WTF told you that? Take a walk around a typical mall and look at women's asses and men's stomachs.
Seriously.
Genes are exactly where it comes into play, and there is a high likelihood of specific methods based upon gender.
In other words, what is quoted above is indeed the typical norm.
Women will often put on mass around the waistline/hips, typically near the glutes, upper thighs, and around the hips.
Men typically put on mass in front of the abdominal wall.
That's typically how our genome approaches excess energy storage/fat deposits. Putting on mass equally distributed across the entire body is not normal, nor is it ideal. That kind of "excess baggage" typically is either a) indicative of other health issues, or b) will directly cause/lead to other health issues. If you can keep all lipid mass gains in the gender-specific areas, long-term health prospects are usually great. Of course, once you gain enough weight, the fat has no choice but to start being deposited elsewhere/everywhere.
Aside from personal image, there usually isn't any health implications with a little excess weight around the hips/stomach/love-handles (obliques).
But it's also a great reminder that you will look much better shedding that weight as opposed to packing on more. Being skinny but having a beer-gut is always the oddest thing to see. But it's very common in men. It's not super common to SEE because people often get far worse, packing on weight elsewhere since the beer gut was in place already. If you get rid of that/don't let it get any worse, it will look weird - but that's your cue: get to work and get rid of it before you get around to "proportionate distribution of mass in body." You DON'T want that.
If you don't want to be skinny - you'll want to pack on muscle with equal distribution. There's no other approach if you want to have a larger frame but remain anywhere close to healthy.
