Bria Bryant awoke from what felt like a 30-minute power nap. She’d been under anesthesia for three hours and the LED lights in the hospital room beamed brightly as she gradually came to.
She was lying flat on her back, and the soreness kicked in immediately. She was cold, as though she had been submerged in a deep freezer.
“I didn’t even know where I was at,” Bryant said. “I was like, ‘Wow, I feel like I just went to the gym. I’m so sore.’ Then, I open my eyes. I just see a light, then it clicks to me, where I’m at and what happened. Immediately, I’m like, ‘Turn. Me Over.’”
Bryant, a 28-year-old service worker in Baltimore, had just undergone gluteal augmentation with fat grafting, better known as a Brazilian butt lift or BBL. The procedure originated in Brazil in the 1960s and was pioneered by Brazilian plastic surgeon Ivo Pitanguy as a way to give people rounder, fuller-looking butts.
“A Brazilian butt lift is really us augmenting the buttocks by adding fat. It’s a double bonus for the patient because they have fat removed from areas where they do not want it and they have it added into their buttocks where they do want it,” Dr. Wright Jones, a double board-certified plastic surgeon, told HuffPost. “A BBL does add some lift to the butt, but it’s really filling the butt. A more appropriate term would probably be a Brazilian butt fill. We’re filling the butt with fat and we’re adding volume, which inflates and lifts the butt.”
BBLs became more popular in the U.S. in the middle of the last decade. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) called 2015 “another year of the rear” in its annual report. That year, there was a buttocks procedure — such as a lift, implant or fat grafting — performed every 30 minutes. Coincidentally, 2015 was the year after Kim Kardashian’s infamous internet-breaking cover of Paper magazine, where she showed off the derriere that launched 1,000 think pieces.
With the rise of social media, butt augmentation has been tacitly touted by influencers and celebrities who often refute any claims of getting work done. Notably, members of the Kardashian-Jenner clan have famously contributed to the procedure’s popularity with their hourglass figures. Musical artists Cardi B. and K. Michelle have both talked about getting below-board butt injections; Blac Chyna said she got “something done” after giving birth to reduce a previous butt implant.
In recent years, the BBL has gone more mainstream: Some patients are Instagram baddies who endorse products like detox drinks as a means of “naturally achieving” an artificial figure. Others are everyday people who simply want to keep up with the trends that are constantly promoted on their screens.
Some find the pursuit of the BBL trend unfruitful and dangerous; for others, the procedure is wholly unrelated to the cyclical nature of pop culture. Rather, it’s a form of health care, a form of self-love, or another means of simply exercising bodily autonomy. With social media and TikTok democratizing and destigmatizing cosmetic work, questions have arisen about how far is too far — and who gets to set those standards.
Jones is based in Atlanta, which he calls “the BBL capital of the United States.” The plastic surgeon, who has been in practice since 2013 and was featured on the Lifetime television series “Atlanta Plastic,” he believes the BBL trend is not going anywhere anytime soon.
Board-certified physicians in the U.S. performed just over 61,000 butt augmentation procedures last year — a 37% increase since 2020 — that amounted to $245.8 million in revenue, according to data from The Aesthetic Society. Between 2015 and 2019, the number of butt augmentation surgeries went up by 90%, Business Insider reported, citing data from the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.
Bryant said that as a young Black teen in the late ’90s and early 2000s, Beyoncé and Jennifer Lopez were the women of the hour. Their bodies were perceived as the ideal, posing a stark contrast to the mainstream culture of flat butts seen on rail-thin white supermodels and celebrities. Bryant felt like she lacked an hourglass figure and wanted a natural-looking BBL to “feel more womanly.”
“I felt like my figure before did not go with my age whatsoever,” she said.
When Bryant began searching for a surgeon in 2018, it was imperative to her that she find a board-certified physician to conduct the procedure. She perused YouTube testimonials, Googled reviews of various facilities, and read sites such as RealSelf, a health care marketplace where consumers research aesthetic treatments and connect with physicians. She was worried about the recovery more than the procedure itself, since two of her friends had told her aftercare had caused them incredible pain.
She finally decided on Dr. William Schwarz at 305 Plastic Surgery in Miami, the city with the second-highest concentration of board-certified plastic surgeons in the U.S., according to Business Insider.
As an out-of-state client, Bryant said she first underwent an online consultation with a nurse that included sending in photos of her body and disclosing her full medical history. She also had to receive medical clearance from a physician about two weeks before her surgery and send related paperwork to the practice. The morning of the procedure, Bryant said she also had to undergo a series of evaluations, including a pregnancy test, a substance use evaluation and a procedure to measure her iron levels.
Bryant became increasingly nervous. Hour after hour, test after test, she kept waiting. She hadn’t had food or water for hours, since eating is prohibited after midnight the day of surgery. After getting undressed and slipping into the hospital gown, the nurses gave her an IV. She was finally ready. At 2 p.m., the three-hour procedure began.
Bryant woke up lying on her gurney. After a nurse flipped her over and rolled her out in a wheelchair, Bryant was placed into the care of Roxanne Ramsey, her friend of over eight years. Ramsey picked up Bryant in a rental truck, where she lay on her stomach in the passenger seat, and took her to the Airbnb she’d rented for her recovery.
The stiffness began setting in. Bryant was peeing constantly. Sleeping comfortably was borderline impossible. For the next week, Ramsey was at her friend’s every beck and call. She couldn’t find the Percocet Bryant was prescribed for her pain at any nearby pharmacy and had to drive 90 minutes to get it.
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7099065537015139630?lang=en-US&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffpost.com%2Fentry%2Fthe-rise-of-the-bbl-how-getting-a-brazilian-butt-lift-impacted-these-patients_n_6282842be4b0c84db7284337
“I could not bend any type of part of my body whatsoever. Getting in and out of bed was the worst part of it all,” Bryant said. “Roxanne had to take me to the bathroom; she had to bathe me. At one point, I put a diaper on, which did absolutely nothing. It literally soaks through everything. You never realize how much you take for granted, and sitting is one of them.”
@huffpost I took care of my friend during her difficult #BBL recovery, but I noticed a lot of red flags. Link in bio for more. #BBLrecovery #PlasticSurgery #storytime
♬ original sound – HuffPost
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