AlexGHi guys, first time poster here.
This one’s aimed at the fiction writers: how do you calculate a woman’s height and weight in one of your works?
Personally, I use a formula I’d borrowed from Vitality Magazine weight guidelines: a 5’0" woman’s healthy weight should be 100 lbs., and add 5 lbs. for every inch taller after that.
Of course, that’s going to go up for body builders; I did something very fast and loose here when I was dieting: you know those 5 pound tube packs of hamburger meat you might see at the supermarket? I imagine that as my "modeling clay, and try to add that much to the woman’s frame as I imagine her and add up the height and weight.
How do y’all measure your amazons?
It’s an interesting question; one that doesn’t have any real fast or exact answer since the variables involved depends upon the individual and can span a wide range – even within a female bodybuilding weight class. I.E. two people might have approximately the same physical height and weight, but depending upon how their skeletal-muscular structure (genetics) is put to together one might look far larger then the other.
On a related topic, at the moment, there is an ongoing project to create a Giantess calculator over at the http://www.giantess.com web site.
But you asked about Amazons, rather then Giantesses . . . 😉
Another factor you have to take into account is whether or not the character is going be Human Amazonian or Meta Human Amazonian in height, weight and the degrees of her overall strength. If it’s the former, you could use stats of real life female bodybuilders and a height / weight table comparison chart (use one with a range and median average) as a guide.
Some of the better female bodybuilding stat sources:
http://www.getbig.com/almanac/almanac.htm
http://www.wpw.net/
http://www.raymartin.net/
http://amg-lite.i-networx.de/
Although the original site seems to be gone, its been saved on the Internet Wayback Machine site – one of the best height / weight charts I’ve come across – best to print it out.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.mhv.net/~donn/diet.html
Click on Nov 28, 1999, then scroll down to the link "Weight Tables Comparison Study" and click on it. The height / weight chart should come up – if not, keep trying with one of the earlier dated saves of the site, the later ones seem to have been blocked off by the original home page server.
Now, if its a case of the latter and your Amazonian character is going to be on the level of the She-Hulk or Thundra, you can still use the former information as a preliminary starting point, but as a real guide its best to see what others have already worked out on the subject. As an example, the stat info from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe (or conversely the version used by DC for its characters) for height, weight and levels of strength would be a good source since the information is already compiled for you.
Hope this is of assistance.
“I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.”
~ Mark Twain / Samuel Clemens (1907)