Brazilian Butt Lifts: What To Know

hold up a minute. I went from a B to a double D. We had a death of week before her and a death of week after her. How did we end up here? I was really trying to keep that from happening to people. Well, guys, this is going to be a very interesting WHOA for sure. Extremely I'm glad we're talking about this today. The b B else because I was considering getting me too. I think, let's be real, okay, I considered getting the tiniest little bit you did. But then I just got in the gym,

That's why. And I told her, I said, you want to but one thing your mother know how to do is build a bun exactly, and you bet it. But I really to the point that people thought you got certain you know, you're right. I just feel like there's always been so much more pressure on women to look a certain way. You know, it's all about youth. So for somebody like me, the struggle has been extremely real, Like I had botox, and then you get to the point where how much are you gonna do? Then it

almost becomes addictive. Both y'all know, I've been collecting my little surgeons for that inevitable, inevitable moment that this girl right here is gonna get a little snatch even though people think I have done it already, but I have, you really haven't. This is interesting. So due to COVID, cosmetic surgery has become even more popular because of what's being called the zoom boom. We spend hours staring at our own faces and not liking what we see. Like,

to me, my face never looks right. Well, she nobody's face it looks right, because I don't think twenty year olds think that face looks right. Now that you can and all this stuff you can do with your picture, you know, all the voters and I mean just an insane amount of like self esteem like problems, like specifically nowadays, I feel like, but getting back to the butt lift, some people be looking real cute. Here's what we can't deny.

It does change lives for some people. It's kind of like a BBL can get you forward in life and wait, whoas and like influencing all of these things like if you have this look, now you can get these two years it's lips, it's but it's I just want women to feel empower and I feel like there's a slippery slope with empowerment on this trajectory of of changing the way your body looks. We'll see it's it's it's what we always say, will aware. You can pretty much do anything.

It's just a matter of where you're sitting within yourself, the why exactly the real so. But that's only for an individual person to figure out for themselves, you know, and it's not for anybody else. But one of the reasons why we thought it was important to do this particular show is to just really express I don't think people are aware of the risk. I know I wasn't. The Brazilian Butt Lift or BVL, is the fastest growing

cosmetic procedure in the world. Experts say it's also the most dangerous new you of Magazine, USA Today, and Newsweek have all recently reported on it. They say the huge demand for BBL is due to a new social media trend where women are posting the entire process on social media for all to see. The hashtag BBL has been used more than three billion times. It definitely makes a difference,

three billion. They're showing off not just their results. They're showing you before and after, but the painful, weeks long recovery. She's a little bruised up there, even letting their doctors go live from the operating room side back. This global phenomenon has sparked a worldwide search for the best butt at the lowest price. Stunning video shows a line of twenty four BBL post out patients in wheelchairs waiting to

board their flight from the Dominican Republic to Atlanta. The big Butt Barbie Doll body trend has launched careers and created influencers. I had eight mills of fact injected in total. I personally wanted it way big up, but this was all the fact I had in my whole body. Wow, we're not here to tell anybody what to do, what not to do. I feel like people should be able to do whatever right. I just want people to be able to do their research. The BBL is very controversial

and dangerous. One out of three thousand women won't make it. A mom and a ninth grade English teacher, Alicia Rennette Williams, had waited years to get plastic surgery, got on a plane to the Dominican Republic and tragically never came home. Alicia's sister Stacy is here along with Dr Mila Bennett, who was a Board certified plastic surgeon dr and did not treat Alicia, but knows her story all too well. Stacy, let me first just say we're really sorry about the

loss of your sister. Thank you. Could you tell us a little bit about her? Aelicia was the best list ever. She's been a school teacher for a long long time. She only had one child, which was Chad. She lost weight, gain weight, lost weight, gain weight, so she started looking into having a BBL. She did a research for a couple of years. Then she come across these groups on social media, which makes everything look so good and so easy.

In these groups that they have, they put it out there that you know, all of us want to go to the Menic and Republic. So you find somebody and you go together. They were called surgery sisters. And the ladies from the groups say how cheap it is and you can just get this perfect body. So this is why she decided to go to the American Republic to get this surgery. She was so excited to go because

she ever expressed why she wanted the BBL. She just wanted to look pretty and small, small ways, big hip. Most ladies are doing that. Yeah, exactly, that's exactly what it is. So then what happened next. So the nurse or the lady assistant that she had been talking to the whole time, my sister told her, I wanted to be the first one to have surgery. The next morning, my sister kept telling her that. It kept telling her that, and she kept ensuring her, Yeah, you'll be the first one,

