More and more women are choosing the Brazilian Butt Lift (BBL) – so what exactly is it? Apparently the first BBL was carried out by Doctor Ivo Pitanguy in Brazil. The procedure involves grafting fat from other parts of the body to the buttocks to accentuate and lift them. Pitanguy died in in 2016 aged 93 after carrying the Olympic flame through Rio de Janeiro, but the BBL lives on.
Is that a good thing? In my opinion no. There is too much pressure on girls to get that Instagram swimwear body, and to help them get it the BBL is now offered all over the world in countries such as United States, the UK and Turkey – which has become a popular destination for the operation because it’s cheaper to have it done there, and flights from the UK and Europe are good value.
But the results can be tragic. Last August 29-year-old Leah Cambridge travelled from Leeds to Izmir for a BBL but died of a blood clot. Later in the same year another UK woman died while having the procedure, though her name and the location have not been revealed yet. The second death prompted the The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (Baaps) to tell its members not to perform the procedure until more safety information is available, as it is the “deadliest” cosmetic operation available.
The advice online is that straying away from the top professionals to try and save money can leave you with unfortunate side effects. For example a 23-year-old woman from Wales told the BBC that after her surgery in Turkey she could barely walk until fat began leaking through holes in her buttocks. The leaks soaked her clothes for thee months and so she had to use bandages which left a smell.
Another woman has reported that she had a BBL performed in Turkey only ten minutes after meeting the surgeon and experienced a high fever after it. When she informed the doctor she was ignored and was only treated after being admitted to a hospital in the UK. Two years after her surgery she still experiences pain.
And yet YouTube is still full of videos promoting the BBL, many of them from private cosmetic surgery companies.
These videos just add to the pressure being put on young girls. Another unfortunate aspect of the BBL craze is that according to a short BBC documentary called The Brazilian butt lift and its effect on black body image, the BBL plays into the insecurities of black women particularly, who think that to be black you have to have a certain type of shape.
By the end of the film Shami the presenter decides that the 1 in 3000 chance of dying under the knife to conform to something that is just a fashion is a bad idea, and I agree.
