Brazilian Butt Lifts: Big Booty Lifestyle
From Kim K to Instagram-influencers, TikTok stars to performers, BBLs have become a core component of modern beauty standards in media. A BBL for the uninitiated is a cosmetic surgery that lifts and enlarges the recipient’s butt in order to look bigger. A BBL is both an item that is bought for the enjoyment of the recipient of the surgery, as well as a tool that is marketed on social media by influencers for clout and financial gain. While BBLs’ peak popularity has passed, the emergence of the surgery in mainstream media has left lasting negative impacts on black and brown women.
BBLs were created in Brazil in 1960 by Dr. Ivo Pitanguy. Brazil, up until that point, had a very problematic history of cosmetic surgery. The Eugenics Society of São Paulo, which was created in 1918, aimed to eliminate black and brown physical appearances with cosmetic surgery. Pitanguy’s work followed the theme of eugenics, with the original purpose of BBL surgery being to make butts look smaller, but soon the surgery shifted towards enlarging butts to a degree that was associated with black and brown bodies in Brazil (Jennings, 2o21). This change happened because eugenics largely failed in Brazil and the nation had developed a large mixed population. This mixed population celebrated large butts, which was abnormal in comparison to the values of other countries. This niche appreciation of large butts and BBLs would eventually spread to other countries like the United States.
BBL surgery found its way outside of Brazil eventually and grew in popularity in America around the mid-2010s. (Enochs, 2o15). The largest center for BBLs in America is Miami, Florida where there are 100s of practices that offer BBL surgeries. In 2021, there were nearly 62 thousand BBLs performed in America, and many more surgeries performed on American citizens on trips overseas (Garcia, 2022). This surgery stayed on the outside of the mainstream American market for decades due to body standards being against larger butts (Enoch, 2015). Throughout modern American history, women’s beauty standards were consistently white and thin. Right before larger butts began to enter the mainstream in the 2010s, America was in an era that celebrated what has come to be known as “Tits on a Stick.” A body standard that celebrated wiry frames on women with large breasts and little backsides (Jennings, 2o21). Even before the “Tits on a Stick” era, America had never celebrated larger butts like they would in the coming years.
The shift towards BBLs from marginalized to mainstream began when American media started to celebrate women performers with larger behinds such as Jennifer Lopez, Beyoncé, and Nicki Minaj (Silva, 2022). The celebration of these artists and their bodies came in part with the growing acceptance of black and brown women performers in general. The sexualization, and incorporation into beauty standards of these performers' body types can be seen as a defensive tactic employed by the male gaze. Ziesler (2008) defines the male gaze as “positioning women as nothing more than objects to be looked at, sexualized, and made vulnerable, the male unconscious reassures itself that, really, it has nothing to fear from women” (p. 8). With this in mind, we can interpret the increase of BBLs in the 2010s as a product of the male gaze’s response to the rise of powerful black and brown women performers with large butts in mainstream media. In the past, the male gaze sexualized powerful female performers’ bodies in an attempt to make them feel like less of a threat. This sexualization set America’s beauty standard to not include black and brown women’s body types since the powerful women performers of the time weren’t black or brown. Similarly, the sexualizing of the bodies of black and brown women performers is mens’ sub-consciousness trying to not feel threatened by those black and brown women’s increased power. This sexualization of black and brown body types by the male gaze led to the large butts of certain black and brown performers to become considered the beauty standard, just as the sexualization of previous performers set the beauty standard in the past. This caused some women to search for ways to gain a large butt, which led to the explosive increase of BBL surgeries performed on Americans in this past decade.
