tips to flatter your figure and help you feel more confident and body positive
Do You Have an Apple Body Shape?
Whether you think of yourself as produce or not, and you may have heard yourself called an apple body shape, but you may also call your shape an O shape, or strawberry. No matter what name you prefer, your body shape is fabulous. Many articles and programs combine your shape with inverted triangle, and while they do share some characteristics, they are definitely different.
Yours is one of the less common female body shapes, and in this article (along with many others), it’s combined with inverted triangle.
More from the Stunning Style Know Your Body Shape Series!
Defining Proportions of an Apple Body Shape
As an apple-shaped woman, your defining proportion is your bust is your largest measurement. This can be a subtle difference, or one that’s more dramatic. Your shoulders and your waist are also are wider than your hips. Similar to an inverted triangle body shape, your torso makes a V shape from the back, but from the front you look more straight. Your waist is wider from the front.
The typical O-shaped is typically depicted with strong shoulders, a full bust, full midsection, a flatter bottom and very slender but shapely limbs. You have GORGEOUS legs. While many do match this description, there are many variations of this body shape.
An apple can have anything from a full bust to a very full bust, a curvier bottom and fuller limbs, but the key measurements are your shoulders are wider than your hips and your bust is the same as or larger than your shoulders or waist.
Other Possible Characteristics
You are blessed with slender, shapely, gorgeous legs, particularly your calves, delicate ankles, and slim arms. If your calves aren’t very shapely, they are very slender, and that doesn’t change with weight gain. Your overall musculature tends to be curvy and soft, except your legs, which tend to be well-defined.
As an apple-shaped woman, you usually have a flat bottom, although it can be curvier, and your bust size can vary from full to very full and shapely. When you gain weight, it shows up first and primarily in your midsection, shoulders, and bust while your limbs remain quite slim. From the back your body does create a V-shape as your torso narrows from your shoulders to your hips.
When shopping for clothes, you typically wear a larger size up top and a smaller size on bottom, unless you need to accommodate for your waist size. You biggest shopping struggle is to find pants that fit your waist without drowning your hips and legs.
Wearing the wrong pants can also create a muffin top where there is none.This is such a common problem that I’ve created a FREE Masterclass on how to find pants that fit you right, and you can reserve your spot right now! If you want to dive even deeper into dressing for your body shape, my new 2-part course, Style Your Silhouette has an entire module dedicated to bottoms and so much more!
The best asset of an apple-shaped woman is her gorgeous gams, and sometimes her full, shapely bust. Your primary complaint is usually your proportionally larger waistline.
Common Myths
Many articles and books put inverted triangle and apple body shapes in the same category, thinking they are the same body shape at different sizes, but they are actually different body shapes that need to be dressed differently. Dressing an apple and an inverted triangle in the same clothes will lead to frustration and reinforce the idea that there is something wrong with your body. But it’s not you! It’s the clothes! We will discuss the differences between the two body shapes in depth in the next section.
The second myth is that all O body shapes are plus size and they aren’t. You can be a slim apple, like Reese Witherspoon. When you gain weight it shows up first in your middle, so your midsection fills out quickly.
Kate Upton is a great example of a slender apple, and she’s a supermodel. She has the full bust, the shapely legs, the flat bottom, and a fuller midsection. Her middle isn’t as full as the definition of an apple, but you can see that is where she carries her weight. And clearly the world thinks it’s gorgeous.
Apple vs Inverted Triangle
You lean toward an inverted triangle shape because your shoulders and bust are also wider than your hips and if you slim down you can become an inverted triangle shape. Even though other body shapes can’t change their shapes because it’s determined by bone structure and DNA, apples are the only body shape that transforms into a different body shape based on weight loss and weight gain. A slim O shape becomes an inverted triangle, but their bodies still have some differences.
The main differences between apples and inverted triangles are apples will gain weight in their midsection FIRST, and an inverted triangle will gain weight there EVENTUALLY. Carrot shapes also tend to be more angular and muscular in their arms, shoulders, and torsos, and apples are softer and more rounded in those areas. In general apples are curvier than inverted triangles.
Apple Vs Rectangle
You lean toward a rectangle when your middle section isn’t as full and your shoulder to hips ratio isn’t as dramatic. When Reese Witherspoon is in between inverted triangle and apple she resembles a rectangle. There is a scale to everything, and the difference between your shoulders and hips can be dramatic or minimal, and if it’s on the minimal side you may confuse yourself as a rectangle body shape.