You'll be the first one. She did not get to be the first. She was the very last person to have surgery that day. During that day, when I talked to my sister, she was so upset. I could tell her blood pressure was so hot. Was there a reason why she wanted to be first. It's plastic surgery. It takes a couple of hours, and you're the last person the doctor's tired. She didn't want that to happen to her. Do we know around what time it'll very last? Was

I think about six o'clock in the afternoon. Did she have an opportunity to meet the doctor before her procedure? No? No, she talked to this nurse's assistant the whole entire time. She was the orchestrator of all of this. When did you know that something wasn't work? She stayed alive five

days after her surgery. About the third day, I got a message said that they had to send her back to the hospital for dehydration, and leading I tried to contact the nurse and they just give you minimal information. And then I got a text message that they had to rush my sister back to the hospital and that was all that she said. And then I woke up and I had so many miss phone calls and my heart is like, okay, this is not good. Yeah, they

called my sister boyfriend. They said she didn't make it and it was just down here from there, and how are we going to tell Chad? Dr Bennett, What was your relationship to Alicia? I learned of Alicia from Stacy. She d m me on social media and she wanted to let me know what it happened to her sister. She wanted me to know because she knew I had done so much speaking about the dangerous aspects of plastic surgery. It's pretty rare that I performed bbls because I believe

that they're dangerous, They're risky. Did they say cause of death? She had a lot done at once. She did several procedures. She had several procedure, she had sat taken from under her arm, she had the fat transfer from her stomach from her back. They put something in her hips to give her some hips and Tommy Tuck also, it was a lot, and it's too much, too much to be done at one time. Based on the combination of procedures she got, it sounded like it was most likely a

pulmonary embolism. That's usually a blood clot that forms of your legs and goes up to your lungs. Those can be dead lead. I think that's what happened to her. Did you ever have an opportunity to talk to the doctor. Wow, when my sister passed, they posted a thing it says the doctor have talked to the family, and I'm like, I never talked to the doctor never. Okay, that's really shady. Well it's shady to do surgery on a person you've not met. Is the doctor who worked on Alicia? Is

that doctor still practicing? Yeah? There was a lot of deaths after my sister. He had a death of week before her and a death of week after her. Is making me upset. Now, I'm like, how did you, like, how did we end up here? You know, I was really trying to keep that from happening to people, you know, and then when I saw her picture. We have to humanize her legacy. You know this, this this young man has got to tell people that his mom died from surgery.

Alicia's son, Chaz, was fourteen when she died. Thank earlier. Set down with him to hear his message. Tell me why you wanted to come today. I just want to save another kid, keep them from losing their mom. Tell us a little bit about your mom. She was the best. She was just a joyful person and she was sweet, funny. That was my best friend. We did everything together. What was your favorite thing about her. I don't think she ever saw a bad side of things. You have a

bright soul. I can feel your mom through you. Thank you. He's very deicious. Yeah, if I just wanted to say to you both, thank you for coming. This will save a lot of people. Yeah. So, Dr Arthur Perry is a Harvard trained plastic surgeon with more than three decades of experience. He led an investigation on deaths caused by BBLS. Says he won't perform BBLS and he's going to take us through everything, so explain to us. Actually, what BBL

is a Brazilian butt lift. That's what it's called. It's a very very poorly named procedure because one it's not Brazilian and two it's not a lift. What it is is taking fat from one area of the body where you don't want it, like your belly or your thighs hips wherever, and suction in a way and injecting it into the buttocks. It sounds great right too. For one procedure, you get liposuction and you get a larger buttocks if

that's what you want. By the way I pronounce a liposuction, everyone in the world pronounces the LiPo, but the word is lipid, it's not. Yeah, all right. A Brazilian butt lift is a very dangerous procedure. There have been countless deaths, hundreds of deaths. So I have here. This is duck fat. It looks just like human fat. Got it. The way we do a b B L. The first step is to extract fat. We do liposuction, liposuction, whatever you want to call it. This is a what's called a canula

is a liposuction. And if this were your abdomen, I would be going back and forth with this liposuction canyla. And this end is attached to a very fancy vacuum, and the liposuction machine is basically a vacuum. It is. So what we do in a procedure like a Brazilian butt lift, we'll take the fat and draw it up in these syringes. This is just how it's done. Uh. It's already been taken out of the body and filtered, so we'll get the blood out. This is a typical

syringe that we might use. This is a sixty c C syringe and in a Brazilian butt lift, as much as eight hundred ccs. That's almost a leader of fat is injected into each buttock cheek peach, So that's a lot. Imagine thirteen or fourteen of these injected into each buttock. So all of that fat, that eight hundred ccs is coming from several different areas in their belly, their hips. Sure, now we have to be very careful. I will go ahead and make an incision and go ahead, and there

it is. But that is basically how it's done. And where I've placed this is above the muscle. I could go into the muscle. That's not a good thing, and that's where a lot of the problems with the Brazilian butt lift have occurred. Now you might be wondering why I have these. These are straws, just regular drinking straws, and they represent the blood vessels in the thigh, in the buttocks. These are pretty big. This is three millimeters.

