Anatomy Of Knees

[bkd49]

I'm an artist and have recently begun studying the human form. According to my figure drawing book women have a capsule of fat below the kneecap and men don't. Why? Does anyone have a scientific reason for this?

[Retrochic]

I haven't -I've looked -just bone no capsule of 'fat' and my legs are not skinny.

[Canary42]

Nice how this thread brings back memories - I'm now playing Teresa Brewer's Music Music Music from YouTube over and over again. Wonderful.

[Canary42]

Ooops, wrong thread

[Buenchico]

Which book are you using? Eliot Goldfinger's book, published by Oxford University Press, is probably the recognised authority. Although he takes great care to distinguish between the male and female forms throughout the whole of the text, he appears to find no difference with regard to the infrapatellar fat pad:
http://tinyurl.com/ovq5tth

[wildwood]

My daughter had to have fat pads removed from both knees in her teenage years, but the so did my father many moons ago, so maybe your reference was not completely on the nail.

Some people might suggest it would help a woman when scrubbing the floor, but I wouldn't be that insensitive. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[Peter Pedant]

yeah I was gonna say there is Hoffa's disease which affect the infrapatellar gfat pad - and doesnt say that only women get it

http://www.sw.org/misc/health/Hoffa's%20Disease%20(Infrapatellar%20Fat%20Pad%20Syndrome)%20with%20Rehab-SportsMed.html

[Peter Pedant]

.

http://physiotherapy.org.nz/assets/Professional-dev/Journal/2005-March/Mar05ScholPaper.pdf

is wirtten from the perspective that some causes of knee pain are due to the pad - and a gender difference is not mentioned

bkd - you might have said 'deep' to the kneecap
below is ambiguous and I thought mroe towards the feet ( inferior ) , that is associated with the patella tendon

In fact this thing has the honour of being intra articular but extra synovial ( wow ) and involved in the production of synovial fluid ( even more wow )

[New Judge]

It's to give them a bit of extra padding when they're down scrubbing the floors! :-)

[Zacs-Master]

Ooooph! ^^^^^^
You're brave!

[Captain2]

Think you might get a female knee (with or without padding) in a painful place there NJ

[bkd49]

Thank all for your responses. I have gone back to my reference and see that I might have misunderstood it. It actually says "there is a special fat capsule..." which I took to mean unique to the female, but could mean some kind of difference. It was certainly not mentioned when describing the male figure, but only came in when discussing the features of the female. Anyway, I am now more informed than before, so thank you.

[New Judge]

"Think you might get a female knee (with or without padding) in a painful place there NJ"

Yes, and it would be fully deserved !!!

[Peter Pedant]

its special in the sense of highly innervated I think
( and has more blood vessels and lymphatics - by comparison to wobbly fat around your hips )
I never found anatomy greatly interesting ....