Does My Butt Look Big in This?

A recent survey reports that 85% of women worry about the shape and size of their rear, leading to the old question before going out for the night: “does my butt look big in this?”

The UK cosmetic surgery practice, The Hospital Group, surveyed women to understand why the Brits are experiencing a huge increase in procedures such as buttock lifts and body sculpting to create a better bum. Even lipo is up 64% since last year. Certainly, the growing popularity of bottoms like Beyonce’s and Kim Kardashian’s are part of the reason. The study also discovered that clothes shopping caused 55% of women to feel self-conscious and 62% were concerned about how to dress for the holidays to either show off or minimize their derrieres.

The study also revealed that there are 4 distinct bottom shapes!

• The tomato shape is “bigger, plumper, rounder and squishier,” and is possessed by about 45% of women.
• The potato shape is wide, long and frumpy and, unfortunately, 35% of British women have it.
• The pear bum is narrower at the top and twice the size at the fullest part of the bottom.
• The perfect derriere is called the nectarine, which looks like two bowling balls pushed together. One wonders why they don’t call that one a strike…

Buttock lifts and buttock implants are increasingly popular in the US as well, with approximately 5,000 buttock augmentations performed each year. Buttock augmentation and lifts increased by 37.3% and 24.6%, respectively, from 2008 to 2009. 

While some buttock augmentations are performed with implants, I find fat grafting to be a much better alternative. Not only does fat grafting eliminate the problems with implants (of which there are many), it uses liposuction to obtain the fat for grafting into the buttocks. Nice to think you can take fat away from a place on your body where you don’t want it and put it into having a rounder rump, don’t you think?

To your health & beauty,

Joe Danyo, MD