A few years ago, he might have gotten that number in a month. (Miami too is a popular destination for BBL surgery.)īoyd now sees about five BBL consultations a week. (The Dominican Republic is a popular plastic-surgery-tourism destination.) And then there was the viral image of an email allegedly sent from a Miami-area hotel informing its patrons that it had neither the equipment nor the infrastructure to support post-op-recovery stays. Back in June, a widely circulated video depicted a couple dozen women in wheelchairs departing the Santo Domingo airport on a flight to Atlanta after presumably having BBL surgery. Before-and-after-BBL TikTok is a thing, of course, and so is BBL Pinterest: mostly as-cheery-as-possible lists of recovery tips and DIY recovery chairs (no sitting allowed for at least two weeks post-op). Although the BBL’s popularity has been growing over the past decade, we have now reached a unique point of both mainstreaming and frenzy.
But early on, celebrities were its adopters - Nicki Minaj and the majority of the Kardashian-Jenner family have the shape, though none has copped to having the procedure. Now we see it on countless everyday influencers. It’s achieved primarily through a “buttock augmentation through fat grafting,” removing fat usually from the abdomen via liposuction, then transferring it to the hips and butt, a procedure popularly known as the “Brazilian butt lift” or BBL. He has seen the body ideal shift, too, from big breasts and straighter hips to what he describes as “all of the curves that Black women have been blessed with forever and many times ostracized for.” The look is an hourglass shape pushed to its extremes - tiny waist, wide hips, and the key: a large, high butt. “They know that fact as well as I do, but it’s important to say it - to say these are Black women’s lips so they know what they’re asking for.” But that’s not what’s desired anymore,” says Boyd, whose practice is based in Birmingham, Michigan. “That one-third–two-thirds thing came from only studying white women who had thin lips, and that’s the proportion they had. He started highlighting that fact for his colleagues, other physicians and practitioners whom he trains to create those lips via injections. Through his work as a plastic surgeon and educator, Boyd knows that this 50-50 ratio is usually found on Black women.
They want bigger lips, yes, but specifically a top lip that is the same size as the bottom, instead of the industry-standard recommendation of lip proportions of one-third to two-thirds, top to bottom. Charles Boyd has noticed a common request among his white millennial patients. Photo: © Tschabalala Self Courtesy the artist, Pilar Corrias Gallery, London, and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich / New Yorkįor years now, the Black plastic surgeon Dr.