Not to be that person, but I read in the updated Kibbes that pure N and pure C don’t exist anymore 🥲 Also height isn’t a big a factor in typing men (Leonardo DiCaprio and Elvis Presley are verified Romantics despite being 6 ft). Also body shape isn’t much of a factor either. Mila Kunis, Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez don’t really have defined waists, but Kibbe recently called them TRs. Jennifer Love Hewitt is FG and is curvier than those 3. I think people tend to get stereotyped based on body shape alone
as this is commonly mentioned: time for some critical points in depth:
i do keep all the 13 categories - otherwise, the system logically falls apart. i'll explain why.
pure c especially has to be the middle anchor. of course yin and yang can coexist equally in a person who is neither tall nor small and quite symmetrical, and some people like that exist. kibbe removed them because of perceived rarity, "they were somehow inconsistent with his vision of female physiognomy" (yikes - somebody likes to prescribe how we should look like or not), and a conservative shift in america aka "every person is either more yin or yang". which we all know is too simplistic. we are back to belle northrup — she sorted everything into masculine D/N or feminine R — where it all began in the 1920s. classic 100-year cycle. maybe kibbe studied northrup again and was influenced by it, went back to square one to reduce difficulty, even though it's dated. but kibbe likes dated stuff, it's no surprise, we know that since the metamorphosis book.
and yes, remember kibbe didn't create the system. Joseph Bonomo, Belle Northrup, Harriet Tilden McJimsey, John Kitchener, Carol Tuttle, they all invented and developed it. kibbe marketed the final bits. that's probably why there's lack of clarity and constant changes, plus his puzzling leaning towards poetry and magical thinking in his facebook group. he doesn't invent, he modifies, so it seems like he created it. he undoes the work of other authors to make it his. that should be critiqued, since it made no sense and wasn't well-received either. it's strange how he dismantles something with his name on it without proper explaining.
i don't get the pure type removal generally. a typology about human shape needs the in-betweens, both outliers and mixed and blended lines, and kibbe can make mistakes. he's retyped and changed his mind countlessly before, which says a lot. tom cruise is pure N not SN, timothee chalamet is pure G not FG, the list goes on. and most of men's clothing is pure classic or pure natural. would be hilarious if it's for nonexistent types, even though beauty and fashion does work like that sometimes. even david doesn't dress his own type aka TR in 90% of the pictures we see of him, but like a colorful classic or gamine. even he wants to be a different ID or ideal, even if he praised TR to the heavens in the book.
of course i am a hardliner on this: height is THE factor in typing both men and women! this won't ever change, even if kibbe's been more detailed for women's heights, as that is his market and demand, and height is a less touchy subject there culturally. it's too important in how a person comes across IRL though. first thing we see at a distance. it would be ironic to disregard height when especially guys are quickly categorized by it. for reasons of social dominance and distinguishing from the opposite sex mostly, but we can do that without judging but objectively through kibbe's system which has to be unbiased and normalize diversity, not ignore plurality. he's the one saying everyone's perfect anyway!
so: vertical, medium height, petite. three options. every guy is somewhere. agreed? we have to at least take these into account. otherwise, it's not kibbe anymore and we can discard it all. which many people following kibbe's confused updates did. i get why people ditch it all at once given the lack of consensus and lack of real physical rules. height is the last frontier, otherwise kibbe is just 70% quasi-spirituality.
my rules are, if a man is above 6'0, he's SD, D, or FN, slim chance of DC. a male gamine or romantic must be 5-foot-something. kibbe is negligent with typing men because he's very hetero and follows the money + cultural hegemony, aka women are styled and looked at VS men are not. kibbe should give us height limitations for guys, too, since they make a difference. and make typing easier.
but if david makes typing easy, he can't sell consultations and books. still, we can put some levels in there ourselves. daniel radcliffe at 5'4 is gonna be a soft gamine and paul newman at 5'10 is gonna be a dramatic classic and tom hiddleston at 6'2 will be a dramatic. i like height helping with types, since it's clear-cut and the only thing about the system you can actually quantify. and it helps people typing themselves tremendously. why ignore it for guys when one or two exceptions (supposed tall gamine etc) pop up?
leo dicaprio and elvis are both in the natural or dramatic family anyway. yes, i think they are mistyped. kibbe categorized them based on their womanizer heartthrob public images, which means R to him, ignoring their width/height. david is the one applying stereotypes in favor of skipping analysis. which saves him time as he's busy as hell admittedly and "womanizer" is both their public image, and that's how some Rs CAN come across, sure. but both are not petite, and you have to be below 6'0 small and delicate to be R. their faces have softness but also width... sounds like SN alert. the usual confusion between those types. elvis might even be an SD. tall-ish, T-shape, soft face, long slim legs... SD also has a glam heartthrob image in the book, so... it'd still work if you go by how the public perceives them.
body shape is essential! otherwise, what should a body typing rely on? it's not a personality typing. you have to mark and analyse a person's silhouette to get an image ID. interestingly, kibbe's new book is literally all about that. he leans heavily into line drawings. no body shape, no drawing. and people confusing "perceived curvy" VS "kibbe double curve" is a long-standing problem. i'm still studying it too.
ariana is a flamboyant gamine (petite + narrow/angular) rebranded as a pure R for wicked, and selena/mila have fluctuating weights. selena is TR, though. dunno about mila. mistyped SN? remember, theatrical adds a dramatic element though, which includes less defined curves than pure R and streamlines that type. especially soft gamines can be curvy still, they are both mostly R and some D in one. jennifer could be TR, too, if she's that curve dominant. needs further elaboration.
the stereotyping is almost the point of metamorphosis, as kibbe bases his idea on old hollywood typecasting: of course the 50s were regressive and reductive like that. it's about abstracts and personal aura to him, too, which is why he's been so wishy-washy and sensationalist about it. it works and sells. people who got a consulting from him say it's less about oneself but the rush of that experience and overconsumption, and getting clothes they don't want or actually wear, since kibbe overrides clients with his own supposed vision. keep that in mind. disappointed but not surprised.
most of these common points have been debunked for long, and it's known i maintain the original system: against kibbe's latest penchant for experimenting, randomizing, and disembodying a typology about bodies (how) because he likes a philosophical/idealistic-neoliberal approach. i get why he might be sick of just sticking to physics but come on. it's essence typing at this point.
i am not liberal, i like the material and measuring aspect of the 13 types, cause that's right in front of our eyes, and that's where putting on a piece of clothing happens. difficult in the internet age, and people dislike being thrown into a drawer, i understand that. but the more types he removes, the more narrow the two yin yang drawers become in the first place. i do acknowledge his experience with practical styling, i do theory, and theory/analysis can miss a mark just as much. both is risk.
the plurality should be maintained instead of removing types, and kibbe's volatile opinions for marketing and excessive monetizing efforts disregarded (5000 bucks for a consultation? phew), or attempts to type according to personality and celebrity PR first and foremost. singular celebrity examples or typing confusions shouldn't have such a huge impact. looking at public image can help (eg sabrina carpenter rebrand = pinup = yin), but let's draw lines and go by height first. why is pinup yin? because the waist is marked. and so on.
neither the new nor the old book are anywhere near perfect, so the real deal happens on independent kibbe-only blogs and youtube/tiktok making sense of this anyway. kibbe himself is not the untouchable end-all-be-all, it's better to have a more democratic typing universe (what would we do without aly art or gabriella arruda, for instance). that being said, TLDR: much work to do!
