The Brazilian Butt Lift (BBL) was quite popular for giving people an hourglass shape, but now it is getting a lot of bad press because of a side effect that is so awful that it is turning heads for all the wrong reasons.
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons says that buttock augmentation treatments have been increasingly popular in the last ten years, in part because of celebrities and influencers like Kim Kardashian and Cardi B.
BBLs shift fat from one part of the body to the buttocks to make them larger and better contoured. Doctors are stressing the importance of thorough post-op preparation as the treatment becomes more common. This includes training patients how to care for their wounds and aiding them with hygiene.
But a lot of people who want to be famous for their viral videos don’t talk about what actually happens during surgery.
The smell of BBL
There are thousands of BBL transformation videos on social media. Most of them are edited, shiny, and happy. But they don’t illustrate what real recovery is like, which includes sponge baths, cleaning wounds, limited movement, and being embarrassed by smells.
GetSnatched, a cosmetic surgery center in Miami, says that a strange fragrance that patients don’t expect is a common side effect. “This is a normal and mostly harmless part of the healing process, but it can make recovery more stressful or confusing.”
The clinic’s website notes that after a BBL, patients usually can’t sit, shower, or get to their backsides because of swelling, pain, or how things are set up. Putting on compression garments, bandages, and sweat can make a bad smell.
“Smell is real.”
“The BBL smell is real,” said Dr. Eric Anderson, a plastic and reconstructive doctor in Chicago, to the Daily Mail. He explained this is because there were big complications following the procedure, like tissue dying and not being clean enough.
“Fat necrosis” is one thing that can go wrong following BBLs. It happens when the fat in the buttocks dies following surgery. This happens when the patient gets too much fat during treatment.
The doctor said, “If there is too much fat in an area for the blood supply to handle, the fat will die in a smelly process called fat necrosis.” This can cause infections that necessitate antibiotics, hospital stays, and even sepsis.
Getting to the back
But it could possibly be because of how dirty it is.
Dr. Roger Tsai, a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, explains that after a BBL, it could be hard for patients to reach around their bigger butts after they use the bathroom. This might make them smell terrible.
Tsai told the Daily Mail, “It’s going to be a lot harder to wipe down there because there’s more to reach around.”
“Attack on my nose”
One TikToker, on the other hand, raised the alert on social media after going out with a woman who had a BBL. “Her body looks insane…” She did it the right way. He started the well-known video “BBLs do be smelling” by remarking, “Her whole body looked great.”
The user, who has 4.1 million likes, then added that things went bad when he got home with the woman and she started twerking with her freshly raised butt.
“I was like. “What the hell?” [Because] she doesn’t have anything on right now. And I could smell something, and it hit my nose. He said, “an attack on my nose.”
The TikToker then tried to be nice and told her that she “wasn’t smelling that fresh down there.” She told her to “get in the shower” and “freshen up.”
I knew that if someone has an average-sized butt their whole life and then suddenly gets a big BBL, it’s not normal. You know, to really get it clean back there? And if they don’t do that a lot, they might not know that you sweat in a different way. He says, “When you add that much more meat back then, everything changes.”
“BBL smells bad.”
Another social media star said she had the treatment redone since her “sit down” smelled “real, real bad,” even though she said it wasn’t because she was dirty.
She informed her TikTok admirers, “BBL stinks, do you hear me?” She explained the bad smells didn’t come from her holes; they came from the “incisions that they inject the fluid and the fat into your butt.”
“And if it’s not healing right and your body doesn’t want it, the [incisions] will stay open and the drainage will keep going…” The woman, who had a BBL for barely a year, said, “It will make your underwear, linens, and everything else smell bad.”
Would you still have a BBL if you knew it would smell bad for up to two months? We’d love to hear what you think and read this tale so we can keep talking!
