What Are Hip Dips? The Complete Anatomical Explanation

What Are Hip Dips?

Hip dips — sometimes called violin hips — are the inward depression that appears on the side of your upper thigh, just below your hip bone, when you stand with your feet together. They look like a small "dip" or notch in the curve between your hip and your thigh.

Roughly 30% of women have visible hip dips to some degree. They are completely normal, not a medical condition, and not something you caused through diet, exercise, or lifestyle choices.

The Anatomy Behind Hip Dips

To understand why hip dips exist — and why no cream, stretch, or diet can eliminate them — you need to understand the three layers of anatomy involved:

1. The Skeleton (Fixed for Life)

The shape of your hip dip is determined before you are born. Two bony landmarks matter:

• The iliac crest — the top rim of your pelvis, the bone you can feel when you put your hands on your hips
• The greater trochanter — the bony knob at the top of your femur (thigh bone), which you can feel on the outside of your upper thigh

The distance between these two points is set by your genetics. If the gap is wide, the skin between them drapes inward, creating a visible dip. If the gap is narrow, the contour stays smooth. No intervention short of surgery changes the distance between these bones.

2. The Muscle Layer (Changeable With Training)

Three muscles attach around the hip dip area and can influence how visible it is:

• Gluteus medius — sits on the upper outer hip, fills the area just below the iliac crest
• Gluteus minimus — sits beneath the medius, adds deeper volume
• Tensor fasciae latae (TFL) — a small muscle on the front of the hip that can create bulk in the dip area when developed

Building these muscles through targeted resistance training pushes outward against the skin, softening the depression. This is the only exercise-based approach with a real anatomical mechanism — and it doesn't erase the dip, it reduces how visible it is.

3. The Fat Layer (Changeable, But Not Directionally)

Body fat sits between the muscle and the skin. Higher body fat tends to soften the dip because the fat fills the contour; lower body fat makes the dip more visible because the fat that was gently filling the area disappears.

You cannot choose where your body stores or loses fat. So while weight changes affect hip dip visibility, you cannot "spot reduce" or "spot gain" fat in the hip area specifically.

Are Hip Dips Normal?

Yes. Hip dips are a normal anatomical variation, like the shape of your nose or the length of your toes. They are not:

• A sign of being overweight or underweight
• A sign of weak glutes (though stronger glutes can soften them)
• A deformity or medical condition
• Something caused by your diet, posture, or activity level

The reason hip dips became a cultural fixation around 2020 is social media — specifically, the rise of the "smooth hip" silhouette on Instagram and TikTok. That silhouette is often the product of posing, lighting, shapewear, or outright photo editing, not the default state of the female body. Many of the celebrities held up as smooth-hip ideals have visible hip dips in unedited photos.

Can Hip Dips Be Fixed?

This depends entirely on what you mean by "fixed":

• If you mean change the bone structure: No. Nothing outside of surgery changes your skeleton.
• If you mean reduce how visible the dip is: Yes, through muscle building, shapewear, fillers, or fat transfer.
• If you mean eliminate the dip entirely: Only surgery (fat transfer or implants) comes close, and even then results vary.

Every legitimate approach — exercise, shapewear, dermal fillers, fat transfer, implants — works by changing what's in front of the dip (muscle, fat, filler, padding) or behind it (clothing). None of them remove the bone gap underneath.

The Full Option Spectrum

Here is every credible approach, ordered from least invasive to most:

Each comes with specific cost, timeline, and risk trade-offs. The right choice depends on your anatomy, your budget, how much the dip bothers you, and how much downtime you can tolerate.

What This Means For You

If you take one thing from this article, take this: hip dips are not a flaw, and any decision you make about them should come from a place of self-care and information — not from the marketing pressure created by social media. Whether you decide to embrace them, soften them with exercise, hide them with shapewear, fill them with cosmetic procedures, or change them permanently with surgery — the only wrong choice is one made without information.

The rest of the articles on this site break down each of those approaches in detail, with realistic costs, timelines, risks, and what you can actually expect.