Body Shape Calculator
A body shape calculator sorts three tape measurements, bust, waist and hip, into named regions by comparing their differences and ratios. This one uses five: hourglass, rectangle, pear, apple, or inverted triangle. The cut-offs it applies are its own rather than a clinical or industry standard, and the published Female Figure Identification Technique uses different figures and nine categories, two of which need measurements this tool does not take. A category is a statement about the three numbers entered, not about the person who entered them.
Enter bust, waist and hip measurements and see which of five categories they fall into under this page's cut-offs, with the test that decided it shown alongside.
Quick Answer
Enter bust, waist and hip and see which of five categories the measurements fall into, with the test that decided it shown alongside. The cut-offs are this page's own.
Measurements
Around the fullest part of your chest.
Around the narrowest part of your abdomen.
Around the widest part of your hips/buttocks.
Closest category under this page's cut-offs
Hourglass
The waist is at least 8 in below both bust and hip, and no earlier test matched.
Examples
36 in bust, 27 in waist, 38 in hip
Hourglass, because the bust-hip gap is 2
34 in bust, 30 in waist, 35 in hip
Apple, because 30 ÷ 35 = 0.857
34 in bust, 30 in waist, 40 in hip
Pear, because the hip-bust gap is 6
How it works
Formula · bust − hip ≥ 3 → inverted triangle · hip − bust ≥ 3 → pear · waist ÷ hip ≥ 0.85 or waist ÷ bust ≥ 0.85 → apple · bust − waist ≥ 8 and hip − waist ≥ 8 → hourglass · otherwise rectangle
Four tests run in order, and the first match wins. That ordering is doing real work: the Apple test is reached before the Hourglass test, so it decides cases that would otherwise land as Hourglass.
- Inverted Triangle if Bust − Hip ≥ 3 in
- Pear if Hip − Bust ≥ 3 in
- Apple if Waist ÷ Hip ≥ 0.85 or Waist ÷ Bust ≥ 0.85
- Hourglass if Bust − Waist ≥ 8 in and Hip − Waist ≥ 8 in
- Rectangle otherwise
The cut-offs used on this page are this tool's own. They are not a clinical standard.
What this page reports, and what it does not
It reports which side of a set of cut-offs three numbers fall on. That is the whole of it. The category names are labels for regions of a measurement space, not descriptions of a person, and the page does not treat them as anything else.
It takes no view on health, build, proportion or clothing. Waist and hip figures appear in some clinical measures; none of those is computed here, no risk is reported, and questions in that territory belong with a clinician rather than with a page that has three tape readings and nothing else.
Where these cut-offs come from
From this page. The 3-inch gap, the 0.85 ratio and the 8-inch drop are this tool's own cut-offs and are not a clinical standard, a medical standard or an industry standard. That is worth saying plainly, because there is a published system and this is not it.
The published system is the Female Figure Identification Technique. Simmons, Istook and Devarajan described nine shapes at North Carolina State University in 2004; Lee, Istook, Nam and Park turned those descriptions into numeric formulas in 2007. Those formulas are reproduced in full as Table 7 of a 2020 conference paper listed in the sources below, and they do not match anything on this page:
| Boundary | This page | FFIT, as published |
|---|---|---|
| Bust-hip gap that splits the triangles | 3 in | 3.6 in |
| Waist drop for the hourglass | 8 in and 8 in | 9 in or 10 in |
| Balance test for the hourglass | none | bust − hip ≤ 1 in |
| An Apple category | waist ÷ hip ≥ 0.85 | does not exist |
| Categories in total | 5 | 9 |
FFIT has no Apple. Its midsection shapes are Diamond and Oval, and both are defined by stomach and abdomen measurements this page never asks for. Two more of its shapes, Bottom Hourglass and Spoon, turn on a high-hip to waist ratio against 1.193, and this page takes no high-hip measurement either. So FFIT is not available to a three-measurement tool, and pretending otherwise would be the borrowed authority this page is trying to avoid.
The 0.85 is borrowed, and this page says so
The Apple test compares the waist to the hip against 0.85. That number is not a shape boundary anywhere in the apparel literature. It is the World Health Organization's waist-to-hip screening threshold for women, and this site already carries it, with its attribution, on the waist to hip ratio calculator.
Using it here as a category label is a decision this page inherited rather than one it can justify, and the honest thing is to name it instead of leaving a health-screening number to pass as a styling convention. If the waist-to-hip ratio is what you came for, the page that owns it will tell you what it means and who published it. Nothing on this page reports risk of any kind.
Sources
- Sokolowski, S. L. and Bettencourt, C. (2020). Modification of the Female Figure Identification Technique (FFIT) Formulas to Include Plus Size Bodies, Proceedings of 3DBODY.TECH 2020, DOI 10.15221/20.22. Its Table 7 reproduces the original FFIT formulas in inches, which is where the 3.6, 9, 10 and 1.193 figures above are read from. The paper was downloaded and its text extracted, not summarised from a search result. Verified 2026-08-21.
