Started From the Bottom: Experts Weigh in on the Cultural Obsession With Butts
Nicki Minaj, clad in a green sequined two-piece, gyrated her hips and thrust her backside in the air onstage at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards as she belted out the lyrics to her song “Anaconda.”
“Oh, my gosh, look at her butt/Look at her butt/Look at her butt,” she sang.
Minutes later, pop singer Jessie J (who opened the show alongside Minaj and Ariana Grande) took the stage to perform her hit “Bang Bang.”
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The opening lines of the song? “She got a body like an hourglass/But I can give it to you all the time/She got a booty like a Cadillac/But I can send you into overdrive.” Later that night, during her introduction for Iggy Azalea and Rita Ora’s “Black Widow” performance, Jennifer Lopez teased her new “Booty” remix with Azalea, which recently dropped. (The original version of the track was released on Lopez’s A.K.A. album, featuring Mr. Worldwide.)
The original chorus (“Big, big booty/What you got a big booty”) remains unchanged. But in the remix, Azalea raps, “The last time the world seen a booty this good it was on Jenny from the block.”
It was, after all, Lopez who originally kicked off the butt fad back in 2000 with her plunging, derriere-hugging Versace ensemble. “It started when J.Lo showed up in that green see-through dress at the Grammys,” says Dr. Constantino G. Mendieta, a Miami-based plastic surgeon who is the author of The Art of Gluteal Sculpting and a globally recognized expert on the subject of butt augmentation. “After they saw her, people started asking us, ‘Hey, how can I get a backside like that?’”
Ten years ago, women were enhancing their backside shape through silicone implants. Today, however, a quickly growing percentage of women (and even men) are increasing the size and changing the shape of their butts through fat injections, a process better known as the Brazilian Butt Lift. The cost of such a procedure, which can increase your butt size roughly one to two full sizes, can be upwards of a cool $10,000.
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“It’s revolutionary what is happening to the backside,” Mendieta tells us. “If you look at the statistics, the number of people getting this procedure went up 53 percent from last year. Nothing else increased in our statistics like butt injections did in the past year, so you are certainly on to something.”
No doubt, butts have never been bigger, both in physical size and as a cultural phenomenon (umm…#belfies, translation: butt selfies). Last week’s VMA show only further cemented it. Not only were the performers riffing on booties, they were flaunting their own hourglass shapes, too. Minaj’s and Azalea’s rear ends received more attention—and resulting social media commentary—than most of the show. (There’s now even an app called Tap That, where you can digitally enhance the size of some of the most famous butts out there, including Minaj’s, Azalea’s, Beyoncé’s, and, of course, Kim Kardashian West’s. )
It’s the shapely derrieres of celebs like Beyoncé and Kardashian West (who was fittingly sitting front-row at last week’s show) that’s inspiring women and men to go under the needle. And for those going after something slightly more conservative in scale, the Pippa Middleton treatment is being heavily requested these days.
“Many patients will refer to celebrities when trying to convey the look they desire,” says Dr. Adam Schaffner, a New York-based, board-certified plastic surgeon. “Celebrities with buttocks which are admired by many patients include Jennifer Lopez, Beyoncé, and Kim Kardashian,” he confirms.
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Officially, the jury is still out as to whether or not those bold-face names woke up like that, or if they got a little help from their white-coated friends. Nicole Winhoffer, trainer to Madonna, helps ladies get kick-ass booties the old-fashioned way: a hard-core sweat. (This reporter can testify—I took several of her classes and could not walk for days after.)
Winhoffer, who didn’t want to comment on anyone’s plastic surgery, says, “It’s possible to completely change the shape and size of your butt—it’s just about sculpting your butt using different angles, changing the muscle memory, and working with the right trainer.”
Several of the doctors we consulted, however, said that while you can get a great shape from loads of squats and working out, the effects are different than when you add fat volume through injections.
“You can tell a butt when it’s been made. There is more volume in the upper part, it’s more round, and the volumes are not where they are naturally,” says Mendieta. “A butt that is built looks beautiful, but it’s like when you walk into a room and something has been misplaced. You know something has been changed.”
No matter how they got their booties, these ladies are helping to lead a body-positive message. “You have Kim K. and different models really using their butts to promote themselves,” says Winhoffer. “But I love that they are curvy and they love themselves. If you have the power to change the world and you have people paying attention to you—either through social or whatever—and you use it the right way for the right message, I am all for that.”
One thing is clear: The message in pop culture right now is that your backside can be your greatest asset. Beyoncé, for her part, came on top of Forbes‘ 100 Most Powerful Celebrities list this year, raking in $115 million in earnings. Kardashian West brought in an estimated $28 million and also made the Forbes Top 100 list. This summer, Azalea became the only artist since The Beatles to have the number one and number two record in the country at the same time.
And as for the original face of the booty campaign, Jennifer Lopez? At the end of the day, she’s still Jenny from the Block, but the 45-year-old force to be reckoned with raked in $37 million in the past year and came in 33rd on the 2014 Forbes Top Celebrity 100 list. Used to be a little, now she’s got a lot.
—Kristin Tice Studeman
Photos: Jeff Kravitz/MTV1415; Mark Davis/Getty Images; S.Granitz/WireImage; @kimkardashian; @jenselter; Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic
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