The current recommendation is that we don't go smaller than this. But look what happens. I can take this three millimeter and put it right in this blood vessel. So this is going up what's called the Vinta cave, that's the big van of the body, into the heart and then right into the lungs and then you simply die. And that's the danger of a Brazilian butt lift. This much fat will kill you, in fact a lot less. So what happens in a procedure where someone's injecting three hundred

eight hundred ccs or more of fat? Could I injected straight into a blood vessel? Yes, that could happen, even if we don't go into the muscle. Is it just like a game of chance, like when you when you try to find that spot like, that's correct? It is? It is? It is. Now there are things that classic churches are trying to do. They're trying to develop technology that will tell people when they're in the muscle. I don't think that's good enough because some of these very

large veins traverse, they go through the fat. Also, so even if we're in the muscle, we could be getting fat into the blood vessels. And each rain has a different way of mont and we know where most of them are, but we don't know where exactly. You don't have X ray eyes, you can't see. That's correct. So when this fat goes into that big blood vessel, goes into the heart and then then into the lungs, the game is over and I think over the years this

will become safer. But the problem is we're doing this now. We're doing this now. Plastic surgeons are doing this, and other surgeons are doing this now when it is not considered uniformly safe. Think about this. So, if I were a cardiac surgeon and I invented a device like a new heart valve, do you know that it takes almost ten years to get that on the market. That's to keep you safe in my field in plastic surgery. I think up an operation today, I say, let's see if

I can have someone do it. And if I do it, then I get a public relations agent. I'm not going to make many friends and plastic surgery saying this, but this is true. You get a public relations agent and the next morning, after you're on this show or some other show, your office is filled with patients, whether or not the procedure has been proven safe. And that is where we are. That is why the British plastic surgeons told their members don't do this procedure. It's not considered safe.

We're studying. This is at this point experimental, so so I just want to be clear. The BBL procedure it's not considered a certified procedure. Basically, well, for the most part, the government stays out of medicine when it's surgery. They regulate things like drugs, of course, and they regulate devices. They don't regulate what I can do in the operating room. For the most part, neither does the state government. The exception has been with this procedure in Florida when there

were all those deaths. And my role in this was that I was recruited by USA Today as a newspaper to look at all the deaths, the autopsy reports and try and help them understand what was going on. Now Florida has taken the step. They have said, because of all those deaths, doctors cannot by law go underneath the muscle or into the muscle with an injection of fat. If you do, they said, even accidentally, you lose your license. Wow. H Are your fellow um plastic surgery friends like tiffed

at the stance you're taking about this. The ones that do it, certainly are the ones that don't do it have said, you know, good job. The dangers are real and people are dying not by the dozens but by the hundreds. Wow. How much does the BBL costs? It depends. If you go in Manhattan, everything is three times it's expensive. It would be well over ten thousand dollars in Manhattan. Going down to the places you know, hardly call them doctor's offices in Florida and around the country that will

see you without ever seeing a doctor, it's not uncommon. Unfortunately, those might charge you three or four thousand dollars. And while that's still a lot of money, people scrape together their dollars and they say, I want to look beautiful. And that's one of the really sad things about this because some of the most dangerous places are the least

expensive places. So let me ask you, Dr Perry, how should we go about trying to uh do research and find the best doctor for whatever procedure is trying to have done. You know, it's it's not the easiest thing. It really isn't because every website is really an advertisement, right And I'm sorry to say this, but you know all the best doctor lists, which you know I'm on the New York doctor list. Those unfortunately our popularity contests now because many of the hospitals they prompt their doctors

to vote for their colleague. Sorry, Uh, this is where I'm going to get the emails because it's true, and so can you trust all those lists? They just want you to buy the plaque seventy do and you can put best doctor in whatever right that is a problem. Here's how I I suggest. It is extremely important that you choose a proper plastic surgeon. A real plastic surgeon calls him or herself a plastic surgeon. You want to find the doctor that is certified by the American Board

