I’m Thinking The NYT Generates A Lot Of Advertising Revenue From Plastic Surgeons

Why else would they run this doofy “news” story: “How to Stuff a Wild Bikini Bottom” by Natasha Singer? Below is the charming illustration that accompanies it. If your behind doesn’t look like the one on the far left, according to Singer’s ace reporting you have an inferior posterior and need to wrap youself in shapeless bolts of burlap until you can undergo butt-corrective surgery.

Below in italics are a few excerpts from the text, followed by gratuitously sarcastic commentary in bold:

…“A casual observer might think that’s a pretty buttocks over there in the pink sweatpants with the narrow waist and full bottom,” Dr. Mendieta said one evening last month as he pointed to a young woman window-shopping on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach. Perched at an outdoor cafe table under an orange umbrella, Dr. Mendieta had agreed to a reporter’s request that he rate buttocks as they sashayed by : all in the interest of medicine of course.

“But, professionally speaking, I would enhance her buttocks by adding more fullness and projection at the middle and the top,” he said. “I can always make a pretty butt even prettier.” …

By the strangest coincidence, the man who “can always make a pretty butt even prettier” makes his living as a plastic surgeon, and according to Singer would charge about $20,000 to augment your ass. Hey, no conflict of interest here, your read end is *objectively* defective.

…”Some women over 50 get the surgery to bulk up deflating derrières, while younger patients say they want larger buttocks to complement prominent busts. “I always got compliments for my front but never for my back,” said Natalie Del Rio, 18, a high school student in Miami who had the procedure last month with Dr. Mendieta. “Now my mom says I look like a Coca-Cola bottle.” …

People were not remarking positively on this 18 year old woman’s behind, only her bust, and that was a problem that $20,000 worth of surgery solved, so teenagers everywhere should start saving their allowances.

…”Efforts to enhance the size of the posterior date to ancient Greece, when Spartan women performed a bottom-kicking dance, said Dr. V. Leroy Young, a plastic surgeon in St. Louis who is chairman of the emerging trends task force of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. “Women would kick themselves in the fanny to make themselves bigger and firmer.” …

Granted I am not a classics scholar, but color me cynical about there being a wealth of historical or anthropological evidentiary support for the bottom-kicking dance of the Ancient Greeks.

…”Each augmentation takes six to eight hours, Dr. Roberts said, and typically one to two pounds of fat are added to each side. Skinny patients are asked to gain 10 to 15 pounds before the procedure to create enough fat to work with, Dr. Roberts said.

“Fat grafting to the buttocks is such a new procedure that little is known about how safe it is, how well it works or how long it lasts. The most frequent complication is infection, which occurs in 2 to 3 of every 100 patients, Dr. Roberts said. Other surgeons have reported tissue necrosis, in which the fat dies and must be removed. Patients also may have scars at the injection sites that fade over time. As in all liposuction, there is a small risk that fat drops or blood clots will migrate to the lungs, causing respiratory problems and even death.” …

So it’s expensive, risky, you can’t sit down or lie on your back for weeks, and you have to wear a girdle afterwards. But you caught that part about how “Patients say they don’t mind the discomfort,” right? Why not? Because:

“In primeval days the butt was the primary sexual attractor, not the breasts,” said Galdino F. Pranzarone, a professor of psychology at Roanoke College in Salem, Va. “This is really a return to what cave men were originally interested in.”

Arrrrrgh.

–Ann Bartow