I mentioned a couple of posts back about being surprised by how high the top of my iliac crest was—nearly as high as my navel.

As chance would have it—not such an unlikely chance, with the date approaching All Hallows Eve—I happened upon a depiction of a skeleton outside a local shop. And look! That poor guy’s iliac crest comes no higher than his coccyx!

I present this image purely in an effort to spread the blame around. My ignorance of pelvic configuration is an ignorance deeply rooted in inaccurate depictions in popular culture.

I told this story to one friend who was baffled that I was so misled by these sorts of images. “Just look at any bikini model,” he said. “You can plainly see how the top of the iliac crest is nearly as high as the navel.” (Which is true—search for bikini model at wikimedia commons and see for yourself.)

The topic under discussion shifted at that point to optimal waist-to-hip ratios, after which it started getting strange. But all that is beside the point: Is it any surprise, in a world where plastic Halloween decorations cheap enough to leave out on a public bench are this inaccurate, that I might be confused about this particular aspect of anatomy? No, I say. It is not.