America's long national nightmare has just begun a new chapter, but we've still got a beacon of hope: holding up our end of the social contract, whatever that means to you, and the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, which is set to walk in Paris later this month.
As usual, when this parade of the impossibly, professionally in-shape is televised approximately a month from now, we as a country come together with dairy and corn products pumped full of carcinogens to laugh at the costumes and wonder what it's like having a low enough percentage of body fat that you can see every aspect of the underlying musculature. The latter is how terms like "thighbrow" (the creases that appear along the pelvis when seated) and "ab crack" (a line running down the center of the stomach) have entered our lexicon and collective consciousness—as will "hip dent," should this introduction serve its purpose.
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Meaning "the indentation where the leg meets its socket," the HD is rare-ish, even amongst other elusive identifiers of hyper-fitness—most lingerie models may have valleys dividing their bellies in half, but not all of them have hip dents. And that's what makes it great—its exclusivity even amongst the elite, which kind of makes it more democratic in a way, doesn't it? Because in a culture that fetishes gaps and hollows and is prone to judging itself by narrow parameters, who's to say an objectively beautiful body with one characteristic but not another is any less beautiful?
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Chelsea Peng is a writer and editor who was formerly the assistant editor at MarieClaire.com. She's also worked for The Strategist and Refinery29, and is a graduate of Northwestern University. On her tombstone, she would like a GIF of herself that's better than the one that already exists on the Internet and a free fro-yo machine. Besides frozen dairy products, she's into pirates, carbs, Balzac, and snacking so hard she has to go lie down.
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