In 2017, Tina visited an Upper East Side plastic surgeon who was trying to reduce cellulite on her lower body.
The doctor convinced her that the best way to deal with it was a Brazilian butt lift, which would remove fat from her lower back and thighs and channel it into her butt.
She paid $12,000 for the popular procedure, but wasn’t happy with the results.
Clothes didn’t fit her new body properly and people whispered and pointed when she walked by.
“I looked like a Queens stripper,” said Tina, who lives in Bayside and asked that her last name be withheld for privacy.
“It wasn’t the right look for me professionally,” said the 35-year-old, who works for a payroll company. “I’m petite with skinny legs and then this huge butt. Some people might have thought it looked good, but I found it embarrassing… I was devastated.”
She was so unhappy with her new look that she finally decided to go under the knife to fix it.
Last October, she visited Manhattan plastic surgeon Dr. Ryan Neinstein, whose practice is above Bergdorf Goodman, and performed a three-hour operation to reverse the process, at a cost of about $25,000.
The recovery, she said, was painless, and she drove herself to work a few days later.
“It’s a major change,” Tina said. “Now my hips are much smaller and all my clothes fit better. Even my shirts fall more normally.”
A growing number of Women regret their Brazilian butt lift — which take fat from other parts of a patient’s body to enlarge the buttocks — and other booty-enhancing procedures, such as silicon implants.
Last month, Blac Chyna went public the news that she was getting silicon out of her buttwhile rumors have swirled that the Kardashians have surgically reduced their alleged chubby behinds.
Crazy curves are no more in fashion.
“The pendulum swings from one extreme to the other,” Neinstein said. “Right now, people are gravitating from an ultra-narrow waist and wide hips to a sleeker, timeless look with longer, slimmer lines. I’m doing this flip across all spectrums of society, from lawyers to celebrities, and there are 10 times more people asking for the flip this year than last year.”
Buttock lift reversals are done under general anesthesia and use ultrasound to melt fat and break up scar tissue.
The plasma energy is then used to tighten the skin around the new body contour. Recovery is minimal, but it takes two to three months after surgery to achieve optimal shaping and tightening.
And, Neinstein notes, reversals can only do so much.
“We can always change the shape, but the problem is the quality of the skin,” he said. “The skin is stretched from overfilling and it’s hard to get a smooth look back.”
Dr. Matthew Schulman, another Upper East Side plastic surgeon, said he has performed about 500 butt lift reversals in the past four years, and requests for reversals have increased about 40 percent in the past year.
It equalizes the wave of surgeries with the move away from larger breast implants.
“It’s like people in the ’90s who decided they wanted smaller breasts,” she said. “Most of them don’t want all the fat removed. they just want less bulk and less curves. They want to be livelier and rounder, with a more athletic and less dramatic look.”
He said sometimes it’s not just a matter of changing trends, but also that some patients are at a new stage in life.
“Maybe they’re in a different position socially, so they want a different look, or they’ve put on weight over the years since they’ve been lifting, so it doesn’t look as attractive,” she said.
Krystal Lopez, 29, was immediately unhappy with her butt lift, but she wasn’t forced to go back under the knife until her life and tastes changed.
In 2017, she was a young, single woman when she went to a plastic surgeon in New Jersey trying to make her flat butt more perky.
“At first I wanted more of a round shape and, at first, I thought maybe I was still bloated, but it never went down,” she said. “It was much bigger than I expected or asked for, and the doctor said, ‘That’s what everyone wants.’ I said, “That’s not what I want.” It looks so unnatural and there are so many things I can’t wear.”
Now a married mother of two, she can no longer live with her butt.
He is scheduled to have a reversal with Schulman — who charges $15,000 to $20,000 for the procedure — for late May.
“I didn’t want to go under the knife again, but I’m a little girl and I come with this big butt,” Lopez said. “It’s not a good look anymore and not my taste. I was young and dumb and now I’m paying for it. But thank God there is a solution.”
