Summary: We propose bending energies for isotropic elastic plates and shells. For a plate, we define and employ a surface tensor that symmetrically couples stretch and curvature such that any elastic energy density constructed from its invariants is invariant under spatial dilations. This kinematic measure and its corresponding isotropic quadratic energy resolve outstanding issues in thin structure elasticity, including the natural extension of primitive bending strains for straight rods to plates, the assurance of a moment linear in the bending measure, and the avoidance of induced mid-plane strains in response to pure moments as found in some commonly used analytical plate models. Our analysis also reveals that some other commonly used numerical models have the right invariance properties, although they lack full generality at quadratic order in stretch. We further extend our result to naturally-curved rods and shells, for which the pure stretching of a curved rest configuration breaks dilation invariance; the new shell bending measure we provide contrasts with previous ad hoc postulated forms. The concept that unifies these theories is not dilation invariance, but rather through-thickness uniformity of strain as a definition of pure stretching deformations. Our results provide a clean basis for simple models of low-dimensional elastic systems, and should enable more accurate analytical probing of the structure of singularities in sheets and membranes.