Hip dips are having a moment. The perfectly normal indentations that sit below your hips on the outer thigh have become the latest body feature to be scrutinised, fixed and agonised over on social media. But what are they? Can you actually get rid of them? And should you even try?

Formally known as the trochanteric depression, hip dips exist in both men and women and are simply the visible result of the space between two bones – part of the pelvis called the iliac crest and a bony bulge on the upper thigh bone called the greater trochanter. How pronounced they look depends on your bone structure, muscle size and how much fat sits in the area. In other words, they are largely the result of genetics.

Research suggests that some people feel hip dips disrupt the natural contours of the body, though what counts as an attractive figure varies widely from person to person.

The exercises most commonly recommended to........

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