim as Madonna’s, and getting legs like Gwyneth’s would require painful leg lengthening procedures for the average woman (we’re only 5’6”, after all). More »