The Ideal Female Body Shape (Full Guide)

In this article, I’ll focus on the ideal female body. I wrote another about the ideal male body. Over the past fifteen years, I’ve surveyed thousands of men from cultures all around the world. You can see the results of one of those surveys here. Different cultures sometimes prefer slightly different things, but I’ll focus on what was universally preferred across all of them.

We’ll cite the other research as it comes up. Some of it might surprise you. Most women have a fairly good idea what other women prefer, but they aren’t nearly as good at guessing which body shapes men find most attractive.

This article is long, so I understand if you don’t want to read the whole thing. Here’s a quick and simple trick to make yourself instantly sexier: have a drink. It will boost your attractiveness (to yourself) by 50%. This is known as the Beauty is in the Eye of the Beer-Holder effect (study). You don’t even need to have a real drink. The participants who drank the placebo beer got the same attractiveness boost.

If you’re looking for a longer-lasting improvement, or perhaps one that other people would notice too, that’s what the rest of this article is all about.

An Important Caveat

I’m sure you already know this, but you aren’t just your body. Men care about more than your body shape. It’s somewhat of a myth that men are more superficial than women. It’s just that men and women look for different things.

If you want to know how important your hip-to-waist ratio is, think about how much you care about a man’s height. If you care deeply about how tall a man is, know that some men feel just as strongly about how small your waist is. If you don’t care about height, know that some men couldn’t care less how wide your hips are.

Most men don’t look at women critically, trying to find weak spots. If your butt is too small but you have a great waistline, most men will look more at your waistline, less at your butt, and they’ll think you’re beautiful anyway. Or vice versa.

If you think men are crazy for trying to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, when what you actually prefer is a guy who looks casually athletic, like a soccer player, there’s a flip side to that, too. Most men aren’t looking for one of those crazy Kim Kardashian figures. Most men think noticeable cosmetic surgery looks weird. The average man prefers a woman who looks casually healthy, feminine, and athletic.

What is Sexiness?

Most of what makes a woman’s body attractive to men is rooted in signals of health, youthfulness, and femininity. The men who were drawn to healthier, younger, and more feminine women were more likely to have healthy children who would then go on to have more children. These preferences have been refined over tens of millions of years, rooted in the most fundamental and primordial parts of our brains.

These preferences aren’t unique to men. Women are attracted to male bodies in a similar way, to a similar degree, just with different criteria. Men are fertile for a longer part of their lives, so signs of youth are less important, whereas signs of strength are more important. Most women find taller, stronger, healthier, more capable men more attractive.

These preferences aren’t unique to humans. Animals have their own ways of doing it. Peahens do the same thing when they choose to mate with the peacock with the most beautiful tail feathers.

What makes people different is that most of us choose to settle down into monogamous relationships. That means, compared to other animals, we tend to put less emphasis on beauty and more emphasis on other factors that make some a great partner and parent.

That’s just as true of men as women, by the way. 80% of the men I surveyed said their dream was to have a lifelong marriage with someone they love.

This article is about the most attractive body, though, so let’s focus on that.

The Link Between Health and Attractiveness

Sexiness isn’t very easy to fake. People are remarkably good at spotting subtle cues of genuine health. So, instead of focusing on any one specific detail, it’s usually better to think more holistically, focusing on getting stronger, fitter, leaner, and healthier.

For example, healthier women have more radiant skin, regardless of their skin colour (study). A higher intake of vitamins and minerals (good nutrition habits), higher levels of oxygenated blood (good exercise habits) and a healthy amount of melanin (exercise, nutrition, and sunlight) will turn your skin redder and yellower, giving you a healthier “glow.”

For another example, having wider hips relative to your waist indicates more subcutaneous fat (healthy fat), less visceral fat (unhealthy fat), and greater femininity. It’s also the shape most women develop during puberty and lose after menopause, giving it a strong association with fertility. And it suggests you aren’t currently pregnant or recovering from a pregnancy.

In both cases, the best way to give off a more attractive signal is to develop the underlying trait. If you lift weights, do cardio, eat a good diet, and live a healthy lifestyle, you’ll become healthier, more youthful, and more feminine, and you’ll emit those signals in a genuine way.

