This may seem like a frivolous question, but as a conscientious and earnest plastic surgeon who is in the biz of making butts bigger and better with fat (aka Brazilian Buttlifting aka BBL), I am here to serve with an answer. As many of you are aware, curves and butts are in. Porno boobs, six packs and anorexia are out. This shift in aesthetic sensibility has occurred for a multiplicity of reasons, including a melting pot of cultures in conjunction with social media. The Kardashian family has done more to stoke this fire than probably anyone else with their endless butt selfies (buttsies….you heard it here first). As deviant as this behavior is, it has seeped into our collective consciousness. Now everyone is doing it.

There is a dark side to all this. A new, unrealistic ideal has been established. People now have pornographic, photoshopped bubble butts floating in their minds like errant balloons rather than what is normal and healthy. It is thus important for the plastic surgery community to chime in and ask the weighty question: “what is the ideal buttock size?” The Journal of Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery recently published an article addressing this question. An online survey was sent out to 9000 plastic surgeons along with the lay public. It included an app that allowed digital manipulation of a model’s buttocks with changing waist-to-hip ratio and buttock size. The retrieved data were collected and analyzed to elucidate buttock shape preferences. 1032 responses were received. Overall, almost forty percent chose a 0.7 waist-to-hip ratio as ideal (curvy). Furthermore, when sorting for age, sex, and ethnicity, certain predictable patterns emerged. Latin America preferred the largest butts followed by Asia, North America and Europeans. After regression analysis, the results showed that regardless of profession (surgeon or lay people), region, sex, age, or ethnicity, buttock size did impact perceived “attractiveness.”

The take home message here is intuitively obvious: curves are back and butts are in. A small waist with wide hips is a feminine archetype or ideal for many cultures and something that has been lost or de-emphasized in our progressively asexual, homogenized, ultra-feminist, white, western culture. Embracing femininity is good and healthy. As for buttock size, it is important to emphasize harmonious balance. While big butts are in, bigger is not always better. The buttock size has to match a person’s God-given anatomy. Any body part that is too large (whether it is boobs or butts) throws the person off balance and overpowers their physique. When I see people in public who either have buttock implants or an unartistic, overexaggerated BBL, I wince. People stare and not always in a good way. We now like big butts and we cannot deny, but not too big…..