Hips are a thing that I think most of us want. After all, the “ideal” figure for a woman is an hourglass, society pushes this so much. We live in a society but that doesn’t mean it’s right about everything it pushes onto us. But much like every part of the body, hips can come in all shapes and sizes, much to the detriment of our own idealization. Having kim kardashian hips with the same small waist isn’t exactly common so you have to set your mind right first. Having average hips is ok, having small hips is ok and if you’re lucky enough to have big hips then good for you I’m sure you can send this to people you know.

Hips are a hard topic to cover for most people since unless you started hrt as a wee baby then most of your hippage will come from weight gain and fat. Training your muscles in that area is a lot more helpful to your butt than the front view of your hips. However hips are nothing to obsess over as many women don’t have large hips either and even then the ones that do get fetishized which is kinda cringe, which I’m sure many of us can attest to anyway by virtue of being trans. 

If having small hips bothers you though there’s a few things you can do to completely work around it. 

A thing to understand is how people can give definition to their hips through their waist. You can see is quite frequently even with cis women through the phenomenon of high waisted items. I think what demonstrates this the best is high waisted underwear like this, although even higher waisted things exist (it’s just difficult to find photos).

As you can see this model doesn’t have the largest hips however because of how the underwear goes all the way up to their waistline, it makes it appear as if the hips start right beneath. The added curve of your waist ending means your hips will cover a larger area and thus look larger. Now that we hopefully understand the benefit of high waisted/fitted at the waist things, let’s move onto the tips.

The most important thing is to not wear anything fitted around your hips.

This means no skinny jeans, no leggings, no booty shorts (or honestly just shorts in general) and no low rise bottoms. Because your hips are smaller and it bothers you, bringing attention to their defined figure is the last thing you (probably) want to do, especially because clothes might not fit right depending on your proportions. 

The difference between these leggings vs the jeans I think are quite clear in demonstrating this.

The fact there is no wiggle room for my clothes to kinda poof outwards a bit on my hips only makes it worse. Avoiding low rise bottoms is because it leaves too much of a gap between your hips and where your waist starts and it will just look kind of odd, maybe if you’re short it’s different but I’m not so i don’t know.

So what’s the next tip going to be? Well obvious it is wearing loose things around your hips, and more specifically: wear things that fit at your waist and are high waisted. The difference between low waist vs. high waisted can be seen here. This also demonstrates why if your bottoms sit too low, they will just fall straight down because of gravity and make your hips look completely non-existent.

Having things fit at your waist means there isn’t a need for fitting around your hips so you can often have a lot more variety in that way. A great choice for doing this is a midi skirt. Midi skirts are very feminine as many of them will fit at your waist and are often a little poofy, they can exaggerate the amount of hips you have by a decent amount. Here are a couple though to see the shape differences between some as not all skirts will give you the same amount of extra hip. white is least, red is some, purple is most.

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Another good choice is actually baggy jeans. Now if you’re a boomer, like lets say 25 or older, you may not be used to them but I assure you zoomers have made them plenty available. You’re going to want stiffer denim for this so they hold their shape so try to aim for 100% cotton as otherwise they could grip to your hips a bit. If you’re going to go this route, definitely buy them in person as it can be unreliable to gauge quality when buying things online. 

For a more business/formal look you can go for wide leg pants/trousers which are also called palazzo pants (or just wide leg pants). These typically have a more structured look to them like this.

Having poofy bottoms, whether it’s pants or a skirt will also make your upper body look smaller if you think it is disproportionately large so keep the bigger picture in mind for your whole outfit instead of only planning for one problem you have.

Another super expert pro tip is also to buy a size larger than normal. Why? Because the extra fabric accommodates for an extra 2 inches of hip as opposed to 1 inch of waist and can often add that shape I mentioned earlier. Do not do this without being able to try them though because it super duper depends on the sizing of the pants and you need to be a super expert pro to ensure you can identify what kind of fabrics will hold the shape (especially over time as you wash it and it loses those properties) for this to work. To add onto this, pants with pockets also tend to make your hips look bigger as the fabric from the pockets can add a bit of an extra layer to the silhouette and then make hips appear bigger; especially if you have things in your pockets. The reason many women’s pants don’t have pockets is actually for this exact reason: it ‘messes’ up the intended silhouette of the garment. The blue jeans have pockets, the black jeans has tiny ones.

Now this isn’t a tip you need to follow if you like shorts but I would avoid things that are short, so anything that shows more than above your knee. This is because if you have smaller thighs then you most likely also have smaller hips so it’ll just lead people’s eyes to your hips. If the garment is only long enough to cover your general hip area and a bit more, that’s where people will be drawn to look. Hiding your legs will also keep the illusion that you’re more proportionate with the bigger bottoms being your skirt or whatever. It just brings further attention to your hip area which might be undesirable for you. I’ll demonstrate this with a skirt that is way too tight and short for me, see where your eyes go.

A good summary of these all of these tips in combination is this comic

The figures may be a little exaggerated but I think it demonstrates the difference pretty well

I’d also recommend tucking in your top if it’s long enough, it’ll just look better as you want your waist to show relative to your hips, making it appear a bit smaller than it is. With that in addition to your poofy skirt or whatever, it can give you some desired hip and maybe even waist figure. This applies to tops like blouses that won’t be as form fitting and therefore will mess up the proportions when too loose; tucking this in might alleviate some of that issue.

If it’s not QUITE long enough to tuck in, then using a belt is another way to achieve the same thing. It also adds a bit of a flair to your look. When it comes to pants I like to use a chain belt, and skirts just a regular belt like leather.

Another tip is to wear tight or slim shirts so that way you don’t need to tuck anything in since it will already by form fitting, bodysuits are good for this but be aware those make it difficult to tuck.

This is definitely a more general tip to apply but by having things that are tight on your upper body you avoid the potential exaggeration of your torso that some shirts might bring. Obviously if you want to read the post on minimizing the appearance of your shoulders, most of those tips work well in this case too as minimizing works well when combined with trying to make something else look bigger.

So in summary 

• Avoid low rise bottoms, as they can make your hips look straight since they do not ‘grip’ onto your waist.
• Avoid form fitting clothes around your hips, it will show their structure and you might not want that if you are anxious about your hips being small.
• Avoid short bottoms like shorts as they will “expose” the general shape of your hips through the size of thighs and bring attention of eyes to your hips.
• Tight tops and baggy bottoms will force your proportions to look like you have bigger hips to an extent 
• Form fitting bad poof good