The desire to look like these popular stars was seemingly solved by receiving a BBL, but the proliferation of BBLs ended up creating a unique form of misogynoir. Moya Bailey (2021) defines misogynoir as “uniquely co-constitutive racialized and sexist violence that befalls Black women as a result of their simultaneous and interlocking oppression at the intersection of racial and gender marginalization” (p. 1). BBLs create a form of misogynoir by taking black and brown women’s body types and marketing an imitation of them to white individuals (Silva, 2o22). White influencers use BBLs to both attain the current beauty standard, as well as market their bodies for profit. This leads to white women profiting off a caricature of a black body type as though it’s a passing trend which causes the erasure of the black and brown women who have that body naturally. This dehumanization and objectification also follows Bailey’s idea of hypervisibility and invisibility, where black and brown women’s bodies are highly visible in media in the form of famous performers and now the caricature of BBL body types, but their struggles when it comes to real problems are continuously ignored (Bailey, 2o21, p. 6)
The rise of BBLs from niche to mainstream may have correlated with the rise of powerful black and brown women performers, but the rise of BBLs overall has caused negative effects for black and brown women. The male gaze created a new beauty standard in America in response to the success of black and brown women. This new standard caused the growth in popularity of BBLs which allowed for the profiteering of black and brown bodies by white influencers and the objectification of black and brown women’s bodies.
References
Bailey, M. (2021). Misogynoir transformed. NYU Press.
Dazed. (2019, October 22). A brief history of the Brazilian butt lift. Dazed. Retrieved December 4, 2022, from https://www.dazeddigital.com/beauty/article /46497/1/brazilian-butt-lift-plastic-surgery-kim-Kardashian-west-cardi-b- jennifer-lopez
Enochs, E. (2015, November 10). How America's "ideal" butt has changed over the Last Century. Bustle. Retrieved December 4, 2022, fromhttps://www.bustle.com/ articles/122061-how-americas-ideal-butt-has-changed-over-the-last-century
Garcia, S. E. (2022, May 11). Butt lifts are booming. healing is no joke. The New York Times. Retrieved December 4, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive /2022/05/11/magazine/brazilian-butt-lift.html
Jennings, R. (2021, August 2). The $5,000 Quest for the perfect butt. Vox. Retrieved December 4, 2022, from https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22598377/bbl- brazilian-butt-lift-miami-cost-tiktok
Martin, C. (2021, September 3). The global pursuit of a bigger butt. The Cut. Retrieved December 4, 2022, from https://www.thecut.com/2021/09/the-global -pursuit-of-a-bigger-butt.html
Silva, D. F. (2022, August 1). Perspective | the hidden anti-black history of Brazilian butt lifts. The Washington Post. Retrieved December 4, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/08 /01/hidden-anti-black-history-brazilian-butt-lifts/
Victor, A.-owaji. (2022, July 15). If the BBL era is "over", where does this leave black women? Refinery 29. Retrieved December 4, 2022, fromhttps://www.refinery 29.com/en-gb/bbl-era-over-black-women
Zeisler, A. (2008). Feminism and pop culture. Seal Press.
Stella Cha
ReplyDeleteHi Sean,
Thank you for your blog post detailing the background and consequences of BBLs, a phenomenon that is hitting the mainstream yet harming the black and brown communities from which it found its inspiration. It’s important to point out the appropriation of certain features and aspects of Black culture and women, for there have been other instances of this exploitation and blackfishing in which certain features of Black women are romanticized while others are frowned upon. I appreciate your connections to Bailey’s piece on misogynoir and how black and brown women are hypervisible in the media for their “sexy” features but invisible when it comes to discrimination (Bailey, 2021).
I found that Sontag’s Notes on Camp could also play into the aesthetic of the BBL. Sontag defines camp as a “love of the unnatural” that is “shamelessly artificial” (Sontag, 1964). BBLs are by definition, unnatural and artificial, and are often criticized as being trashy and over the top. As you stated, the aesthetic of BBLs first began through the celebration of female POC performers who had larger butts than were previously considered a part of the beauty standard. However, as the BBL became more popular, it began to turn into a joke in the media, with BBLs and those speculated to have had the surgery being satirized due to the exaggeration of this unnaturally sculpted body type. For instance, Kim Kardashian who has been rumored to have had enlargement surgery on her butt and an enhanced, small waist has been parodied for her “photoshopped” body. The aesthetic she attempted to achieve through the existence or appearance of a BBL could easily be considered campy; while she believed that her “sexy” body was an honest attempt at creating this beauty standard, the media made a mockery of her BBL and created a failure out of her seductive unnatural body, paving the way for hundreds of thousands of others to attempt and fail at this now-considered campy practice.
Hey Sean, your insights on this issue are truly substantial in helping to fight misogyny and racism worldwide. The first step to solving these issues is first recognizing and bringing well needed awareness. While I was reading your post I noticed that there are substantial parallels to the reading on mechanical reproduction by Walter Benjamin.