I’ll go into way more detail, and some of those details are fascinating, but try not to lose sight of the forest.

The Most Attractive Body Type

What has a much bigger impact on how attractive you are isn’t your body shape, per se; it’s whether you’re in good shape or not. Almost all men from almost all cultures throughout almost all of history have preferred women who are healthy, feminine, and youthful. However, that has little to do with your bone structure or how naturally curvy or thin you are. You can have thinner or thicker bones, wider or narrower shoulders, or be shorter or taller.

However, every body type has different struggles as they try to get into better shape. A naturally thin woman will benefit from building muscle, and she’ll probably have trouble eating enough food to gain weight. On the other hand, a naturally overweight woman will look better if she gets down to a healthy body-fat percentage, but losing weight can be tough, especially with all the high-calorie foods that are so readily available.

It’s also true that some women have an easier time building an attractive figure. Some women have naturally wide hips, small waists, and broad shoulders simply due to their bone structure. They might also have a genetic tendency to store more fat in their thighs, breasts, and butt, with less around their stomach, giving them an hourglass figure even if they don’t eat well or exercise.

Much of what appears to be genetic could also be due to lifestyle. Most people know that women who exercise more and eat better diets tend to be leaner and more muscular. However, it goes deeper than that. Exercise, nutrition, and lifestyle can also cause you to store less fat in your waist and more fat in your breasts, thighs, and butt (more on that here).

The Three Female Body Shapes

The vast majority of women have a body shape that somewhat fits into one of these three categories:

All three of these women might be in great health. The thinner woman may have a slender bone structure, a small appetite, prefer lower-calorie foods, and enjoy forms of exercise that burn calories without stimulating muscle growth, such as jogging, yoga, or pilates. She might be healthy and fit, with an impressively long life ahead of her. This is common for naturally thin women.

Similarly, the naturally heavier woman might exercise for several hours each day, but maybe she has a large stomach and an eager appetite, and it all seems to go right to her thighs. That isn’t really a problem. That’s a healthy place to store fat, and she isn’t overweight.

However, when I surveyed 600 men, 78% of them chose the woman in the middle. She has the combination of a small waist and wide hips. She has a healthy amount of body fat, and it’s stored in healthy places. She also looks quite athletic, with strong legs and an athletic upper body.

All three women might be in great shape, but the woman in the middle is the one who is the most conspicuously healthy, youthful, and feminine. At a glance, she appears to be in the best shape.

Don’t focus too much on her specific body, though. What matters more is what it signals. She could have a slightly thicker waist, much wider hips, and way stronger muscles, with smaller breasts. As long as she still looks impressively healthy, youthful, and feminine, it will still send all the right signals.

The Benefit of Looking Extra Healthy

There’s another nuance to add. The first woman has the most common body shape. Most women lean towards being overweight. For example, in the United States, 69% of women over the age of twenty are overweight or obese. However, it’s the least preferred. She only got 9% of the votes. That means there’s more supply than demand. It will be harder for this woman.

The third woman has a less common body shape. 13% of men found the thinner woman the most attractive, and it’s possible that fewer than 13% of women have that body shape. There might be more demand than supply. I suspect it will be easier for her.

The woman in the middle definitely has the greatest advantage, though. The vast majority of men prefer her more athletic figure, and it’s relatively rare for women to be in such conspicuously great shape. Plus, appealing to a wider variety of men gives her more choices, making her more likely to find someone she likes.

There are situations where it can make sense to appeal to a niche. If you’re super into sports, you might want to dress in a sportier way so that you appeal to men who would love to do sporty things with you. Your appearance would be a useful filter. That makes sense. It makes less sense to reduce your choices over something that has nothing to do with your personality. That filter would just make things harder.

I’d also watch out for creating other sorts of accidental filters. If you get plastic surgery, it might create a filter for guys who are into that sort of thing, too. Maybe you find yourself attracting guys who are unusually fixated on beauty, or who take steroids, or who also get plastic surgery. That isn’t necessarily bad, but make sure that’s the sort of filter you want.

