I was asked to answer this for Quora, but I thought I would share the answer here as well.
Why is the BBL so popular?
Think of the buttock like the breast. They come in different shapes and sizes. Some droop. Some are more curvy. Some are bigger.
As you age, the breast and buttock both tend to droop and lose shape.
The Brazilian butt lift is not a lift like a breast lift is a lift. When I do a breast lift, I am rearranging the breast tissue, cutting out skin, and truly lifting the breast. This lets me use what is there to reshape things, but it leaves a scar. When you do a butt lift, you are really just adding volume to the buttock. Volume helps tighten and lift the skin by filling the skin envelope. In the past this was done with implants, but the most popular method now is using your own body fat by doing fat grafting.
Why are they popular?
There are really two veins of people who want to add fat to their bottoms.
- The first are people who want to be super curvy.
- There are many stars who have popularized the curvy shape, starting years ago with Jennifer Lopez to the Kardashian clan now.
- For women to achieve this curvy look, they add volume to their buttocks and frequently also their breasts.
- There are some women who overemphasize these curves. For these, the volumes implanted can be large.
- The second group is more modest in their desire. They just want a little curve or to fix things.
- There are some women born with no curve. They have flat bottoms.
- Others have lost the volume, and their bottom droops. As I mentioned before, the Brazilian butt lift adds volume which helps lift the buttock.
- Others have formed dimples and irregularities on their bottom, and fat can help “pop” the dimples back out.
So the change in volume in BBL is a range, just like breast augmentation is a range. Some people go huge, and others are more modest. But remember it isn’t always super curvy- you can add fat to the bottom and have it look very natural and subtle.
BUT (pun intended) there are risks.
There is a higher morbidity to fat grafting to the buttock, and our national society formed a task force to figure out why. I have BLOGS on the subject here, which summarize the findings in the journal articles, but the synopsis is this: you can safely transfer fat to the buttock in small amounts, and you must stay superficial. If someone is doing large amounts, they are likely getting into the muscle, and the risk comes from that.