Our world is shrinking.  We are all becoming aware that the physical features regarded as beautiful vary around the world and from place to place.  The completely Caucasian model of facial beauty appears to have given way to a more diverse consideration.  For example, thicker lips and darker skin are now much more valued in this country as beautiful, than in the past.  Likewise, the non-Caucasian female posterior appears to have come into its own.  Dark-skinned women in general, Jennifer Lopez and Kim Kardasian in particular, appear to be as healthy and attractive from the back as they are from the front.  The desire of having an unobtrusive backside appears to have taken a backseat to a more curvaceous, even protuberant look.

In other countries, a buttock augmentation involves soft implants beneath the gluteus muscle.  We cannot currently obtain these implants in this country.  There is, in addition, a higher infection and extrusion rate than that of breast implants.  The most successfult buttock augmentation in this country currently appears to be an auto-augmentation using one’s own fat to obtain extra volume.  Liposuction done very gently with syringes can harvest healthy fat cells for transplantation into the buttocks.  The limitation is that individual volumes of successfully transplanted fat appear to be on the order of 1/100 of a ml, or 1/3,000 of fluid ounce at a time.  This means that to obtain an augmentaion of 10 ounces, or 300 ml of fat for the entire buttocks, a small to modest increase in volume would take around 30,000 individual passes of the liposculpture syringe.   Injected individual volumes of fat much larger than 1/100 of a ml seem not to survive in the long run.  Therefore, such a buttock auto-augmentation takes many hours if done properly.  The other type of auto-augmentation is done while doing a buttock lift.  The extra fat normally removed from the upper buttock is instead left attached to deeper tissues, folded down, and allowed to fill the lifted buttock space.  A potential drawback is the relatively unpredictable survival of the fatty tissue.  In my opinion, this is a very difficult operation in which to obtain symmetrical results.  In addition, this type appears to me to have a rather male looking result, the augmentation being a little too much toward the center.  Luckily, I find that the majority of female burrocks I have been asked to evaluate, seem to have a greater problem with dropping or sagging of the tissues rather than an absolute loss or absense.  Lifting the tissues up appears to restore the colume where it needs to be.  A buttock lift involves the careful placement of a curved incision at the top of the buttocks to lift up the tissues to their original position.  If one looks in the mirrow and places her hand on the hip, just above the buttocks, and pulls upsward, she will see a demonstration of what a lift can do.  This lift is often done at the same time as an abdominoplasty or tummy tuck.  Although it can be done as a separate procedure, when doing the two at the same time is is called an extended abdominoplasty.  They result is improvement all the way around the patient.  After all, a healthier looking backside seems to go very well with a healthier looking abdomen.