clavicles; and the distance from the notch to the bases of the ears (which again may differ according to the pose). Some teachers deprecate mechanistic measurements and strongly advise the artist to learn to estimate proportion by eye alone. Ratios Many text books of artistic anatomy advise that the head height be used as a yardstick for other lengths in the body: their ratios to it provide a consistent and credible structure. Although the average person is 7 heads tall, the custom in Classical Greece (since Lysippos) and Renaissance art was to set the figure as eight heads tall: "the eight-heads-length figure seems by far the best; it gives dignity to the figure and also seems to be the most convenient." The half-way mark is a line between the outer hip bones, just above the pubic arch. the ratio of hip width to shoulder width varies by biological gender: the average ratio for women is 1:1.03, for men it is 1:1.18. legs (floor to perineum) are typically three-and-a-half to four heads long; arms about three heads long; hands are as long as the face. Leg-to-body ratio is seen as indicator of physical attractiveness but there appears to be no accepted definition of leg-length: the 'perineum to floor' measure is the most used but arguably the distance from ankle bone to outer hip bone is more rigorous. On this (latter) metric, the most attractive ratio of leg to body for men (as seen by American women) is 1:1, matching the ratio above. A Japanese study using the former metric found the same result for male attractiveness but women with longer legs than body were judged to be more attractive. Excessive deviations from the mean were seen as indicative of disease. "High class fashion journals depict women with an extreme length of limb, and decorative art does the same for both men and women [...]. When the artist wishes to depict the lower orders, as such, or the comic, he draws people with exaggeratedly short limbs and makes them fat." Waist-to-height ratio: the average ratio for US college competitive swimmers is 0.424 (women) and 0.428 (men); the ratios for an (US) normally healthy man or woman is 0.460.53 and 0.450.49 respectively; the ratio ranges beyond 0.63 for morbidly obese individuals. Waist–hip ratio: artist's conception of the ideal waisthip ratio has varied down the ages, but for female figures "over the 2,500-year period