Let’s talk about the BBL. BBL stands for “Brazilian Butt Lift” and is a sort of cringy-sounding form of plastic surgery. Basically, the operation involves removing fat cells from one area of a patient’s body and inserting them into the backside. The result is a slimmer waist, hourglass hips, and a much larger butt.
I’ve always been semi-aware of the existence of the BBL. They first came on my radar during the height of the Kardashian era in around 2013. Although most of the Kardashian clan tend to deny their surgical procedures and attribute them to “genetics,” the shift in Kim Kardashian’s figure, for example, is almost indisputably the work of a BBL. Or implants at the very least. However, for whatever reason, the trend of the Brazilian Butt Lift has recently resurfaced in a huge and public way. I recently found myself on the “BBL Corner ” of TikTok, and to say the least, it’s scary.
Plastic Surgery and TikTok
Through TikTok documentation, I’ve seen hundreds of girls flying to Miami in hoards to get BBLs. They capture their experiences through before-and-after videos set to fun music. They insert funny photos of them sitting backwards on their flights home or lying face down in the backseats of cars because they’re unable to properly sit down. It reminds me a lot of the Kylie Jenner era of lip implants, when juvederm shots were all the rage.
And, it’s not just the Kardashians. Beauty and lifestyle influencers on TikTok and Instagram have forever been passing off their expensive procedures as “natural.” And, it’s a clear pipeline to the epidemic of average social media users thinking they need pricey surgeries in order to compete with the social media-established beauty standard. These days, it’s easier and more acceptable to get a surgical procedure than ever before and plenty of people are going under the knife every day.
A Deadly Decision?
Aside from the general conversation around plastic surgery, there’s a lot of contraversy surrounding the validity of the BBL specifically. On one hand, I’ve always considered plastic surgery to be a personal choice, one I might even undergo myself one day. But, this particular surgery trend is kind of terrifying. The fatality rate of the BBL is extremely high — 1 in 3,000 patients die from this surgery every single year. But, TikTok is portraying the Butt Lift as if it’s nothing more than a casual excursion with great end results.
This is the underlying issue with the casualization of plastic surgery. It’s one thing when a plastic surgery procedure, for example a lip injection procedure, doesn’t pose much more danger than breaking the bank. But, the BBL can legitimately end your life. How far will social media go to portray these life-altering procedures as a casual, simple choice?
Featured Image from Sam Moqadam on Unsplash
