How to Understand Your Body for Better Outfits

what's good today I'm going to share with you a step-by-step guide to understanding your body so in my last fashion video I talked about how different fabrics and styles and cuts can look different on different body types and I got a lot a lot of requests to make a video about you know how you can understand your body type or proportions so that's what we're going to go over today if if you find this video useful in any way be sure to give it a like And subscribe if you haven't already now before we get

into this video let's start with a little disclaimer okay I am not a mental health professional but I am very aware of how prevalent body dysmorphia is in the age of social media if at any part during this video or process you start to have any negative thoughts or feelings about yourself [Music] take a break turn this video off and come back to it another time in the future learning about your body should not be a negative experience the whole point of this video is to help you all understand why certain Fabrics or Styles or

Cuts might look awkward on you so that you can you know make the necessary changes to make your clothing work for you and not the other way around we should never fit our bodies into clothes clothes should fit to us I know that for me personally I started having way more confidence after I started learning more about my body because I was able to start choosing clothes that looked and felt better this should be a positive experience if you ever find yourself feeling any differently it's okay to revisit this topic at another time the first

step to understanding your body is to take photos now when you're taking photos of your body it would really help to wear clothing or undergarments that are fit but not too constricting for example you don't want to wear a sports bra because while it's fit it will compress your bust too much it would be better to wear something like this for example your body shape without distorting or compressing your body I recommend taking photos with a tripod because they're easily adjustable to get to the perfect height it does not need to be expensive I just

use this cheap one I think I got this from Amazon if I can find a similar one I'll leave it in the description box down below and you're going to want to place your camera or your phone at chest level at least like six feet away from you and one of the biggest reasons why I recommend using a tripod as opposed to asking someone to take your photos is because your phone or your camera needs to be flat and leveled if the camera is tilted in any direction it's going to distort your body shape and

the reason why you want the camera at chest height is because if the camera is too high or too low it will also distort your body shape and that's why you see so many tick tocks recommending you to take photos from a lower angle if you want to appear taller and those types of photos are fun line for your Instagram but what we're trying to do here today is to get an objective understanding of our bodies so that we can create the best outfits for them now take photos from the front back and both sides

with a neutral posture now a lot of you might have something called anterior pelvic tilt it's something that I still kind of have I'm still working on it but basically this occurs when your pelvis is rotated forward which forces your spine to curve and this is very very common for people who sit for excessive amounts of time so if you work in an office or you're sitting at a desk all day you probably have it now eventually you're going to want to address this for the sake of your mobility and your overall health and I'll

actually link some like quick exercises that you can do down below but for now for this exercise when you're taking your photos try to see if you can just tilt your your pelvis back so you have a more neutral posture an interior pelvic tilt can distort our perception of our bodies it can make our stomachs look like they stick out way more than they actually do and the curved spine can alter the way clothes fall on our bodies so in general you want to work towards correcting this for the sake of your posture and your

mobility and your General Health but for the sake of this process if you can just try to tilt your pelvis back and try to correct your posture just for the photo that would be great okay so I feel like the most obvious element that most people know about their bodies is how tall they are it is the most obvious one but I don't think that it is the most important one and it's not really as straightforward as we think and let me explain why look at this picture of Alessandra Ambrosio and Rosie Huntington Whiteley now

Alessandra is listed by her agency as five foot ten and Rosie is listed by her agency as five foot nine now even though Rosie is allegedly one inch shorter she actually kind of looks taller and this is because Alessandra has a longer torso and shorter legs and you can actually see how differently this t-shirt fits on Rosie versus how it fits on Alessandra now when you look at alessandra's street style you can see that she looks a lot more balanced when she wears high-waisted Pants versus when she wears low rise pants and this is why

in my opinion height is not really the most important element to understand about your body proportion is another quick disclaimer throughout this whole video I am going to be using a lot of models as examples and this is just because there are so many pictures of them online this is literally what they do for a living so I have a lot bigger of a selection of photos to illustrate the point that I'm trying to make for those of you who are on like the shorter side have you ever looked up a video that was like

best outfits for petite women and then you try on those recommendations and they didn't really work that's because your height is not really that important your body proportions are what matter more so if the person that you're watching is the same height as you but they have wildly different proportions their outfits are not going to look the same on you even if you're the same height on the flip side if you're or short but you're watching a tall person but she has the same proportions as you her outfits are probably going to look more harmonious

on you than the other girls outfits even if she's taller than you now you might have to get your pants tailored or you know like buy the short version of the same pants but the overall outfit formula is probably going to look better on you than the the shorter girl with wildly different proportions than you all of this just to say proportion is more important than just height alone which brings us to step three how to discover your body proportions now I just spent like the past 10 million minutes talking about how important body proportions