of Plastic Surgery, that's the real word. You want to look at their training and and learn what medical school that doctor went to and where they did their residency. Very important. So what you want to do is find a doctor who has privileges to do the procedure that you're looking at having in a hospital, not a surgery center, and not an office. You don't necessarily want to have that procedure in the hospital, but you want the doctor

to have privileges at the hospital. And the reason for that is because there are other doctors that are looking at that doctor and saying in a committee format that they are properly trained and they can do that procedure. Here. Again, not a popular thing. I won't make friends with this interview here. This is supremely important because I didn't know that either. The other thing is whether your doctor wants it or not. See a board certified INTERNALT prior to

surgery internest. Sorry Gang, not a family doctor. And again, no friends going to be made here. But honestly, if you're an adult, you see an INTERNETS beforehand. Now in California that's a law, but not in the rest of the United States. Everyone over the age of sixty, I have them get an exercise stress test. And if you pass an exercise stress test, I know your heart is going to be just fine in the operating room. Right, So there are things that you can do to protect

yourself from disaster. There's one other thing that I suggest also ask your doctor who they would go to a doctor's right, that's what you want. What questions should patients ask when they meet their doctor. The consultation must be with the doctor, and we've heard of consultations with nurse. Sary on your nurse, I want to have my surgeon

to the consultation, including imaging. Imaging is important plastic surgery, and if the nurse does that, well, you know they don't really know what the doctor can do in the operating room. It's got to be the doctor. Sit down with the doctor. A consultation is a minimum of half an hour. If it's one of these five minute things, forget it. And honestly, everybody wants to save money. But a free consultation you get what you pay for. You're not going to get an hour with a doctor at

no charge. You want to know if you can relate to the doctor. I want to see pictures of patients. If the doctor doesn't show you pictures, there's something wrong. Should someone ask a doctor if they've ever had a death during a procedure that they have performed. Why not? Are they going to tell you the truth? They better? It's reasonable to ask have you had malpractice suits? How many have you had? Any action taken against your license?

You can find out. Most state boards have websites in most states, the disciplinary action is out there, so you don't have to ask the doctor did you get a reprimand did you lose your license? Because you can find that out and people should. If you're willing to go on Yelp and look for restaurant reviews, you know, go to the state board website and find out whether your doctor got disciplined. How well do the butt lift last? Like, what what is the long term effect all of that?

What's going to happen that you asked that question, because you know what, if you look out there in the global information available about the Brazilian butt lift, you will not find that information. That study does not exist. So fat gets injected, it needs to get a blood supply. Each and every fat cell has to get nutrients, It has to get oxygen anywhere from ten lives to maybe

we don't know. The studies have not been done. So now, what does it look like in a year, five years, ten years when someone's push eight d cs of fat in each buttock almost a leader of fat. No one knows. I'll bet you we're gonna find out pretty soon because people are going to be coming in with buttocks that do not look pretty lumpy bumpy. Some fat survives, some fat doesn't survive. The skin will retract in funny ways, not everybody, but there's gonna be a lot of people

that are deformed. I would imagine that you aren't too pleased with people who decide to go live, you know, on social media in the operating room with this. Yeah, I worry a lot about that, and I call me old school, but you know, surgery is not entertainment, a potentially deadly undertaking, and it's only a matter of time before we are going to see a death in real time on whatever social media it will happen. Man, Thank you,

I'm going to be thinking about I opening. Yeah. For years, Michelle Massage was known for her double deep breasts, but one day she made a dramatic decision that saved her life. Breast implants are still one of the most in demand plastic surgeries in the world. RuPaul's Drag Race star Michelle Vissage has an urgent warning about the debility taking side effects she experienced from hers for decades. Michelle says she suffered from hair loss, sudden weight gain, and fatigue, and

believes her signature double D s Those aren't breath. These are breath. Girl, We're making her sick. I'm scared, nervous, I'm petrified. Michelle stunned fans when she made the bold decision to remove her implants, revealing the entire journey in a deeply personal documentary called X Plant. I'm so happy to have been learning a lot, listening and watching, it's just frightening. So with finally made you decide to get them removed. Had I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's thyroid artists,

which is an autoimmune condition that attacks the thyroid. It happened pretty soon after my first set of implants, and so my journey started there. I would have these flare ups where I would gain a ton of weight, my body would go bloat up and down, and I would go to my doctors and I'd say, if this is an autoimmune issue and my body is attacking an invader and just happens to be attacking my thyroid, the only invader are these two blobs of silicon in my body,

So why wouldn't I take them out? I even had one doctor say, just don't take them out yet because we want to make sure it's not something else. But I was kind of be yeah, I've done everything else, because you can't imagine what I have done after twenty plus years of chasing my health constantly, continuously things getting worse, and um, I couldn't understand why that was my last step, And to be honest, I was over them anyway. Michelle says she exhausted all avenues to get to the bottom

of her disease. I'm sick of being sick. A symptoms started soon after she had her first of three implant surgeries, eventually filling a double D cup. So you had three surgeries, I had three breast augmentations. Should go bigger? Yes? It was like your size tiny, teeny tiny. I remember always wanting the boobs growing in a household where my father was a subscriber to Playboy magazine. I would look in the magazine and said, when am I going to get that?

