The shape of your bottom cannot tell you anything about your hormones, whatever recent social media posts claim. The only way to find out your levels of cortisol, oestrogen or anything else is a blood test.

A heart-shaped bottom, influencers say, signals healthy oestrogen, while an H shape means too much cortisol. In reality, buttock shape doesn’t reflect your circulating hormone levels from day to day, week to week or month to month.

So what decides your shape? Mostly your genes. They give you your skeletal structure and your muscle size and structure. And in the buttocks and everywhere else, how much fat you are likely to carry there.

The shape of the pelvis varies between people. In obstetrics, four traditional categories describe the internal bony structure of the pelvis, which is also the shape of the opening through which a baby passes during birth: gynaecoid, android, anthropoid and platypelloid.

Gynaecoid is the most common in females and the most favourable for a vaginal birth. Android is narrower and close to the shape of........

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