Body Shape Calculator: What Body Shape Am I?

Each figure below is drawn from a set of measurements, the four under it, and the calculator sorts each set into the shape named: what you see is what the rules read. Your own result draws your figure from your tape beside the matching one.

All differences are in inches, as FFIT publishes them. If you enter centimeters, the calculator converts first. The rules run in this order and the first one that fits is your shape, after the apple check.

Two corners of the space fit no FFIT rule: a bust 10 or more inches over the hips with a defined waist, and hips 10 or more over the bust with a defined waist and no high hip shelf. The calculator names the nearest shape, top or bottom hourglass, and says the body is past FFIT’s range.

Over light clothing or none, standing straight, feet together, the tape level and snug without pressing.

Styling advice is convention, not research: the stylist’s usual aim is balance, so that the eye reads the waist at its narrowest and the top and bottom of the body as even. Here is what that means shape by shape.

Hourglass (and top and bottom hourglass): Keep the waist visible and let clothes follow the curve. Wrap dresses, belted coats and high-waisted trousers mark the waist where it is narrowest. Fitted knits and stretch fabrics follow the line; boxy cuts hide the waist and add width. Top hourglass: V and scoop necklines; bottom hourglass: A-line and bootcut below a fitted top.

Pear (triangle) and spoon: Add width and interest above the waist, keep the lower half simple. Boat necks, structured shoulders, puff sleeves and lighter or patterned tops widen the top. Dark, plain bottoms in A-line skirts, wide-leg or bootcut trousers skim the hips. Spoon: start the skirt or trouser shape at the waist so it skims the high hip shelf instead of gripping it.

Apple: Draw the eye up and down, away from the middle. V necks and open collars lengthen the upper body; long open layers make a vertical line. Empire waists and tops that skim instead of cling give shape without pulling at the middle. Straight or slim-straight trousers show the legs, often the narrowest part.

Rectangle: Build curve at the waist, or lean into the straight line. Peplums, wrap tops and belts over a layer create a waist; ruffles or detail at bust and hips add curve. Straight, sharp tailoring, shift dresses and boyfriend cuts suit the line as it is. Cropped jackets and high-waisted bottoms set a waistline where you want it.

Inverted triangle: Soften the shoulders and add volume below the waist. V necks, raglan sleeves and darker, plain tops narrow the top half. A-line and pleated skirts, wide-leg trousers, prints and color below the waist widen the hips. Skip shoulder pads, boat necks and heavy detail at the shoulders.

Color works with the same aim: lighter and brighter draws the eye, darker recedes. The color season analysis finds the shades that suit your skin, hair and eyes, so you know which colors to put where you want attention.

With hips well over the bust and a waist 9 or more inches under the hips, the high hip decides. Divide it by the waist: under 1.193 is a bottom hourglass, where the hips curve out smoothly; 1.193 or more is a spoon, where the hips step out right below the waist. A 28 inch waist makes the cut at a high hip of 33.4 inches.

That is why the calculator shows the high hip box but asks for it only when your other three numbers fall in that zone. For everyone else it changes nothing.

SizeUSA, the national sizing survey of 2003, scanned about 10,000 American adults. Sorted by FFIT, over half of the women aged 18 to 25 were rectangle, about 15% spoon and 12.5% hourglass; at 26 to 55, over 80% were rectangle, spoon or inverted triangle and 8% hourglass (Newcomb and Istook, 2006). The same study found the US Junior and Missy sizing standards cut for the hourglass at every size, a shape only 8 to 12.5% of those women had: its explanation for clothes that fit badly off the rack.

Those shares are American women scanned in 2003. Other countries sorted by the same rules come out in a different order (Lee et al. 2007 compared American and Korean women), so read them as one population, not a world average.

FFIT was built from women’s scans and sorts women’s figures; no male system with published tape rules was found, so this calculator covers the female shapes and does not guess at men’s. For a man, the measurable questions behind a body shape search are fat at the middle and muscle for his height: the waist to hip ratio calculator reads the first against the WHO cut-off, the body fat calculator turns a tape into body fat, and the FFMI calculator says how much muscle that leaves.

Two limits are worth knowing. First, the tape sites: when 1,679 3D scans were measured once at FFIT’s sites and once at the UK sizing survey’s, up to 40% of bodies changed shape (Parker, Hayes, Brownbridge and Gill, Ergonomics, 2021). Second, the rules are fixed inches, not proportions, so the same proportions sort differently at different sizes: 36-28-37 inches is a rectangle, 20% larger it is an hourglass.

So measure at the sites above, twice, and if you sit close to a line, read both neighbors. The shape is a styling shorthand; the waist to hip ratio calculator is the measurement health research uses.