Hip Dips Vs No Hip Dips: What Is Actually Different?

Those two bodies in the side-by-side photo are not a before and after. They are two different skeletons, or one skeleton photographed two different ways.

Almost every hip dips vs no hip dips comparison comes down to where two bones sit and how much padding covers the space between them. Neither version is fitter, healthier or better trained.

Very little of that is under your control, and the part that is moves slowly.

So the questions worth answering are narrow ones: what is physically different between the two, why the same person shows a dip in one photo and a smooth line in the next, and what training actually moves.

Key Takeaways

• Hip dips are the gap between the top of your hip bone and the knob at the top of your thigh bone. A wider gap plus a thinner layer of fat over it means a visible dip.
• Neither version is better. It is not a sign of body fat, fitness, or how much you train.
• The same body can show dips in one photo and none in the next. Stance, weight shift and camera height do most of the work.
• Training builds the glutes, which is worth doing on its own. The evidence that it fills in a hip dip is much thinner than the workout videos suggest.

Hip Dips Vs No Hip Dips: What Is Physically Different

Two people in a hip dips vs no hip dips photo can carry identical body fat and identical muscle and still look completely different at the hip. What separates them is a small difference in bone spacing.

What We Are Comparing	Visible Hip Dips	No Visible Hip Dips
Top of the hip bone	Higher, flared wider	Lower, closer in
Thigh-bone knob	Further down and further out	Tucked closer under the hip bone
Gap between the two	Wider, so there is a space to see	Narrow, so the line runs straight
Fat over that gap	Thinner, or sitting below in the outer thigh	Fuller layer that fills the space
Side glute fullness	Less volume high on the hip	More volume high on the hip
What training changes	The glutes around it, slowly, and mostly the big glute	The same muscles, with less contrast to notice
What nothing changes	Bone spacing, pelvis width, fat storage pattern	The same list

The dip sits between the top ridge of your hip bone (iliac crest) and the bony knob at the top of your thigh bone (greater trochanter).

When those two points do not line up on one smooth curve, you see an indentation.

Cleveland Clinic’s explainer on hip dip anatomy puts the baseline plainly: everybody with typical anatomy has that space, and whether a dip shows depends on how pronounced it is.

A wider, more flared pelvis leaves more room between the landmarks, which is why visible dips turn up more often on women. The same feature goes by violin hips, and the shape it describes is the same.

Hip width and dip depth are separate things, though. You can have wide hips with deep dips, or narrow hips with a line that runs straight from waist to thigh.

So what causes hip dips comes down to three things: bone structure first, then the fat layer over the gap, then the muscle high on the hip. Thin skin, a thin fat layer or a flatter side glute each change how the same skeleton reads.

The parts really are different, then. Whether one arrangement is better is another question.

Is Having Hip Dips Better Or Worse Than Not Having Them

If you have been reading your hip dip as a scorecard for how hard you train, it is not one.

Neither version is better. There is no health difference, no strength difference and no functional difference in the hip dips vs no hip dips comparison, and no doctor will treat one as a finding.

Are hip dips normal? Completely. Everybody has the gap; what varies is how much of it shows.

For some lifters, growing the glutes makes the dip more visible rather than less, because a fuller rear glute raises the contrast at the side.

The dip did not deepen. The shelf above and behind it got bigger.

Plenty of people with years of hard training have pronounced dips precisely because of that training. Lifters tend to treat it as a package deal that arrives with the glutes.

It is not a body fat readout either. Lean people have deep dips and people carrying more fat often have none, because the spacing underneath does not care about the layer on top.

Where your body parks that fat is largely decided for you, which the training section below comes back to.

So if neither is better, why does the same body seem to switch between the two from one photo to the next?

Why The Same Body Shows Hip Dips In One Photo And Not The Next

The two images in most hip dips vs no hip dips comparisons are sometimes the same person, taken minutes apart.

