- Dr. Nicolas Zwillinger, Plastic and Cosmetic Surgery
The padded corsets that created a rounded behind—which women wore under their dresses in the 18th century—are a thing of the past. Nowadays, women prefer to have their own fat injected into their buttocks to look like Jennifer Lopez or Beyoncé, and more recently, Kim Kardashian or Kylie Jenner.
Renée, a woman in her forties from the United States, has just made headlines with her botched buttock implant surgery. It’s worth noting that the number of buttock implant procedures has surpassed the number of liposuction procedures in England and is steadily increasing in the United States. Is this a passing fad? Where did this trend originate?
It’s true that there’s a real craze forbuttock surgery.
Brazil remains the country that continues to set the aesthetic standards in the field of plastic surgery. Brazilians are, in fact, very often pioneers in this field.There, buttock surgery has been in vogue since the 1980s and is just as common as breast implants.
This phenomenon first swept across the American continent, from south to north, before taking the United States by storm—a country where the boom in cosmetic surgery is highlighted by popular media such as film and television through series like *Nip/Tuck*, as well as reality TV shows and pop stars. The buttocks fascinate today’s younger generations, who have grown up on Beyoncé’s music videos and the world’s most famous behind, that of Jennifer Lopez.
Women who undergo buttock augmentation surgery are very often from mixed-race, African, or Latin American backgrounds. It is therefore no surprise that Brazil—a country characterized by a unique blend of African and Latin American cultures—produces and distributes the majority of buttock implants worldwide; the Brazilian brand Silimed is, in fact, the leading manufacturer of buttock implants.
Beauty standards among people of African descent differ from Western beauty standards. For example, on the African continent, there are no beautiful women without a beautiful butt. This is considered far more important than having beautiful breasts. The original inspiration for this seems to be the primitive sculpted depictions of the callipygian woman from ancient times.
This sudden craze seems to me to be linked to popular music culture, which highlights attractive behinds in R&B and rap music videos. Women and their husbands often come to consultations with photos they’ve found online showing women with very shapely—or even disproportionately large—backsides.
France is no exception to this global trend, as aesthetic standards continue to become increasingly liberal. While breast surgery has long been the mainstay of cosmetic surgery, buttock procedures are gaining ground and establishing themselves as a significant part of the procedures performed.
There are various methods for treating the buttocks, including liposculpture, buttock lipofilling, or buttock implants, depending on the individual case and body type.
Men, too, want a nice butt and are just as willing to take the plunge and walk through the clinic’s doors to learn about the procedures. France is catching up to the major American leaders in cosmetic surgery, and techniques are evolving to offer a new, more scientific—yet just as appealing—perspective on this part of the human anatomy.