Hip dips are indentations along the sides of your body, just below the hip bone and above the thigh. They’re a completely normal part of human anatomy, created by the natural gap between your pelvis and the top of your thigh bone. Everyone has this gap. Whether yours shows up as a visible dip depends on the shape of your skeleton, where your body stores fat, and how much muscle you carry in the area.
The Skeletal Structure Behind Hip Dips
Your upper leg bone isn’t a straight line. It’s shaped more like a curvy number seven, with the top of the femur jutting outward from the pelvis. Three bony landmarks create your hip’s overall silhouette: the ilium (the wide, wing-shaped part of your pelvis that gives hips their round shape), the hip socket where the femur connects, and the greater trochanter, which is the knobby bump at the top of the thigh bone.
Between the ilium and the greater trochanter, there’s a space. That space is your hip dip. The size of the indentation depends on how far apart those two landmarks sit, how wide your pelvis is, and how long your femoral neck is (the short bridge of bone connecting the ball of your hip joint to the shaft of your leg). A wider pelvis with a shorter femoral neck tends to create a more visible dip. A narrower pelvis or longer femoral neck may keep the curve smooth. None of these dimensions are something you can change through diet or exercise.
Why Fat Distribution Matters
Bone structure sets the template, but soft tissue determines how visible the dip actually is. Fat doesn’t distribute evenly around the hips. In women especially, estrogen drives fat storage toward the hips and buttocks, but that accumulation isn’t uniform. You can have plenty of overall volume in the glute area and still have a thinner layer of fat right over the trochanteric depression, leaving the dip visible.
This is why two people at the same body weight can look completely different in this area. One person may carry more fat directly over the gap between the pelvis and the greater trochanter, filling in the dip. Another may store fat just above and below the dip, which can actually make it look more pronounced by creating fuller curves on either side of the indentation. Gaining or losing weight may change how noticeable your hip dips are, but it won’t eliminate them if they’re driven primarily by your bone structure.
Why Hip Dips Are More Visible in Women
Women are more likely to notice hip dips because of the typical female pelvic shape. The gynecoid pelvis, which is wider across the top, increases the visual distance between the iliac crest and the greater trochanter. That wider span means there’s more room for the inward curve to show. Hormonal, genetic, and biomechanical differences all contribute to a higher prevalence of visible trochanteric depressions in women, though men can have them too.
Can Exercise Change Hip Dips?
Exercise won’t eliminate hip dips, but building muscle in the right areas can change how they look. The gluteus medius, a fan-shaped muscle that sits high on the side of the hip, covers part of the area where hip dips appear. Strengthening it can add volume to the region and create a slightly more rounded contour.
Exercises that target the gluteus medius and the surrounding muscles, like side-lying leg raises, clamshells, curtsy lunges, and banded lateral walks, can help build mass in that zone over time. The effect is real but modest. You’re adding a layer of muscle over a structural gap in your skeleton, so the degree of change depends on how deep the dip is and how much muscle you’re able to build. For some people, consistent glute training makes a noticeable difference. For others, the skeletal geometry is simply too pronounced for muscle alone to smooth out the curve.
Cosmetic Options That Exist
For people who want to address hip dips beyond what exercise can do, a few cosmetic procedures target the area directly. Fat grafting (taking fat from one area of the body and injecting it into the hip dip) is one of the most common approaches. It carries an overall complication rate of about 10.5%, which is lower than implant-based procedures, where the complication rate runs around 30.5%.
Injectable fillers made from hyaluronic acid are a newer, less invasive option. They’re biocompatible, non-toxic, and reversible if needed. A typical session uses about 20 milliliters of filler for the entire gluteal region, placed in the intermediate layer beneath the skin. Results are temporary compared to fat grafting, and multiple sessions may be needed. These procedures are purely cosmetic. Hip dips carry no health risks and don’t indicate anything about your fitness level, hormone balance, or overall well-being.
What Hip Dips Don’t Mean
Hip dips aren’t caused by doing something wrong. They’re not a sign that you need to lose weight, gain weight, or work out differently. They don’t reflect poor health or a lack of muscle. They’re the visible result of your unique skeletal geometry, the way fat happens to distribute across your body, and the specific proportions of bones you were born with. Most of what determines whether you have them was decided long before you had any say in the matter.