14 DAY TRIAL // The E! reality series “Botched” shows the ugly, often painful and traumatizing side of plastic surgery, especially the kind done in excess or by unprepared surgeons. Starring Terry Dubrow and Paul Nassif, it shows some of the most horrific cases of surgery gone wrong, from women who have had cement injected in their face to men who can’t breathe anymore through their nose after countless interventions.
However, perhaps the most concerning thing about plastic surgery today is, according to Dr. Dubrow, the so-called Kardashian Effect.
Plastic surgery trends and the Kardashian Effect
Dr. Dubrow tells Yahoo! Beauty that there is such a thing as plastic surgery “trends,” when demand for a certain procedure picks up. In recent years, one such trend has been more natural-looking, smaller breasts.
On the downside, women seem to favor bigger backsides, just like those on the Kardashian - Jenner women. Lips as massive as Kylie Jenner’s, which she admitted she got through repeated rounds of injections, are also in.
Dubrow calls it the Kardashian Effect because the Kardashians, as widely ridiculed as they might be, are trendsetters in terms of beauty and fashion. They’re credited for making curves “happen,” because Kim was among the first female celebrities (after JLo) to receive positive media attention for having a more prominent backside.
Today, the Kardashians and the Jenners have turned their hourglass figures into money-making machines, and their fans are willing to (try to) replicate them, even if that means spending a lot of money and going through a lot of pain to get it.
The dangers of the Kardashian Effect
What many patients don’t understand is that no amount of plastic surgery and no plastic surgeon, no matter how skilled, can “make” one person look like another, to natural results, Dr. Dubrow continues.
Asking for a larger backside would be ok if they did it for the right reasons (i.e. personal insecurities), but asking for it to be as large as those on the Kardashians brings a wide range of risks.
“The butt thing is really concerning, because they want to go big,” Dr. Dubrow explains. “They’re pushing the envelope of what the buttocks will take. When you put a ton of fat in the buttocks, some of it’s going to dissolve. Some of it’s going to die. You can get into fat necrosis and scarring. The buttocks is really, really hard to fix.”
As if these risks weren’t bad enough, there’s also the long and painful recovery period, and the chance that the result might be as far from natural-looking as possible, which means regret will settle in once the big booty trend dies down in showbiz.