In my case, I have long hair and tattoos. Most women aren’t into either of those things, but I don’t mind the filter. I prefer looking this way, and I ended up attracting a woman with many of the same interests as me.

The Most Attractive Female BMI

According to most women, the ideal female body is quite thin. Most women prefer thinner body types, less muscular development, and lower body fat (including a smaller butt and thighs). Women with a passion for fashion often develop a preference for even thinner body types, sometimes to the point where it stops being healthy.

Men are attracted to healthy women, but they mistakenly assume women prefer unhealthfully big steroid guys (from my survey here). The same is true the other way around. Women are attracted to healthy men, but they mistakenly assume men prefer unhealthfully thin women.

Just like some men fall into the trap of “more muscle is more manly is more better,” some women assume “more slender is more feminine is more better.”

Let’s start by looking at the healthiest female BMIs. The best study we have is a large meta-analysis with data from over 5.8 million participants (study):

• Underweight (<18.5 BMI): Being underweight definitely isn’t healthy, but there’s a bit of reverse causation at play. It isn’t just that being skinny makes you sick, but also that being sick makes you skinny. The most serious diseases often cause dramatic weight loss. That might be why men prefer the look of women who aren’t skinny: they look healthier.
• Low-Normal Weight (18.5–22.9 BMI): Until recently, this was considered a perfectly healthy weight, but now it appears that weighing a little more is even healthier, especially when the extra weight comes from muscle and healthy fat (as opposed to belly fat).
• High-Normal Weight (23–25 BMI): This now seems to be the golden zone. This is the BMI range most strongly associated with the best health and longevity.
• Low-Overweight (25–27.4 BMI): This is about as healthy as having a high-normal weight. There’s no significant difference. You’re overweight, yes, but it’s actually healthier than having a low-normal weight. As long as you don’t have excessive belly fat, I wouldn’t worry about it at all.
• High-Overweight & Obese (27.5+ BMI): This is when the extra body fat starts to harm your health and longevity. It starts off as a small downside, and then risk shoots way up as your BMI crosses 30, venturing into obese territory.

You can check your BMI here:

My surveys and most research I’ve seen show that men tend to prefer a BMI of around 23, give or take a couple of points. For example, I recently surveyed 600 men, asking them which female celebrities had the most attractive bodies. Most men chose women with a BMI of 23 (very roughly).

BMI has a problem, though:

• The Skinny Fat Problem: It’s possible to have a perfect BMI of 23 while still being over-fat, under-muscled, and out of shape. More on that here.
• Muscle is Heavy: You may have an overweight BMI of 28, but with more of your weight coming from muscle, giving you larger glutes and thighs, rather than a larger waist. This is healthy and looks great. It’s just that it’s relatively rare, so it isn’t captured very well in studies like this. Most women with a BMI of 28 are over-fat, not impressively muscled. More on this in a moment.
• Belly Fat is the Problem: If you have more of your fat stored in your waist, it can be unhealthy and look unattractive even at lower body weights. On the other hand, if you have a small waist with greater amounts of butt and thigh fat, with larger breasts, then you can be healthy and look great, even at higher BMIs. More on this in a moment.

So, BMI might give you an idea of which direction the scale should move, but body composition, proportions, and health are even more important.

Let’s get into the specifics.

The Most Feminine Body Shape

Fit young boys and girls tend to be built like string beans: they’re narrow everywhere. But as soon as puberty hits, male and female body shapes diverge, often quite dramatically.

Men are shaped by testosterone. Strong healthy men with high testosterone are shaped like V’s—big broad shoulders, lean stomachs, small hips. Women tend to find that v-taper body shape attractive because it signals masculinity, strength (broad muscular shoulders), and health (a small, lean waistline).

The same thing is true with women… except not at all. Women are shaped by estrogen, which creates a more hourglass figure, with a small waist, wide hips, and more fat in the breasts, hips, and thighs. It still helps to be strong, though. The top half of an hourglass is a V-taper. You still want athletic shoulders, pecs, and back muscles.

