I keep hearing more about the popularity of the “Brazilian Butt Lift.” I like the idea of having a smaller waist, but I don’t want a larger backside. Is that possible?
Your question reflects what I hear often from my patients, the majority of which want to narrow their waist and enhance their curves, without necessarily enlarging their buttock. In my experience it is the minority of patients that actually want the very large backside seen amongst some celebrity TV stars. Body image trends are constantly changing and there are extremes to every trend. The newest concepts in “body sculpting” involve the redistribution of fatty tissue by removing it from areas of excess and transposing it to deficient areas.
For example, we can take excess from areas like the muffin top and the outer thigh and place that fat into the under-projected buttock areas. This creates the idealized hourglass shape of the lower back while framing the buttock from hipbone to the upper lateral thigh and provides volume enhancement to the buttock region, which also provides a lifting effect. The results can be quite impressive with limited downtime.
What is judged to be attractive in women’s body contours changes just like fashion trends in clothing and makeup. The buttock area has reached new levels of interest thanks to the influx of the Latin culture from South America and pop culture’s fixation on the shapely Kardashians. Surgeons on the cutting edge of buttock enhancement choose to use fat grafting instead of buttock implants to avoid some very difficult complications.
The procedure is commonly known as a Brazilian Butt Lift (BBL), which uses a person’s own fat to naturally augment and shape the buttocks. While the BBL is known for increasing the size of the buttocks, the more impressive benefit includes reshaping of the waist, hips and thighs for more pronounced curves. Gluteal enhancement is not just about making the buttock bigger, but rather about accentuating, enhancing, and adding contour to this area. The goal in reshaping the buttock is redistributing the fat from an area in which its presence is unattractive to a location in which it creates a more desirable, curvaceous buttock.
Brazilian Butt Lifts produce natural-looking results because the buttocks is enhanced with your own fat. Of course you need to find a plastic surgeon with experience in large volume fat grafting. Careful techniques of fat harvesting, fat isolation and reinjection is required to maximize the fat grafting take. The fat is collected via liposuction of the hips, abdomen, or any other problem areas within the body; which provides enhanced contour of those areas as well. Once the fat has been collected, it’s separated and processed before being injected into the buttocks. After being injected approximately 70% of the fat will “survive” and provide enhancement of the backside. Because the BBL uses your own fatty tissue, the results can be permanent. The ability to enhance the look of your buttocks, while improving the contour of your trouble spots is one of the primary reasons why the BBL has become so popular.