Yes that's what I want to do except without switching any geometry basically just deleting the gens, and under the gens is the rest of my hip which is there all along.

OK but, wouldn't you be back to the same lighting problem as the figure? You would still have the extra geom over the hip which causes the lighting problem. So I'm thinking that geometry switching of 2 hips, one with, one without, would solve that. Just guessing here.