Now, at this point, you might be thinking, “But I’m a grown woman, and I’m still a bean!” Some of that may come from your bone structure, which we have no control over, but probably not as much as you think. For example, here’s Aomi’s three-month progress update:

The Ideal Waist-to-Hip Ratio

The healthiest and most attractive waist-to-hip ratio for a woman is 0.7 (study). Here’s what a 0.9, 0.7, and 0.6 waist-to-hip ratio looks like, so you can see the difference:

You could look at just the width of your hips and waist (as shown above), and many studies do that. But the depth of your hips matters just as much (study). Ideally, you’d want to factor in both the width of your hips and the size of your glutes.

To do that, measure your waist circumference at the narrowest point and your hip circumference at the widest point. That will give you a better idea of how attractive your waist-to-hip ratio is.

Don’t fixate on the exact number, though. Instead, try to work towards what the number represents. In this case, you want strong hips, some butt fat, and a lean waist, whatever ratio that gives you (study).

Being out of shape, eating a poor diet, and living an unhealthy lifestyle can cause more fat to be stored in your belly, with proportionally less fat in your hips and thighs. You can reverse that by eating a better diet, doing cardio, and trying to get enough sleep most nights:

The Most Attractive Butt Size

A woman’s butt is arguably her most attractive area. According to the studies I managed to dig up, 60% of men are more attracted to a woman’s butt than her breasts (study).

Researchers have also tracked eye movements to see where men look. They found that more often than not, when looking at a woman’s body, a man’s gaze tended to rest on her butt.

Your butt houses the biggest and arguably most important muscles in your body: your glutes. Because your glutes are such big, powerful muscles, they tend to grow proportionally bigger than every other muscle, even if you aren’t trying to emphasize them.

Having a bigger butt shifts your centre of gravity lower, which can be great for certain sports. You may have noticed that quite a few female athletes have especially impressive glutes:

So it could be that men find butts attractive because they’re such a great indicator of health and athleticism. However, that probably isn’t the full story.

Women also tend to store fat in their butts. Even if you get lean enough that you have a small waist with a flat stomach, you’ll probably still have quite a lot of fat in your butt. That’s especially true for fitter, healthier women, especially after puberty and before menopause.

Butt fat isn’t like belly fat. It doesn’t interfere with organ function, increase inflammation, or cause diabetes or heart disease. It’s healthy to have some fat reserves, and your butt and thighs are the healthiest places to store that fat.

You can live off those fat reserves during a famine. You can also use that fat to maintain fertility, fuel a healthy pregnancy, and produce breast milk—even during a famine. Butt fat is also particularly high in DHA, an important nutrient for fetal brain development (study). No wonder, then, that men find women with larger butts sexier—it’s a great sign of your health, resilience, fertility, and ability to have smart and healthy children, even during hard times.

Interestingly, when times get harder, big butts get sexier. It seems that men have an intuitive understanding that when resources are scarce, they should be looking for more resilient women—women with larger butts.

Lifting weights is by far the best way to build a bigger butt. Squats, deadlifts, and hip thrusts (and the many variations of those exercises) can make your butt much bigger, rounder, firmer, and higher, giving you a much larger hip circumference.

If you’re naturally thin, you can’t build bigger glutes out of nothing, so it’s also important to gain weight. I would try to gain that weight leanly, building muscle without gaining much fat. But even if you do gain some fat, it will be while eating a healthy diet, doing plenty of exercise, and living a healthy lifestyle, which means proportionally more of that fat will be stored in your hips and thighs, and so it will probably improve your appearance.

Can You Have a Butt That’s Too Big?

While going through all of the female attractiveness research, I haven’t come across a single piece of research that suggests that it’s possible to have a butt that’s too big. If your body-fat percentage is outside of the healthy range (over 30%), then that might be a problem. That’s not because your butt is too big, per se. It’s because your body-fat percentage is too high overall.

If you have a healthy overall body-fat percentage, then I’m not sure it’s possible to have a butt that’s too big. But if your hip circumference is more than about 1.4 times the size of your waist (giving you a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7), then your butt is probably big enough to look maximally attractive to men.

Are Women With Small Butts Attractive?

The idea of building an attractive physique is to build a body that’s strong and healthy overall. You don’t need to build a disproportionately large butt to do that. This is common with women who train using a more unisex approach, where all muscles are given equal emphasis. That’s perfectly fine.