What Changes The Dip In A Photo

Change nothing about your body and the dip can appear, deepen or vanish. These are the levers:

• Stance width: feet together deepens the dip, feet apart softens it
• Which leg the weight is on: the loaded side flattens, the free side hollows
• Pelvic tilt: tucking or arching moves the whole contour
• Squeezing the glutes versus standing relaxed
• Leggings and waistband height versus bare skin
• Side lighting, which casts a shadow into any dip, versus flat front lighting
• Camera height: shooting from above lengthens and hollows the hip line

Lifters on training forums describe the dip looking far less noticeable the moment they square their knees and feet in the mirror. Nothing about their muscle or body fat changed in those few seconds.

What A Hip Dip Transformation Photo Really Shows

Three ingredients go into most of them, in rough order of impact: better posing, a change in body fat, and some genuine glute growth.

Posed versus un-posed posts are the honest version of the genre. The people who post both shots side by side tend to admit the second one still bothers them. Transformation content leaves that part out.

Real change looks slower and duller. Six-month training logs on lifting forums show the hips filling in slowly across that stretch, inconsistent months included.

Set the camera aside, then, and ask what training actually moves.

What Training Actually Changes And What It Cannot

A plastic surgeon and a glute coach will give you opposite answers about whether muscle can fill a hip dip. The one study that actually scanned people gives the coaches less to work with than the workout videos suggest.

The Disagreement Nobody Resolves

One plastic surgeon argues there is nothing in the dip to grow, because the big glute muscles attach further back and the indentation sits over a band of connective tissue rather than over muscle.

Glute coaches say the opposite, that building the side and upper glute softens the look by half or more. That figure is coaching opinion, not a measured result.

Both sides agree on one point. The bone does not move.

What Happened When Researchers Actually Scanned People

Eighteen people trained the hip thrust and sixteen trained the back squat for nine weeks in a scan study of glute growth, with scans before and after.

The big glute grew, and it grew similarly in both groups. The side glutes, the ones sitting right over the hip dip area, showed little to no growth in either group.

Two months of heavy hip thrusts or squats reliably builds the big glute and barely touches the muscle over the dip.

That is a slow build, not a delivery date for a filled-in hip. If you train at home, the dumbbell hip thrust covers the same movement without a barbell.

Why Losing Weight Makes Dips Look Smaller For Some People And Deeper For Others

Both versions are true, and which one you get depends on where you personally store fat.

Carry it in the outer thigh just below the dip, and shrinking that pad makes the dip look shallower. Carry it as a thin layer over the gap itself, and losing it uncovers the contour, so the dip looks deeper.

You do not get to pick which one you are. An inherited fat-distribution study of nearly 39,000 people linked 250 inherited gene variants to where the body parks fat, hips and thighs included, and many of those links were stronger in women.

None of this removes a dip, and removing it was never the useful goal. If you want stronger, fuller hips anyway, these are the moves worth your time.

The Best Exercises For Building The Side Of Your Hips

The move at the top of nearly every hip dip workout barely registers when it gets measured. The one that tops the lab ranking usually gets thrown in at the end as a burnout set.

The Moves Worth Loading

Twenty-one people wore sensors across a dozen exercises so researchers could measure the effort in each muscle. Here is the top of that list for the muscle high on the side of the hip (gluteus medius).

• Side-Lying Leg Raise. It topped a lab study of 21 people at roughly 81 percent for the side glute. Sensors measure effort, not growth, and the bodyweight version runs out of resistance fast. Add an ankle weight or a band and take every set close to failure.
• Single-Leg Squat And Single-Leg Deadlift. Roughly 64 percent and 59 percent, and both load heavily in a way the side-lying raise cannot. The single-leg deadlift also worked the big glute at 59 percent in the same study, so it trains the whole hip in one move.
• Hip Thrusts And Squats. Neither did much for the side glutes in nine weeks of scanning, but both build the big glute, the shape change most people are chasing. Work up to a hip thrust weight that gets genuinely heavy rather than adding reps forever.
• Wide-Stance Squats. A wider stance shifts more of the work to the outer hip, which is the argument for goblet squats and sumo squats alongside your regular squat.

Push the knees out and the outer hip has to work.

The Moves That Are Warm Up, Not Growth

Both clamshell variations came in at 40 percent and 38 percent, roughly half the side-lying raise, despite being the first move most hip dip videos prescribe.

Lateral band walks registered just 27 percent for the big glute in the same study and train control more than size, so they belong before the session, not as the session. Fire hydrants belong there too, useful for waking the muscle up.

