In this article, I’m not going to tell you how to get rid of your hip dips. However, if you are here to get rid of your hip dips, this is essential read. Because hip dips are 100% nonsense as a physical defect.
(If you’ve never heard of hip dips, you’re in luck and are blessed and should really turn the pages. Please get on with your life, you’re doing everything right.)
What are hip dips?
The human hip is surrounded by muscles and padded with fat. The normal shape of these tissues often indent when viewed directly from the front or back. (Another term for hip dips is “violin hip,” if that helps.) So, when you stand up straight and stand in front of a mirror, you may notice that your hips look like a concave shape where you might have hoped to see them a Jessica Rabbit-like convexity.
(Jessica Rabbit is a cartoon, of course, and is not bound by the limits of human anatomy. This is your first hint that hip dips are not a bug.)
When you’ve had enough of it, fat can take on its own shape: maybe rounded, maybe angular hips. The less fat you have, the more you can see the shape of the bones and muscles underneath.
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For a visual, this tweet has a perfect example. And as a bonus, it exposes the lie: The photo of a woman “without” hip dips is the same woman who has hip dips in another photo. She just poses differently.
There is no way to “fill” hip dips with exercise
Most of the articles on hip dips will acknowledge that they are normal and common, and then they’ll say something like, “You can’t get rid of your hip dips, but here are some exercises to help minimize them.” This is 100% bullshit.
You see, while exercise can make a muscle bigger, it can’t build muscle where there are no muscles. The whole reason hip dips exist is because there is no muscle in that location. Let’s look at an anatomy diagram:
On the left side, you can see where the top of your thigh bone has a pointed piece called the trochanter that protrudes into the side of your hip. (The iliac crest, which can also be imagined as the hip bone, is a good 15 to 20 centimeters above it.) The alleged “hip dip” occurs roughly in the area of the trochanter. Stand up, press your buttocks together, and poke around a little. You will see what i mean.
Now look at the muscles shown on the right. You have your gluteus maximus behind your trochanter, the gluteus medius above it, the tensor fascia lata above and in front of it, and your quads below.
Which of these muscles can you exercise to minimize your hip dips? That’s right, none of them.
What actually happens when you do glute exercises?
If anyone in this world knows how to change the shape of their butts through exercise, it’s bodybuilders. And it should tell you something that bodybuilders are not obsessed with minimizing their hip dips. Here’s a little unscientific rundown of how many mentions of hip dips Google can find in some subreddits:
- Women’s fashion advice: 91 results.
- xxfitness: 494 results.
- Femalebodybuilding: 3 results, and they all come from a post by a person who does not appear to be a bodybuilder.
If you’ve ever seen photos of bodybuilders butts you’ll understand why. These people compete between building muscle and losing fat. You can see where your butt muscles are. Look at the third photo from Dayana Cadeau in this Instagram post. She’s got all of her hip and buttock muscles built up, and she still has a dramatic indentation on the side of her hip in certain poses because what could be there?
What about people who don’t have hip dips?
Okay, now that you’ve questioned all of your previous assumptions about hip build-up, you’re probably thinking of a person you’ve seen, maybe a particular photo that you could swear on that person didn’t have a hip dive . I would bet you are looking at one of the following:
To pose
This is the easiest way to “get rid of” your hip dips in a photo. Simply push your hips out and to the side, relax your muscles a little, and bend your hip joint slightly to bring your torso a little closer to your thighs.
The most dramatic way to do this is to point one hip toward the camera. The other hip doesn’t pop out in the same way, but that’s fine because it’s angled out of sight. Danae Mercer demonstrates here:
Facetune / Photoshop
Never underestimate what you can do with a photo after you take it. Editing a photo is a proven way to make a human body look like the human body doesn’t actually look like.
surgery
I hate to say it, but there is a way to literally fill in your hip dips and that is surgery. To quote Plastic surgery website:
To repair violin hips, you need to have what is known as fat transfer surgery. This surgery actually involves two procedures: liposuction and fat graft or fat injection. Liposuction takes the fat from another area of your body – usually your stomach or flanks (“love handles”) – and the fat graft procedure places the fat where it looks more attractive.
When fat is grafted onto the hip and buttock areas, most surgeons refer to the procedure as a Brazilian Butt Lift (BBL) or a Mini Brazilian Butt Lift (Mini-BBL).
I don’t like pointing at people and saying “this person had an operation on their buttocks” any more than I like pointing at people and saying “this person is on steroids” because it is gross and unnecessary to shut down other people’s bodies Judge, and because if you don’t know the person’s medical history (which is none of your business), you are likely to get some of your guesses wrong anyway.
Are there people with round hips who have not yet had an operation? I will not rule it out! People come in all shapes and sizes! But it is completely unrealistic to believe that something is wrong with you just because you saw or thought you saw a person with an anatomy different from yours.