The Most Attractive Female Body-Fat Percentage

With body fat percentage, it’s not as simple as leaner being better (survey). Body fat isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially in women. If you can’t see your abs in the mirror, you might care, and that’s okay—there’s nothing wrong with wanting abs—but men probably won’t even notice.

Most people—male and female—really like femininity, and more feminine women tend to have more fat. Men tend to be at their healthiest with 10–20% body fat, with more athletic men often falling within the 10–15% body fat range. That’s quite lean. Women tend to be at their healthiest with a body fat percentage of 20–30% (study):

• Under-fat: <19% body fat
• Healthiest and most attractive: 20–30% body fat
• Over-fat: >31% body fat

Some female athletes are very lean, but that often comes along with health problems, such as amenorrhea. Fertility is one of the signals of being sexually attractive, so it makes sense that men wouldn’t prefer women who are so lean that it reduces their fertility.

Men like boobs, butts, hips, and thighs. They don’t mind softer waists or lower levels of muscle definition. They like the look of some facial fat. Women often like the look of leanness in themselves and other women, but it’s rare for men to prefer it.

Do Men Find Cellulite Unattractive?

Cellulite is more common than most women think. Most female influencers have some degree of it; it’s just that they choose clothes that hide it and post photos where it isn’t obvious.

Cellulite is the dimpling created by body fat pushing up against your fascia. A good way to think of it is to imagine stockings around your legs. Men have fascia more like regular stockings, so it’s rare for any dimpling to show through. Women have fascia more like fishnet stockings, so it’s very common for dimpling to show through.

You can reduce the appearance of cellulite by getting leaner. However, even when you’re quite lean, there can still be enough fat to cause some cellulite sometimes. Plus, the healthiest and most attractive place to store fat is in your hips and thighs, so you wouldn’t exactly want to be super lean there anyway.

You can also reduce the appearance of cellulite by building muscle (guide here). The more muscle you have in your hips and thighs, the thinner your fat will be spread, reducing cellulite. This has the added advantage of making your butt and thighs bigger and stronger, which is great for your health and will make you look even better.

Most women don’t like having cellulite, but most men we surveyed don’t notice or care, especially when it isn’t extreme. Most men find feminine traits in women to be attractive, and cellulite is caused by a feminine amount of fat stored in a feminine area, pushing out against more feminine fascia. As long as you don’t have an unhealthy amount of body fat, cellulite shouldn’t harm your appearance.

How Much Muscle is Attractive on a Woman?

Men tend to love the look of strong, fit, and athletic women, whereas women often prefer the look of thinner women. That’s true in the research (study, study), and we’ve found the same thing in all of our surveys.

There are studies showing that being thinner is more attractive, but only the thinness of the waist. The stronger girls with bigger hips and glutes were deemed slightly more attractive.

The illustration of the “strong” woman above is what most men find most attractive. The illustration of the “thin” woman corresponds with what women find most attractive.

The male ideal lines up well with what’s healthiest. The female ideal can be healthy, too, especially in women with smaller bone structures. Endurance athletes can live long and healthy lives, even if they’re thin. But having more muscle is even healthier (study):

• Greater strength, athleticism, and bone density: I suspect this goes without saying, but building muscle makes your muscles, bones, and connective tissues stronger and tougher, making you more capable and helping to prevent injuries. It also improves your coordination, mobility, and overall athleticism.
• Better insulin sensitivity and blood sugar regulation: Muscles store some of the sugar you eat as glycogen, which they use as fuel during more intense activities, such as lifting weights and sprinting (study). That means the more muscle you build and the more you exercise those muscles, the more blood sugar they soak up, which is fantastic for your health (study, study).
• Better posture. Lifting weights is great for improving your bone density (study), connective tissue strength, stabilizer muscle strength, and posture.
• Longer lifespan: Gaining muscle reduces all-cause mortality, increases longevity, makes you look more youthful, and improves your quality of life as you age (study, study, study, study).
• More brainpower: Strenuous physical activity (such as lifting weights) stresses your brain, promoting adaptation and growth, improving your memory, focus, and ability to learn new things (study).
• Better mood: Gaining muscle reduces anxiety, wards off depression, improves mood, increases confidence, and gives you more energy (study).

