The newest trend of celebrity beauty has caused many women to covet the bottoms of women like Kim Kardashian, Nicki Minaj, and Beyoncé. But instead of heading to the gym to get in another rep of squats, many of these women are heading to their doctors, asking them to reshape their booties in the likeness of these celebrities.
The procedure is called the “Brazilian butt lift,” and it does exactly as the namesake promises.
Michael Salzhauer, M.D., is located in New York City, and is currently one of the most famous Brazilian butt lift plastic surgeons. The procedure, he says, “is a way of augmenting or increasing the size of the butt or improving the shape using your own fat.”
On the medical side, the procedure combines liposuction with fat grafting. Fat is taken from regions of unwanted pooch – like the thighs or the stomach – and then injected into the butt, plumping it up in size and shape.
But as it is with any medical procedure, the Brazilian butt lift comes with a set of complications and challenges. Dr. Salzhauer takes care to tell his patients that the procedure, though done solely for aesthetic reasons, still calls for serious medical practitioners. “There have been incidents of fat embolism,” Dr. Salzhauer reports. In other words, if the Brazilian butt lift is performed by a doctor not properly trained in this practice, there is a possibility of having fat injected into a blood vessel in your butt, which can then travel into your lungs and result in death.
Because the Brazilian butt lift often requires general anesthesia, a professional anesthesiologist should always be present and patients must have no medical problems before they are allowed to undergo the procedure.
The process of fat grafting is not 100% efficient; potentially 40% of the transferred fat cells will be lost over the course of the procedure. This means the size of your bootie can end up changing over time. And because this procedure is done solely for aesthetic reasons, many concerns may arise given the size, shape, and abnormality of your resulting new butt.
Is the Brazilian butt lift worth it then, particularly considering its $11,000 price? We like big butts and we cannot lie, but we’re definitely not as big a fan of that price tag.