ReplyDeleteThe popularity of BBLs can be seen through the lens of augmentation. Augmentation is thought to be the process in which something is technologically modified (Benjamin, 1936). In this case the act of getting a BBL is an act of augmentation, especially considering society’s improvement in knowledge and technology. This act of augmentation is used by women to fit the male gaze (Zeisler) to create a feeling of standardization (Adorno and Horkheimer) amongst women. This is problematic because not only is the surgery of getting a BBL dangerous but this perpetuates patriarchal society.
As you mentioned, BBLs are a response to the rise of black and brown women that have bigger butts in the entertainment industry, where men already sexualized women performers. This new beauty standard has been distributed through technology. Distribution is “technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself.” (Benjamin, 1936). This means that due to new technology, distribution is a lot easier because it puts the augmented versions in places that even the original would not be able to forgo. In this case, with the onset of social media and the internet the popularity of this form of augmentation has been easily distributed through social media where the perpetuation of the male gaze thrives.
Great points, hope you do more research into this in the future! -Xian Scott
Sean, this was a great blog post! I really thought it was insightful to discuss the implications of Black and Brown bodies being sexualized and appropriated by White women. While reading your post, I thought about cool-hunting. This is the process through which people identify an object, concept or element of life that can be marketed as cool and sold to the masses (Powers, 2019). Powers writes that what is identified as cool often is derived “from the periphery to the center and from the marginalized, oppositional groups to dominant, compliant ones” (2019). She refers to the appropriation of elements understood and experienced by a marginalized community -- Black and Brown women and a common body type in their populations -- by the population that is centered and dominant -- White women. Because of how Black women are constantly the target of a lot of discrimination and sexualization, the idea of appropriating a commonly shared aspect of their appearance is a clear form of cool-hunting. Powers expands on this concept by saying, “Cool hunting glorifies difference, which depends on stratification, exotification, and the rigidification of cultural dissimilarity despite postmodern flows and admixtures” (2019). In other words, because cool hunting often centers things that have been scrutinized or discriminated against and decides that they are cool and should be imitated by people who have never experienced that hardship, it romanticizes the appropriated “cool” characteristic and erases the struggle of subordinate groups for having that characteristic prior to this redefinition of it. This links back to your incorporation of Bailey’s concept of misogynoir since this appropriation does not eliminate the criticisms and struggles that Black women have undergone for naturally having this body type that was previously ostracized for not being in alignment with the dominant group.
ReplyDeleteOlufikemi (Kemi) Ogunyankin
Hi Sean!
ReplyDeleteI thought your piece was fascinating about the establishment and impact of the Big Booty Lifestyle trend that has taken the media by storm.
I wrote a similar blog post to yours about the culture appropriation of the "clean girl aesthetic" and how it stole from other cultures but failed to acknowledge them. I see a similar parallel in your piece about the BBL trend and how it ultimately started in a marginalized community and was taken over by wealthy white women; you recognized Kim Kardashian and other white celebrities in your piece.
Celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Iggy Azalea are just two of the A list celebrities that took on the Big Booty Lifestyle and made it their own characteristic trait. However, this aspect of their appearance only came into their lives when the BBL trend was at its beginning stages. I question if these celebrities were eager to change their bodies to emulate the BBL effect for their own interests or rather because it was cool. In On Trend: The Business of Forecasting the Future the author Devon Powers talks about Gladwell's findings on cool-hunting. Glad-well recognizes "cool-hunting" as a tactic to search for future trends. This idea became popular in the mid-1990s-mid-2000s (Powers). This concept was responsible for being ahead of the trends and used tactics that weren't always the most moral to find results. Gladwell discusses in this piece how he observed to reporters asking marginalized groups to ask them what they thought were cool sneakers. Then those same reporters would sell those trend predictions to companies to ultimately profit off of (Powers).
The BBL marketization is one of many culturally appropriated trends that the media fails to recognize its origins.
Bella Corman
Powers, D. (2020). On trend: The business of forecasting the future. Retrieved December 12, 2022, from https://www.amazon.com/Trend-Business-Forecasting-Future/dp/0252084691