Are Broad Shoulders Attractive On a Woman?

Broad shoulders are attractive on women. The classic hourglass figure is characterized by broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and wide hips. If you took away the broad shoulders, you’d be left with an Erlenmeyer flask.

As a general rule of thumb, developing full-body strength will make you more attractive. I recommend building your workout routine around all five big compound lifts. It’s perfectly fine to emphasize your lower body, but I’d still do some overhead pressing, push-ups, and lateral raises to build nice shoulders.

What Type of Exercise Is Best for Building An Attractive Body?

A good workout routine has two parts to it:

• Hypertrophy Training (guide here): I recommend lifting weights and/or exercise machines, with some bodyweight exercises mixed in (like push-ups and eventually chin-ups). This will help you gain muscle and strength, and it often causes simultaneous fat loss.
• Cardio (guide here): This can be any type of cardio you like, including jogging, the elliptical, or group classes. If that’s too intimidating, you can start by going on a brisk 20-minute walk every day. The purpose of cardio is to get fitter, but it will also help you burn fat, especially in your waist.

If you have time to do both types of exercise, the ideal approach would be to follow the World Health Organization’s guidelines, which recommend doing at least 150 minutes of cardio and at least two strength training workouts per week.

Both types of exercise will improve your skin, energy levels, and overall health. Both will help you look and feel younger. Both will make your figure more feminine.

There’s some overlap between cardio and lifting, but most of the health benefits are different and additive. For example, lifting and cardio both improve skin elasticity, but they do so in different ways, giving you greater benefits from doing both (study).

How Muscular is Too Muscular for Women?

It isn’t possible for the average woman to ever become too muscular. Your genetics will limit you before you get to the point where you look too bulky, at least in the eyes of most men. You would need to take drugs (like steroids) to overcome your natural limit. Maybe don’t do that.

For most naturally thin women, becoming too muscular isn’t a concern and never will be. Their slender bone structure won’t let them build so much muscle that it ever starts to seem excessive.

Here’s an incredibly strong woman with a naturally thin bone structure. As you can see, even though she has incredible muscular development, she isn’t bulky or musclebound:

Even for naturally muscular women, more muscle can still be attractive. Here’s Jessica Buettner, a famous female powerlifter with remarkable genetics and world-class strength. Her degree of muscularity is far beyond what the average woman can develop, and yet most men still think her figure looks amazing (and inspiring):

But you don’t need to get maximally muscular everywhere. It’s pretty common for our naturally more muscular female clients to say they’re happy with the size of their arms, back, or shoulders. And that’s perfectly fine. Weight training leaves plenty of room for personal preference.

For example, Reetta told us after just a couple of months of lifting weights that her back was “finished” with her upper body. It was as muscular as she ever wanted it to be. Here’s how that looked:

At that point, we switched to maintaining strength in her back and began focusing more on other areas that she did want to work on (like her lower body).

The Most Attractive Breasts

Research shows that men are more than twice as likely to glance at your breasts before looking at your face. Although men find boobs absolutely fascinating, though, boob size isn’t an important attractiveness factor. According to the researchers:

Men may be looking more often at the breasts because they are simply aesthetically pleasing, regardless of the size.

That means that if you’ve got big boobs, men will love them. It also means that if you’ve got small boobs, men will still love them. Basically, if you’ve got boobs at all, then you don’t need to really worry about it.

The most common Google search that men make about boobs is: “I love my girlfriend’s boobs.” Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, an economist and data analyzer, commented on this peculiar truth with, “It is not clear what men are hoping to find from Google when making this search.”

Here are some more “interesting” facts about male boob preferences (study, study):

• Poorer men prefer larger boobs: when resources are lacking, men gravitate towards women with higher body-fat percentages since it shows that they have ample energy in reserve. Bigger boobs are a good indicator of a higher body-fat percentage, so the poorer a man is, the more he’ll be attracted to large boobs. In fact, even simply reminding a man that he’s poor will make him increase his cup-size preference.
• Hungrier men prefer larger boobs: this means that if you want to make the most of a dinner-and-a-movie date, wear a push-up bra before dinner and then change into a sports bra for the movie.
• Sexist men prefer larger boobs.