I was adopted, and when I met my biological mother, the two things I asked her first, why do I have no boobs? And why do I have a bump in my nose? When I came to your first it was like charging on my credit card. I didn't even have the money to do it. And I remember waking up and I'm like, hold up a minute. I went from not even like a double A, not even A to a B. And I remember waking up going I did not pay ten thousand dollars for a B cup. He was like, calm down, you wait less than a

hundred pounds. You are too tiny. You didn't have the skin. I was like, I have se born stars with boobs the size of my head and they are smaller than me, So don't lie to me. You're lying to me. And then, like an idiot, three years later, I went back to the same doctor. So finally, um, after having both of my children and nursing both of them, I noticed one was bigger than the other, and I said, oh, I think one s to flee. So I ended up going

to doctor nine O two one oh who. I said, can you please give me the boobs of my dreams? And I went from a B to a double D and I was thrilled. So, Michelle, do you feel like you lost a piece of your identity once you took out your implants? It's a great question. My breasts were always part of the fun, the caricatured news, and I have a wonderful therapist, and I was so ready and honest, I don't regret a thing though I have a padded bra on now. When I see myself, it's literally a

rib cage. There is a nipple on top of a rib cage. And I love it. Yeah, I wish I loved it it. At seventeen and eighteen and nineteen. I wish to god, I did you know? And both my daughters I try to instill on them how perfect they are, you know. And my daughter said when I told the family I was going to take him out, She's like, well, I go to your career. It was like, I bet

you people do think that. I honestly got scared that your career was gonna end if you got your boobs or I remember vivially telling you like crying, telling you I didn't want you to get them out because like you weren't gonna know you weren't crying. How when was this, well, there goes your career? Okay, that's how you really think your entire brand is like based off that? Like, yeah, but do you think that I am just my boobs? I never said that. I just know I'm asking you. No,

I don't think you are. But you're like, entire brand isn't built your boobs? Yeah? True, But my entire brand is based off my talent. And I'm not saying I'm not insecure because I have imposter syndrome. I struggle with that all the time, where I'm on sets of things and like do I really belong here? Shouldn't somebody else be doing this job like pinch me. You know that type of thing. I think that exists um in me still,

especially in this industry, industry, sorry, especially for women. It always has been there's a standard that we cannot live up to unless this purchase. And that's unfair for the younger generation. I bet you for your daughters, this has been a really powerful journey for them to witness, for better or for worse than because I have struggled with

body image my whole life. I'm eating disorder survivor, and my younger one struggles and she has seen me, and though I've tried, it breaks my heart to see her struggle with that food and body image. Then you throw in social media and she'll go, oh mom, this girl is a perfect body. And I tell this to my daughter. We all have these hungarian humps in our nose right, and my my Lola that's your age, has one as well. And she hated it for a while. And my whole

life I was the same way. I always wanted to shave it, always wanted to shave it. And it was RuPaul who said, I wish you can see yourself through my eyes. I wish you can see yourself through God's eyes and see how that's it you go and it's deep, and I wasn't ready for that depth, to be honest, and I was like, that's cute, but I still hate my nose because of social media and your generation has, it's so rough. It's tough out there, kid, it's really bad.

I think a lot of girls trauma. They're just like, no, I must be I must be this, and they look on social media and that's just their every day. It's not real. It's not real. But I think I kind of went the opposite way of like she's just gonna I'm just gonna do it a right on, I'm gonna shave my head, I'm gonna grow out my armpits care But can we just look at this child's face? Oh?

I know? Can we just look at this child's face and not like that's what you call face and there is nothing and you could do that all you want, just to skin the eyes. It's just the structure. If you could see yourself through our eyes, you wouldn't touch a thing. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, this was great. Sweet. I love you. I love watching you on TV, and I love being next to you today my darling, thank

you so much. You know we're fanning out of it. Well, my daughter, when I told her I was coming, she's your age. I said that I was coming to do red table talk and she's like, if you see Willow, please bow to her feet. I was like, I will not, but really, she'll go to my feet. Yeah,