Train glutes two to three times a week with real weight, and judge nothing before 8 to 12 weeks.

This list builds hips you like. It does not erase anything.

Do Men Have Hip Dips

Yes, and the anatomy is identical.

Same two landmarks, same gap between them. Men carry a narrower pelvis on average, so the dip is less common and less pronounced, not absent.

Men rarely talk about it, which is most of why it feels rare. Mainstream male body ideals leave no room for the subject, and the men who do notice usually notice through the way their clothes sit rather than in the mirror.

The question usually arrives with its own answer attached. It usually reads as: is this even a hip dip, and by the way, nobody has ever brought it up.

Hip width is skeletal and cannot be narrowed, so the productive play is the ratio. Build the shoulders and upper back to change the proportion instead of chasing anything aimed at shrinking your hips.

For men this was a non-topic for years. It stopped being one in 2026.

Why Everyone Is Suddenly Searching Hip Dips Vs No Hip Dips

The name for this body feature is younger than most of the people worried about it. It surfaced on Instagram around 2017.

It got tangled with cosmetic surgery marketing almost immediately, with clinics selling a fix for a feature that had only just been given a name. That overlap is part of why the advice online contradicts itself so badly.

A TikTok trend in mid-2026 then turned the feature into a coined insult aimed at women, and searches for hip dips vs no hip dips jumped roughly sevenfold year on year. It caused real distress for real people, including teenagers who had never given their hips a second thought.

Fat transfer and fillers exist, and both come with caveats. Only part of transferred fat survives, fillers wear off and need repeating, and fat transfer is surgery with surgical risk attached. That is a conversation for a board-certified surgeon, not a blog post.

The trend will pass. The skeleton will not.

FAQs

Do Hip Dips Mean You Don’t Have Hips?

No. Hip width comes from how far your pelvis flares, while a dip comes from the spacing between that pelvis and the top of your thigh bone, so the two do not track together. Wide hips with deep dips and narrow hips with a straight line are both common.

Which Is Better, Hip Dips Or No Hip Dips?

Neither. No health, strength or fitness difference exists between the two, and preference varies too much for either version to work as a body quality ranking. Both are ordinary outcomes of ordinary skeletons, and neither says anything about your training.

Do Hip Dips Go Away?

Not if they come from bone spacing. Consistent glute training over several months builds muscle around the area, though the evidence that the dip itself changes is thinner than workout videos suggest. Dieting cannot target one spot, and nothing moves bone.

Can Men Have Hip Dips?

Yes. The anatomy is identical in everyone, though a narrower average male pelvis makes the dip less common and less obvious in men. Men who have them usually notice through the way jeans and shorts sit rather than in the mirror.

Are Hip Dips A Sign Of Being Unfit?

No. A hip dip is neither a body fat readout nor a training scorecard, and plenty of lifters with years of glute work behind them have pronounced ones. In some bodies the training is exactly why the dip shows.

Bottom Line

The comparison photo that sent you here was never measuring fitness.

The physical difference is real, but it is small and structural. Where the top of your hip bone sits, where the knob of your thigh bone sits, and how much padding covers the space between them.

Nothing on that list is a fitness measurement, and nothing on it answers to a workout plan.

What you control is narrower than the internet suggests. You can learn to spot a posed photo in about a second, and you can build your glutes over months of consistent, properly loaded training.

Stance, lighting and camera angle account for most of what changes between two photos, and none of that is your body.

The payoff splits in two. Stronger, fuller glutes are close to guaranteed if you train for them. Whether the dip itself looks different afterwards is not something anyone can promise you.

Train your hips because strong hips are worth having. That reason holds up whether the dip changes or not.

You were never comparing fitness levels. You were comparing skeletons.

References

• Cleveland Clinic: Hip Dips: What They Are and Can You Get Rid of Them
• Frontiers in Physiology: Hip thrust and back squat training elicit similar gluteus muscle hypertrophy and transfer similarly to the deadlift
• Nature Communications: Inherited basis of visceral, abdominal subcutaneous and gluteofemoral fat depots
• PubMed: Gluteal muscle activation during common therapeutic exercises