Can You Increase Breast Size with Exercise?

The short answer is yes. Any exercise that trains your chest muscles will make your boobs appear larger and perkier. This means that doing push-ups, bench presses, and chest flyes are all effective ways to increase your breast size and even to improve your breast shape.

The long answer is that it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. Boobs have muscle tissue underneath them (your pectoralis major muscles). However, boobs don’t have any muscles in them. They’re made out of fat.

This has a few implications:

• The main way to change the size of your boobs is to change your body-fat percentage. If you gain fat, your boobs will probably get bigger. However, they may sag lower due to the extra weight. If you lose fat, your boobs will probably shrink a little bit. However, they may become perkier because they’re lighter.
• Hormones can influence body-fat distribution. If you use hormonal birth control, you may notice changes in the size of your boobs. The same thing can happen with natural hormone fluctuations, albeit likely to a smaller degree.
• Exercise can impact body-fat distribution, too. Exercising, such as doing cardio and lifting weights, causes women to burn extra visceral fat. This causes them to lose more fat in their waists, less fat elsewhere. Over time, it’s possible that this could give you bigger boobs relative to your overall body-fat storage.
• Gaining weight, even if you maintain the same body-fat percentage, will probably make your boobs bigger. Let’s imagine that you have a body-fat percentage of 25%. That means that even if you maintain the same body-fat percentage while gaining weight, for every ten pounds that you gain, you’ll gain 2.5 pounds of fat. Chances are that most of that extra fat will wind up in your breasts and butt. However, your body fat will be spread thinner over larger muscles, including larger butt muscles. So the main place you’ll notice that extra fat may be in your breasts.

Furthermore, if you’re building muscle mass in your chest, that’s going to push your breasts out further and raise them up higher, making them appear larger and perkier.

This means that bulking up can, in some cases, increase breast size without noticeably increasing body fat. Here’s a good example of that:

For overweight women, their boobs will tend to get smaller as they lose weight. However, for naturally thin women who gain weight, they’ll often develop bigger boobs as they bulk up.

The Most Attractive Female Posture

An easy way to think of posture is that it shows weakness in your postural muscles. As you build stronger muscles throughout your body, they’ll naturally hold your body in a stronger position.

Of course, in practice, it’s not quite that simple. Improving your posture often means focusing on lifting with good form. It may mean adding in some extra corrective exercises. And in some cases, such as with scoliosis, it can be genetically predetermined.

However, even if you have poor posture and some scoliosis (as is common with naturally thin people), you can still strengthen your postural muscles and radically improve your posture. In most cases, you’ll be able to develop an attractive posture that radiates confidence and strength.

There are a ton of different postural defects out there, but the most common portfolio of postural problems is this one:

This “upper-lower crossed syndrome,” as it’s sometimes called, is usually rooted in having a weak butt and spending too much time sitting. That’s why it’s so common nowadays. We spend a lot of time sitting.

To make matters worse, bad posture is often asymmetrical, too. One side of our hips tilts a little further forward than the other, causing our shoulders to tilt in the opposite way to counterbalance our lopsided hips. As a result, nearly everyone has one shoulder sitting higher and more internally rotated higher than the other. This will also make one of your boobs look smaller than the other.

Posture showcases strength

Fortunately, weak posture can be strengthened. Building up the muscles that hold your body in a stronger position will make you appear more confident, trustworthy, happier, and more assertive (study).

In fact, posture is so closely connected to confidence that it won’t just improve how confident you look, it will also improve how confident you feel (study). Having a more attractive posture also makes it easier to breathe well and to breathe deeply, making you calmer and more relaxed. Proper posture even changes your hormone secretions, further emphasizing all those positive changes to your mood and well-being. This may be one of the reasons that lifting weights is so good for improving confidence and reducing anxiety.

