Bringing up the rear
Plastic surgeons who don’t do ‘Brazilian butts’ are behind the curve. Leigh-Anne Hunter gets a feel for the new procedure
DR Saul Braun is a butt man. Right now in his Rosebank office, the plastic surgeon is cupping an imaginary booty in mid-air, describing the “Brazilian buttock” procedure that has many a flat-bottomed client rushing through his door.
“It’s inspired by the butt shape of Brazilian women — a very plumped-out butt, coming off a narrow waist.” A bit like two soccer balls. No, he hasn’t noticed a surge in demand around the World Cup, although it’s a growing trend.
A few years back, he did five Brazilians a year. “Now I do two or three a month. It’s an offshoot of the fat-grafting boom. In the early days, we didn’t understand how to harvest fat. We lost a lot.”
The latest stats from US surgery rooms rank the Brazilian butt sixth out of the 27 most popular procedures, below moob (male boob) reduction. In SA, it brings up the rear behind procedures such as breast augmentation — Braun does about 18 of these a month.
His butt clients are mainly local, aged from 20 to 35. “You need a tight envelope. If the skin’s already hanging, it’s not going to look pretty.”
In his Sandton office, plastic surgeon Dr Chetan Patel whips out a suction device — called a liposuction cannula — used to harvest fat from the lower torso. The stuff that comes out is spun in a fat centrifuge, a bit like a blender.
“The fat is separated into free oils, excess fluids and in the middle you’re left with pure, yellow fat.” You need to harvest about a litre of fluids to get 200ml of pure fat, which is injected into each buttock through small incisions.
3D liposuction planning is vital, says Patel. “Otherwise you don’t know where you’re sucking and you’re going to get dents.” And it’s no cut-and-paste job. “You’re like a sculptor, except you’re sculpting from the inside.”
Clients come in with photos of celebs. “You can’t make everyone look like Nicki Minaj. It’s frickin’ impossible. Results are not guaranteed.
“People also think: ‘ Oh, I can have this done at lunchtime’. It’s by no means a minor procedure. If you’re reed-thin and don’t need that much fat, it takes two hours.” If there’s more fat to suck, you can push that up to four hours.
Post-op, you’ll wear a compression garment for a few weeks “to hold everything in place”. A numb bum and fat necrosis, which can create hard lumps in the tissue, are possible side effects. You’ll see your best results after a year, once the swelling and scarring have subsided.
Costs? “In Joburg, you’re looking at somewhere between R40 000 and R70 000.”
What if you don’t have enough fat?
“It depends. If you want Kim Kardashian’s backside, I’m just going to tell you, sorry, you’ve got to have an implant. Or I’ll tell you to go put on weight. Seriously. Then we can get the fat we want and shove it in the butt.”
With implants, there is a high risk of complications. “It’s a foreign body, whereas with fat grafting you’re taking out your own tissue and putting it back.” No, you can’t use donor fat. “You can’t share tissue unless you’re compatible, and even then, there are immunosuppressive issues.”
I ask Braun if he’ll let me feel one of his butt implants. He scrounges around his drawers. “I’m sure I had one in here.” He bellows to his secretaries. “Girls, where is my gluteal implant?” In his quest, a drawer unhinges. “It’s heavy — it’s full of boobs.”
He slaps a breast implant on his antique desk. “Feel that. It’s almost the same shape, but a gluteal implant is wider and it’s a firmer silicone — a gel, not liquid.”
Once you veer off into implants, it’s not technically a Brazilian butt anymore. “It’s a butt enhancement,” says Braun. “I’m not mad about doing implants. I do some. Recovery is daunting. You can’t sit for two weeks.”
It seems that, in SA, we’re Africanising the Brazilian. “Some clients want a narrow thigh with the big buttock,” says Braun.
‘I’ll tell you to go put on weight, then we can get the fat we want and shove it in the butt’
“That’s the Brazilian — quite contained and spherical. But with others, you dare not touch their outer thighs because they want that exaggerated curve with the wide buttock.”
Some just want to go bigger. “I’ve done some twerkers. Those girls already have huge buttocks and they want abnormally large, out-of-proportion butts. They show me videos. It’s quite amazing, what they do with their butts.”
One surgeon who didn’t want to be named rolls his eyes at the mere mention of the Brazilian. “It’s pretty boring. You sit there and pump and pump for hours. I far prefer noses. That takes flair.”