﻿There’s no scientific proof that your body type says
anything about you as a person– but this idea is back in the
zeitgeist and body typing has blown up into a surprising modern craze.
"Part 2 of how to find out your body type."
For a long time, humans held onto the belief that how we look
is a clue to our personalities – whether that’s the medieval idea that outer
beauty reflects inner virtue, or psychoanalyst Carl Jung saying that
“bodily traits are not merely physical, nor mental traits merely psychic.”
Over the years, this has crystallized into certain categories of bodies and
what they’re thought to represent. Athletic, muscular bodies are associated
with courage and bravery. Hourglass bodies are confident,
romantic and independent, while round bodies are funny, and
easy-going. And tall, skinny people are
often seen as shy and introverted. “Let’s grow ourselves a big
lanky goggle eyed freak of a son!” “Calm down mate, no need to get
offensive, I didn’t call you fatty as soon as I saw you.”
Today people are turning to the Kibbe system to find out how to dress
for their bodies, yet what they’re getting isn’t just a type, but an
“image identity” and getting their entire essence defined as either
a dramatic, a classic, a natural, a gamine or a romantic.
"The great thing about kibbe is It will work for every height,
every race, every weight." Of course, there is no proven
correlation between what a person looks like, and the kind of person
they are.
So is there anything to body typing – and why are we so willing to
believe there must be? CHAPTER ONE: THE “SCIENCE” OF BODY TYPING
William Sheldon’s theory of
somatotypes dates back to the 1940s, and splits people in just
three distinct categories: ectomorphs, tall and thin, introverted but artistic;
endormorphs, soft and round, sociable and relaxed; and mesomorphs,
hard and muscular, risky and competitive Sheldon’s work has been resoundingly
debunked as pseudoscience. But body typing in different iterations
continues to periodically come back in – even in our modern era after there’s
been so much pushback to judging people based on appearances.
The Kibbe Body Type test has amassed over 80 million views on TikTok.
On the surface, these categorisations — popularized by stylist David Kibbe back
in 1987 — are all about how to dress for the body shape you are, and
they’ve caught on because they offer this guidance.
“Dramatics have long and sharp bones, so they need tailored pieces.
Soft dramatics dress predominantly for long bones, plus
accommodation for curve.” Kibbe’s formula is based on the
idea of softness and sharpness, or “yin” and “yang”, and is itself
an adaptation of a concept introduced by Iowa State University
professor Harriet Tilden McJimsey in her 1963 book Art In Clothing.
If you have more angular features, more yang, you’re a dramatic
or a natural. Rounder, softer, yin features
makes you a gamine or an ingenue. And somewhere in the middle
means you’re a classic or romantic. But in the style guide written by
Kibbe, there are also plenty of character judgments amongst the
more objective physical descriptions. Gamines are friendly and casual;
Classics have a gracious and serene manner; Naturals have an informal,
casual manner. And these characterizations come
from the fact that Kibbe was inspired by old Hollywood divas –
Joan Crawford the archetypal dramatic; Ingrid Bergman the
Natural; Grace Kelly the classic; Goldie Hawn the gamine;
Elizabeth Taylor the Romantic; Debbie Reynolds the Ingenue – so
he was effectively applying the characters they played and their on-screen
personas to their body types.
“Fiddle dee dee, Ashley Wilkes told me he liked to see a girl
with a healthy appetite.” CHAPTER TWO: WHY WE WANT TO
PUT OURSELVES IN BOXES Ultimately, body typing is a way of
putting people in a neat box, and that’s actually a big reason they catch on.
People are looking to definitively categorize themselves,
eliminate uncertainty about which path they should follow, and then to
latch onto an easy framework and a rulebook to operate by
“In general, it’s recommended that theatrical romantics avoid
that really baggy, unconstructed look.” In that sense, the popularity of the
kibbe type goes hand in hand with personality categorizations like the
Myers-Briggs tests, sorting people into Type A or Type B, or astrological signs
and horoscopes. “He’s a Libra Moon, that says a lot!”
And while boxes may certainly be limiting, it becomes really difficult to
tell how much substance body typing or of these tests are onto because
there’s a chicken and egg situation at play. The more we believe in a certain idea
of ourselves, the more we act to confirm that belief.
And typing is modeled for us everywhere we look: onscreen,
the ubiquitous practice of typecasting makes us associate certain traits with
certain bodies — often with problematic consequences.
Actors like Melissa McCarthy and Jack Black both came up in comedy rather
than romantic or dramatic roles, so were seen as reinforcing a long tradition of
fatter bodies being viewed as funnier "I did seven years of very dramatic,
troubled plays, and thought ‘I’d never do comedy again’, then I moved to
LA and just did comedies, so I don’t know what I’m doing.”
On the flipside, actors who fit the more dramatic type — like Tilda
Swinton or Anya Taylor-Joy — get cast as striking, aloof,
complicated personas. And when actors change dominant
personas, that often means altering their bodies: Chris Pratt was a
more comedic actor in Parks and Rec, but then bulked up,
got buff, and overnight began to get cast as an archetypal
leading man “Mr Misrani wanted me to
consult with you.” “You wanna consult here,
or in my bungalow?” Privately, we subconsciously
adopt this messaging, and apply it to ourselves.