are and you're probably sitting there like okay girl well how do we find it before we get into this let's have a little chat there is nothing good or bad or right or wrong about our bodies they just are discovering all of the different elements of your body should be empowering not demoralizing so when we say things like long torso or short torso or big head or small head broad shoulders or narrow shoulders these are neither negative nor positive descriptors they just are so with that being said let's take a look at the photos we

just took now take a look at your frame what stands out to you the most for me it's definitely the fact that my shoulders are wider than my hips now a lot of people can interpret this to mean that you have broad shoulders but this is not always the case compared to the overall structure of my body my shoulders look quite proportionate despite being wider than my hips but if you look at Lisa of blackpink for example you can see that her shoulders also extend beyond her hips but her shoulders are much more broad compared

to her overall frame so she or her stylist is going to have to accommodate the width of her broader shoulders to create a more balanced silhouette now in my opinion she looks so good when she wears oversized clothes because the kind of broadness of her shoulders creates structure underneath to give the looser clothes more shape now for me on the other hand if I wear something that's too oversized it can make me look like I'm drowning because my shoulders don't have that same structure underneath now is that going to stop me from wearing oversized clothing

obviously not I'm wearing oversized clothing today but it does make me want to be more mindful about how big or how oversized something can look on me before it starts to look like I'm drowning so looking at individual body parts isn't really the most helpful because you really have to look at your body overall proportion is all about how everything looks in context so if you just look at my legs these are just legs but when you see the full picture it's like ah yes these legs are longer in proportion to the Torso and this

is how we can use proportion to balance out an outfit so how can you tell if you actually have broad shoulders or if your shoulders are just wider than your hips and there are a few things that you can think about so if you put on a fitted shirt do you often feel like kind of like constricted around your shoulder area does it feel too tight does your you know shoulder area feel uncomfortable if yes then you might have broad shoulders another thing to think about is shoulder straps on your tops so if you wear

a spaghetti strap top do the straps often you know Fall Off Your Shoulder if yes then your shoulders might not be as broad as you think they are and here's something similar if you wear shoulder bags do they often fall off your shoulders if yes then your shoulders might not be as broad as you think they are for me shoulder bags actually fall off quite often not all the time but often whereas when you look at this picture of Lisa girl that bag ain't going anywhere anytime soon now to clarify just because I don't consider

my shoulders to be broad that doesn't necessarily mean that they're narrow I think that they're pretty proportionate to the overall structure of my body they are just wider than my hips okay so now that you've figured out you know your whole shoulder situation take out a notebook or a piece of paper open the notes app on your phone and write down how you feel about learning that about yourself fashion isn't just about how you look it's also about how you feel and I would actually say that's more important if you feel confident you will look

confident if you feel constricted in your clothing or uncomfortable in your clothing you will look constricted or uncomfortable so just write down what you learned about your shoulders and how you feel about it for me I would probably write something like I just found out that while my shoulders are wider than my hips they aren't as broad as I thought they were my hips are just narrow now I understand why some jackets make me look like I'm drowning I probably hate boat neck neckline so much because my shoulders don't have the structure to support them

now obviously this is going to be very different from the conclusions that you come to because everyone's bodies are different but just write down what you learned and how you feel about it this will help us fully understand our bodies and help us rationalize the fashion choices that we make in the future next we can look at the relationship between your bust hips and waist take a look at your pictures and again ask yourself is there anything that stands out are your hips the widest part of your torso if so all the bottoms that you

buy have to accommodate wider hips do you have a defined waistline or is your torso pretty straight different styles of tops are going to work better on certain waist lines than others do you have a wide or full bust line do you have a full bust if so all of your tops are going to have to accommodate your bust now for me my torso is pretty straight rate now my waistline has like slight definition but it's not enough to really like matter like I don't have to make any accommodations for it again you will all

come to very different conclusions but whatever that is write it down and also write down how you feel about this realization next we're gonna get into the relationship between your torso and your legs now learning about this specific ratio transformed my outfits completely and you probably realize that if you watched my last video and the reason why they transformed my outfits in this way is because my proportions are not very balanced so when I altered my outfits to accommodate this very obvious imbalance everything changed now for some of you this might not be the most

important conclusion that you come to today because you have balanced proportions so don't feel like you have to have like this aha moment like I did like you might watch this entire portion of the video and be like what is the big deal different clothing styles and different lengths of clothing can look wildly different on different body proportions like I explained in my last video some people have a short torso and Long Legs some people have a longer torso with short legs and some people are more balanced now there are a few ways that we