There’s an interesting caveat here. Women will sometimes rock the bikini-model pose, intentionally going into anterior pelvic tilt, like so:

That’s okay. There’s a big difference between being stuck in that position because you’ve got weak glutes as opposed to stylistically striking a pose to show off your strong glutes.

Yes, this is the same kind of anterior pelvic tilt that can cause the postural problems we’ve been discussing. However, this posture isn’t rooted in weakness. Intentionally going into anterior pelvic tilt has nothing to do with lacking hip strength or having weak spinal erectors.

As far as strength and athleticism go, proper postural alignment allows us to correctly transfer strength from our lower bodies to our upper bodies. For example, when lifting something overhead, having good posture will evenly distribute the load throughout our entire spinal columns, keeping our backs safe.

However, many women with extremely strong glutes, such as sprinters and athletes, spend a lot of time with an anteriorly tilted pelvis because it helps them run faster. Similarly, many women who are trying to build bigger hips will squat with an arched lower back. Again, because their bodies are showcasing strength instead of weakness, their postures look completely different, and these women don’t tend to experience the same downsides.

Improving your posture will also make you appear younger. Over the course of our lives, we slouch, slump, and sit. Muscles atrophy, posture degrades, and people gradually crumple. You know what I mean. I’m sure you’ve seen an old person. If you’re seeing an old person in the mirror, though, we can fix that by improving your posture.

Weak Posture Can Be Strengthened

The main mistake that women make with their posture is thinking that they can fake it. They try to stand taller, raise their chests up, and push their shoulders back. However, weak posture is caused by weakness. You can’t build a stronger posture simply by willing it into existence.

I’m sure you know what I mean. If you’ve ever tried to stand with better posture, just give it a few minutes. It will collapse again as soon as you stop paying attention. You might notice that trying to force better posture makes you tired, too. Your muscles aren’t strong enough to casually hold your body in that position yet.

We need to drill down to the foundation. We need to build stronger bodies. That strength will then radiate from the inside out.

For an example of how posture can improve as you gain strength, here are two photos of Sara taken ten weeks apart. They show five pounds gained, which is already starting to improve her muscularity. Even more noticeable than her muscle gains, though, is her rapidly improving posture:

How to Build Muscle

For most people, the best way to improve their attractiveness is to improve their body composition. Most people are overweight, so part of that involves losing fat. We specialize in helping naturally skinny women, though, and for us, the best way to improve our appearance is to build muscle.

To build muscle, we need to challenge our muscles in a way that stimulates muscle growth. Then we need to fuel that growth by eating enough protein and eating enough calories. Then we can improve our recovery and keep our hormones healthy by getting enough good sleep. That gives us just four things to focus on:

• Hypertrophy training: there are many different types of weight training, ranging from strength training to endurance training. To build muscle, though, you’ll want to train specifically for muscle growth—hypertrophy training. This usually means lifting weights, using a mix of compound and isolation lifts, doing 6–20 repetitions per set, doing 3–8 sets per muscle per workout, training each muscle 2–3 times per week, and resting long enough for your heart rate to return to normal between each set. That might sound complicated, but it can be done with just 3 full-body workouts per week, each taking less than an hour. For example, here’s a beginner workout routine.
• Eating enough protein: once you’re stimulating muscle growth with your workouts, you need to make sure that you’re eating enough protein to allow your muscles to recover and grow. About 0.8 grams per pound bodyweight per day is enough to maximize your rate of muscle growth, but you might want to aim for a full gram just to make sure you’re getting enough. For a 110-pound woman, that’s 88–110 grams of protein per day.
• Eating enough calories: it’s possible to build muscle without gaining weight, especially if you’re an overweight beginner, but at a certain point, you’ll need to start gaining weight to continue building muscle. That’s when calories become important. Here’s an example of a good muscle-building diet.
• Getting enough good sleep: it’s possible to build muscle even if you aren’t sleeping well. But if you’re sleeping properly, you’ll be able to build muscle around 30% faster and quite a bit more leanly. Here’s our guide for improving sleep.

If you’re a naturally thin woman and you want help bulking up, building bigger and more capable muscles, and improving your attractiveness along the way, check out our Bony to Bombshell Bulking Program.