Body type quiz
What is my body type? Seven questions you can answer in a mirror, one of the six shapes — and the comparison that produced it, so you can check the answer instead of trusting it.
Body Type Quiz
Seven questions, no tape measure. Answer as you actually read in a mirror, not as you would like to — the result is only worth what the answers are.
0 of 7 answered.
Answer all seven to see your body type, the four scores behind it, and the comparison that produced them.
The six body types
Body type here means proportion, not size. Each of the six below is a statement about how your shoulders, bust, waist and hips compare with one another, which is why every one of them exists at every size and why none of them is a goal.
How this quiz decides
Your seven answers move four scores — the hip end, the shoulder end, waist definition and the middle — plus a fifth reading for the upper hip. The rules then run in this order, and the first one to fire is the answer.
1 · hip end leads by 2 and the hip steps out → SPOON
2 · hip end leads the shoulder end by 2 → PEAR
3 · shoulder end leads the hip end by 2 → INVERTED TRIANGLE
4 · neither end leads, middle ≥ 3 → APPLE
5 · neither end leads, waist definition ≥ 3 → HOURGLASS
6 · nothing above fires → RECTANGLE
Every result above comes printed with the line that produced it.
That is the same order the body shape calculator uses, deliberately. Dominance is tested before waist definition, so a figure with wide hips and a soft waist comes back a pear rather than a rectangle. The full reasoning behind every threshold is on the methodology page.
The one thing a quiz sees that a tape measure cannot
The spoon is a pear whose hips step out abruptly just below the waist instead of curving out. Every calculator on the internet, this site's included, returns a spoon figure as a pear — not out of carelessness but because the information is genuinely not there. Bust, waist, hip and shoulder are four circumferences, and a shelf is a matter of where the hip measurement sits, not how big it is.
A quiz can simply ask. That is the seventh question, and it is why this page can return all six shapes where the calculator honestly returns five. If you have ever had jeans grip your upper hip while gaping at the back of the waist, that question is for you.
Questions
- What is my body type?
- For women's clothing, body type means one of six figures — hourglass, pear, apple, rectangle, inverted triangle or spoon — and which one you are depends on how your shoulders, bust, waist and hips compare with each other rather than on what you weigh. Every one of the six exists at every size. The quiz above works it out from seven questions you can answer in a mirror.
- Is this body type quiz free?
- Yes, and there is nothing to sign up for. No email, no account, no photo. The quiz runs entirely in your browser, so your answers never leave the device you are reading this on.
- How is this different from the body shape calculator?
- Same six shapes and the same five rules, tested in the same order — the quiz asks you to judge the comparisons by eye, and the calculator measures them with a tape. The calculator is more precise. The quiz can do one thing the calculator cannot: it asks whether your hips step out below the waist, which four measurements cannot reveal, so it is the only one of the two that can return a spoon.
- How accurate is a body type quiz without measurements?
- Accurate enough to be useful and not more than that, which is why every question here is a comparison you can check rather than a matter of taste. The result prints the four scores and the rule that produced them, so if one answer was a guess you can see how much it mattered. If two shapes feel close, take the four measurements instead.
- What are the six body types?
- Hourglass, where bust and hips sit close together over a clearly drawn waist. Pear, where the hips read wider than the bust. Apple, where the fullness gathers through the middle. Rectangle, where bust, waist and hip run close to straight. Inverted triangle, where the shoulders and bust outmeasure the hips. And spoon, a pear whose hips step out below the waist rather than curving out.
- What is the most common body type?
- Rectangle. The largest study of this is the North Carolina State University FFIT sizing research (Simmons, Istook and Devarajan, 2004), which analysed body scans of 6,318 women: roughly 46% measured as rectangles, about 20% as pears, 14% as inverted triangles and only 8% as hourglasses.
Have a tape measure to hand?
Four measurements is the precise version of this quiz — the same six shapes and the same five rules, with the arithmetic printed underneath.
Run the body shape calculator