Apple Vs Hourglass
If you are full-busted, you can lean toward an hourglass shape when you are slim and the waist gets smaller, but your hips won’t be wide enough to be an hourglass. Because of their shapely bust and gorgeous legs, Jessica Simpson and Catherine Bach were considered both Hollywood bombshells, and both played the character Daisy Duke. Both of them are apples. Because they are so shapely and curvy up top and down below, the brain tends to fill in shapely hips.
Famous Apple Body Shapes
Some of the best-known apple body shapes are Drew Barrymore, Reese Witherspoon, and Meg Ryan. Other apple-shaped celebrities are Rebel Wilson, Jessica Simpson, Catherine Bach, Chrissy Metz, Elizabeth Hurley, and Eva Longoria.
How to Dress an Apple Body Shape
Highlight and Accentuate Your Best Assets
Most body shape courses and articles focus on hiding or covering parts of your body, which adds to the shame and media lie that we all need to achieve an impossible ideal. Your apple-shaped body is perfect, it’s beautiful, and we don’t want to cover anything up. Instead, we are going to direct the spotlight to accentuate and highlight specific parts of our bodies.
Think of a stage production. The lighting crew shines spotlights on certain parts of the stage to draw your attention to the place they want you to look. It could be because they want to direct our eyes to where the most important action is, to distract us from something like a set change, or because they are trying to achieve an effect like telling us we are seeing a memory, a weather change, or magic.
We can do the same thing with outfits, spotlighting the parts where we want to focus their attention, and use that to make them see what we want them to see. When you work with, not against, your naturally fabulous features it’s so freeing. I want you to fall in love with your body because it’s amazing!
Your Spotlight Goal
Your shoulders, bust and legs are amazing, and we want to make sure they get the spotlight! We want to draw the eye away from your spotlight-stealing midsection and focus on your best features. Don’t help your middle steal the spotlight from your fabulous, but not always as noticeable, legs, bust, and shoulders by giving it a microphone and theme music too.
In order to shine the spotlight up to your shoulders and bust and down to your gorgeous gams, we want to create vertical lines that draw the eye up and down. Choosing clothes that add curves and fulness to your lower body will help create a more defined waist and balance with your shoulders, which provide excellent structure for your tops.
You will do this by wearing lighter colors and patterns on bottom and utilizing accessories like shoes, necklaces and earrings to draw the eye up and down. Keeping the waist area quiet and boring will keep the spotlight shining right where we want it.
The Biggest Outfit Mistakes an Apple Makes
Because your lower half is so easy to dress and so slim compared to your upper torso, you tend to wear fitted bottoms like skinny jeans to accentuate that. Even though that is one of your best features, it also shines the spotlight on the difference between your upper and lower halves and exaggerates the apple shape of your body.
Or you go to the other extreme and opt for the oversized, tunic/shapeless look in an effort to try to hide your midsection.
This isn’t necessary and doesn’t achieve the desired result anyway! Nothing needs to be hidden or covered, and when you do that none of your fabulous features get to shine! Instead of drowning your figure in fabric, skim your shape and fill out your lower half so we get to see the best of you!
Your body shape has so many fabulous features, but it’s easy to focus on what you don’t love. When you learn to work WITH your body and feature your best assets, you will love your fabulous shape.
5 thoughts on “Do I Have An Apple Body Shape?”
I thought I was a rectangle, but now I do believe I’m an apple. I ALWAYS gain weight first in the abdomen, along with a bit in the thighs, butt, back, arms and chest, but never as much as in the abdomen. After listening, I do believe I’m an apple. Your descriptions were very clear. An apple shape is SO VERY FRUSTRATING. I CAN transform into a rectangle and an inverted triangle very easily, depending on weight. I thought the most important information was to dress how you look now, NO MATTER WHAT. Since apple shapes can transform, it is important to dress how you look. Thanks so much for finally clarifying this for me.
Interesing. I’ve always had a definite inverted triangle shape, but since I’ve gained weight, none of the clothing advice fits anymore because of my waist. So, I’ve turned into an apple I guess.
Great article. I’m 68 and have lost and gained weight back a number of times. The sad thing about being an apple, when you lose weight, you lose it first in your lower section and last in your stomach area, when you gain, you gain first in your stomach area. So when you do this over and over you become very much out of proportion in time. In the last 3 months I’ve again lost 26 lbs and 11 inches around my waist, I’ve joined a gym for strength training, I hope it helps to balance things out. I love all your encouragement and practice tips for dressing, but the fact remains that my “ chicken legs” and round waist causes me to be very self conscious. I’ll try to be less hard on myself, thank you for telling us, it’s not our fault.
So am I still an apple if I have NO bust, flat bottom and large round middle? Frustrating
I used to think I was a pear when ai was younger but now in my mid 50s I have definitely developed an apple shape. It’s frustrating.