- The formulas in that table are credited there to Lee, K., Istook, C. L., Nam, Y. and Park, S. (2007), who derived them from the shape descriptions in Simmons, K., Istook, C. L. and Devarajan, P. (2004). Neither original was reachable: the NC State PDF answers HTTP 500 and the 2007 paper is paywalled. They are named here as the origin of the numbers rather than cited as something anyone here has read, which is the distinction that separates a citation from a bibliography entry.
Scope. This page sorts three tape measurements into five named regions using cut-offs it defines itself. It is not a medical tool, not a fitness assessment, and not a measure of body composition. It reports nothing about health and takes no position on what any category means. It has not been reviewed by a clinician and does not claim to have been.
Working it out by hand
Take 36 in bust, 27 in waist, 38 in hip and run the tests in order.
- Bust minus hip: 36 − 38 = −2. Not 3 or more, so not Inverted Triangle.
- Hip minus bust: 38 − 36 = 2. Still short of 3, so not Pear. This is the step that most often surprises people, because two inches feels like a difference and the cut-off says it is not.
- Waist over hip: 27 ÷ 38 = 0.711. Waist over bust: 27 ÷ 36 = 0.750. Neither reaches 0.85, so not Apple.
- Bust minus waist: 36 − 27 = 9. Hip minus waist: 38 − 27 = 11. Both are 8 or more, so Hourglass, and the fifth test is never reached.
Change the waist to 30 and step three becomes 30 ÷ 38 = 0.789 and 30 ÷ 36 = 0.833, still under 0.85, and step four becomes 6 and 8, which fails the and-condition. The answer is Rectangle. One measurement moved three inches and the category moved two places.
Why the order of the tests matters
The four tests are not independent. They are tried in turn and the first match wins, so a figure that satisfies two of them is reported as whichever comes first.
The live case is Apple against Hourglass. Take 40 in bust, 32 in waist, 40 in hip. Bust minus waist is 8 and hip minus waist is 8, which satisfies the Hourglass condition exactly. But 32 ÷ 40 = 0.80, and at a 34-inch waist it would be 34 ÷ 40 = 0.85, which clears the Apple test and stops there. A single inch on the waist moves the answer, and it moves it because of ordering rather than because of any measured change in shape.
This is disclosed rather than hidden because it is the kind of behaviour that makes a result look wrong when it is merely conventional.
The five categories, as this page defines them
| Category | Test | Order |
|---|---|---|
| Inverted Triangle | bust − hip ≥ 3 | 1st |
| Pear | hip − bust ≥ 3 | 2nd |
| Apple | waist ÷ hip ≥ 0.85 or waist ÷ bust ≥ 0.85 | 3rd |
| Hourglass | bust − waist ≥ 8 and hip − waist ≥ 8 | 4th |
| Rectangle | none of the above | last |
Other schemes name more regions than this, including spoon and diamond; this tool does not classify those and will place such a figure in whichever of its five is reached first.
Measuring, and how much a tape reading moves the answer
Use a soft tape, held level around the body and snug without compressing. Bust around the fullest part of the chest, waist around the narrowest part of the torso, hip around the widest part of the hips and buttocks.
Precision matters more here than it looks. The cut-offs are hard edges, so a figure sitting at a hip-bust gap of 2.9 inches and one sitting at 3.0 are reported differently, and a tape held half an inch high can be the whole of that difference. If two careful readings straddle a cut-off, the honest conclusion is that the measurements sit on the boundary rather than that one of the categories is correct.
Edge cases
- A blank or zero field. Nothing is reported. All three measurements must be finite and greater than zero, so the page withholds a result rather than building a category on a missing number.
- Centimetres. Converted to inches at exactly 2.54 cm per inch before the tests run, because the cut-offs are stated in inches. The conversion is exact by definition.
- Satisfying two tests at once. Common, and resolved by order rather than by any tie-break. See the section on ordering above.
- Sitting on a cut-off. The comparisons are greater-than-or-equal, so a gap of exactly 3 inches is Inverted Triangle or Pear, and a ratio of exactly 0.85 is Apple.
- A shape this page does not have. Spoon, diamond and oval are named by other systems; this tool does not classify those and such a figure lands in whichever of the five is reached first, which is a limit of the scheme rather than a finding about the figure.
What was corrected on this page
Two of the three worked examples printed here were wrong, and had been for some time. The set 36 / 27 / 38 was labelled Pear when the calculator returns Hourglass, because the hip-bust gap is 2 and the Pear test needs 3. The set 34 / 30 / 35 was labelled Rectangle when the calculator returns Apple, because 30 divided by 35 is 0.857 and the Apple test triggers at 0.85.
The rules panel was also wrong about the page's own logic. It said Hourglass required bust and hips within 2 inches, which the calculator has never required, and it omitted the Apple test entirely, which is the test that decides many of the cases the panel implied were Hourglass. Both are recorded here rather than quietly fixed, because a reader who used the old examples to check their own arithmetic deserves to know the examples were the part that was wrong.
Your measurements stay in the page
The three numbers you enter are processed by this page in your browser. They are not sent to a server, not stored after you close the tab, and not visible to anyone else. There is no account and nothing to sign up for.
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- Waist to hip ratio calculator reports the single ratio rather than a category, and cites what it uses.
- Bra size calculator works from the same bust and underbust tape readings.
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