Quote - The image of how a beautiful woman or man should look like is dictated by glamour magazines, fashion designers, Film and TV -makers etc. You only have to look at pictures of the various decades: women of the 20's would be considered plumb nowadays. These images of idealistic shapes are translated in the proportions of the most appealing bodyparts

I agree, basically there is no 'average' human body shape or type. Whatever you like using in your work or whatever a client asks for is whats 'average'. eg if i used the 'corrected' figs posted here, most of my clients would reject them on the basis that they look like teenagers...

Also note that we aren't drawing or sketching here, but shooting from a (virtual) camera. Which means you also have to take into account the fact that depending on the lens, perspective distortion changes the look of the body shape dramatically. You can make default vicky look like a midget with a  small enough Focal. Its the same idea as that of a real photograph adding or taking away pounds on a person. This is why modelers try to aim for a middle of the road shape that will be usable across a reasonable amount of lenses and not look too horrible in any single one.

http://img92.imageshack.us/img92/9336/camsav1.jpg

Or in other words rather then an ortho drawing, a much better guide is to use photographs of real people for reference and use your own judgment as to what looks best in a particular scene.