can figure this out if it's not immediately obvious from your photos the first method is what I like to call the double hand method so what you're going to do is you're going to take both of your hands you're going to press your fingers together you're going to put one hand on top of the other and you're going to put the hand that's on top right below your bust now if either of your hands completely covers your belly button then you probably have a short torso if your belly button is right at the bottom of

your hand you are probably more balanced and if your belly button is below your bottom and then you probably have a long torso now as you can see here my belly button is entirely covered by my hand whereas for my mom her belly button is lower than her hand I have a short torso and my mom has a long torso now this isn't a foolproof method for a myriad of different reasons but I do think that it is a pretty good starting point but to determine this you can also ask yourself a few questions when

you tuck in your shirts do they tend to Bunch up around the waist if yes then this is a sign of a short torso if they tend to untuck throughout the day then this is a sign of a long torso if you have literally no problem at all with tucked in shirts then you're probably more balanced congratulations here's another question to ask yourself when you wear rompers do they tend to Bunch up at your waist if yes then you probably have a short torso if you're wearing a romper and you feel uncomfortable and like the

groin area or you feel like your body is really stretching that Romper out you probably have a long torso now I feel like if you have either a short or a long torso you probably kind of already know this in your mind like subconsciously you just haven't verbalized it or you haven't like put a name to it and if you're more proportionate or a balanced then you're probably very confused by this section of the video regardless understanding your proportions is key to creating a good outfit once you've figured out the relationship between your torso and

your legs write it down and write down how you feel about it next let's talk about body fat distribution now this might be a touchy subject for a lot of people but it is absolutely part of the conversation for me terms like skinny or plus size can absolutely obviously point you in a certain direction but they can be a bit meaningless because there is so much body variation Within These labels like obviously objectively like plus size means something skinny like means something but I think what's more important is your body fat distribution because your body

fat distribution can actually completely change the way that certain clothes look on you for example I am what society would very clearly deem skinny or thin I'm literally a size zero or a dress size two but because my torso is very short and I have very narrow hips most of my body fat gets distributed around my midsection now if I had a longer torso and I had wider hips my body fat would be distributed more to those areas but I don't have wide hips or a long torso I have narrow hips and a short torso

your waist to hip ratio and the length of your torso can actually determine where your body stores more fat a general tip to remember is the longer the part of the human body the leaner it's going to appear so that's why my arms and my legs look so skinny it's because they're just really long my torso on the other hand is very short so there's not much room room for the fat to go again there's nothing good or bad about this that's just the way it is now Haley Bieber is a really great example of

someone who also has pretty narrow hips and a short torso with longer legs now I'm sure this girl works out regularly she does her little workout she does her little Pilates she cares about the food that she puts into her body you know just basic model things but when you compare Haley's torso to Kendall Jenner who has a much longer torso you can see that Kendall's torso appears to be more lean just because there is a lot more space for the fat to go now Haley and Kendall's body fat percentage is probably around the same

but that number percentage doesn't really mean anything in terms of how their bodies look in similar clothing and this is going to be the same for the plus size girlies have you ever watched like a plus size outfit ideas video and you try to recreate the outfits and they just didn't work out it might be because the person that you just watched has a different body fat distribution most working plus size models that you see in magazines or on websites have an hourglass body shape so their body fat naturally gets distributed more in the hips

and the bust creating that more hourglass shape now body fat distribution is mainly determined by genetics your genetics determine where your body stores fat this is not something that we can really change but regardless of if you're thin or plus size mainstream Western media has a very obvious bias towards a certain silhouette and because of that they're more likely to hire models with that silhouette and that's why in the media you always see some body types way more than others whether they're thin or plus size they're just given more visibility but that lack of representation

in the media doesn't make our bodies bad or wrong they're just different there is so much body variation out there in the world in real life I think that this is really really important to understand especially if you're someone who tends to compare yourself to others it doesn't matter how much I work out my torso is never going to look like this because I just have a short torso now for all my short torso folks out there quicker you accept this the happier you're gonna be and again there's nothing good or bad about this it

just is once I accepted that my body was just built different than these models I became way more confident because my body then became a superpower instead of something that I was ashamed of because now I'm able to accentuate my favorite parts of my body by building the right outfits precisely because I have a better understanding of my body look at the end of the day fashion is in art and while art can have scientific elements art is also very subjective personal style should be built around the basis of how you feel if you watch

this entire video and you feel more comfortable not following these recommendations then that's exactly what you should do I'm just here to provide the tools okay you can choose to use them or not my mission here is really to just encourage people to learn how to be more comfortable with who they are I found so much confidence in myself through fashion fashion can be very powerful will you use it for good that's all I have for you today folks if you learned anything from this video please give it a like and let me know in

the comments down below subscribe if you haven't already and I'll catch you guys next time pills [Music]