To what extent are buttock augmentation before & after photos by means of non-surgical BBL, indicative of the result that the procedure will have on us?
In this article we explain why you can’t use buttock augmentation before & after photos as a menu.
In an era of visual rhetoric, photographs play an important role, but at the same time they are a double-edged sword, since social networks have become sounding boards, circulating “truths” that no one knows when, how, in what context and for what ultimate purpose.
The visual is king, content becomes secondary, technology has led to a world where the truth is no longer enough and you have to do more, apply filters, digitally modify, use Photoshop techniques or finally hire bewitching models to be the sales promoters of the procedure; the priority is in the marketing, not in the truth.
With this situation in hand, factors such as medical aspects, substance used, its mode of action, its components, amounts that a human body can receive without affecting the delicate balance and dynamics of body fluids, are relegated to the background or sometimes even lose all importance, because what prevails above all is that the patient is “hooked” on an image and takes for granted that everything else are unimportant details. There is a tendency to believe that if the image is beautiful, “everything else” will also be good.
For every possible activity, nowadays we want to see pictures: clothes, accessories, hairstyles, make-up, food, wedding cake, etc. And so, many people planning to undergo a buttock augmentation procedure will demand to see buttock augmentation before & after photos, kind of like when they go to the store, pull out the product they like and go through checkout.
Can you really buy a booty like when you flip through an Avon catalog? Let’s analyze the issue.
Influenced by what they see and hear on social networks, more and more people, eager to improve or beautify some part of their body, are demanding before and after photos of the procedure from doctors, not so much with the aim of understanding what they could expect from it, but wanting to choose the result more in line with their own idea of what it should be; “I want this nose”, “these are the breasts I want”, “sell me a derriere like this picture I saw on the internet”.
This worrying trend consists in considering that before & after photos are like a catalog from which you can choose freely, and specifically, we want to refer to the procedure of buttock augmentation using tissue fillers, because it is our specialty and where we have more than 20 years of experience.
With the premise originated during the last century’s consumerist revolution, that “the customer is always right”, doctors enter into a competition among themselves, to see who can put together the most attractive catalog of buttock augmentation before & after photos to show to patients, now turned into mere “customers”, in order to sell them the “product”; they even resort to unethical practices to make the images more attractive.
But there is something that is not taken into account which is that patients are not mere customers, aesthetic medicine is not a supermarket, doctors are not salesmen. Influenced and fueled by comments and interactions with other people who are engaged in social media, many patients, either by reluctance or simply by lack of knowledge on the subject, leave aside that the final result to be obtained in a non-surgical BBL procedure depends on a number of factors such as height, weight, age, fat distribution in the gluteal region, bone structure, skin condition, the state of the musculature of the area, ethnicity and previous gluteal procedures performed; all of this is overshadowed by what the person heard or read on Facebook or Instagram, what a friend told them, how the procedure looked on someone else, etc.
There are even influencers who, by showing their body attributes, promote doctors and aesthetic clinics for a fee, of course. The post-truth era has finally settled into every aspect of our lives and people, especially the younger ones, don’t seem to realize it.
Then there is the whole issue of the volume (cc) of product that people pretend to choose to their total liking, without taking into account that there are clear limits dictated by specific medical protocols and that there is a maximum capacity of dermal filler that the internal tissues of each person can receive: Is it the patient who decides freely or is it the doctor who, based on his knowledge and experience, applies his medical judgment and advises patients about their best options?
In the past, on our websites, we used to have a gallery of buttock augmentation before & after photos but soon we had to back off because we realized that we were subliminally suggesting that photos were a sort of menu from which one could order what was most appetizing; just like ordering “buttocks a la carte”.
- How much do the buttocks in this photo cost?
- I want to look like the person in photo number X.
- I want a butt like the girl in the blue bikini.
In other words, instead of taking the buttock augmentation before & after photos as samples of our work to form realistic expectations about non-surgical BBL, the gallery was viewed as a restaurant menu, to choose a result on demand.
Each patient has characteristics that make them unique. In people who are good candidates for non-surgical BBL, the procedure certainly achieves a substantial improvement in the appearance of their gluteal region, but it does not create standard buttocks like an industrial mold creates all identical pieces. The final result will depend on patient’s initial condition and the parameters mentioned above.
We would like to make it clear that we prefer not to have an Instagram account. We consider Instagram to be a purely marketing platform where actually what is displayed there has no way to be verified. Followers can be bought, comments can be bought, people whose comments are negative and not “suitable” to be shown there can be banned, and the accounts are generally managed by community managers whose function is basically for marketing and therefore, if you will, a fiction.
A 20-year trajectory in this field is our best reference, better than any photo that can be easily tricked or pulled from the internet. The use of a tissue filler of a recognized and legitimate brand is another indicator of trustworthiness of our professional medical practice.
Take for example the following cases:
These patients had ideal weight, excellent distribution of adipose tissue, optimal anatomical contexture, resulting in what can be seen in the images.
Doctors should always thoroughly explain to patients what kind of result they can expect from a non-surgical BBL procedure, based on their body characteristics. Non-surgical BBL will always improve the appearance of the buttocks and their lateral contour, always within a realistic framework. It is also very important to note that the non-surgical BBL should never be seen as a procedure to obtain massive and disproportionate buttocks. The procedure enhances the buttocks in a natural way, improving their projection and firmness, according to a balanced and well-proportioned beauty paradigm.
Buttock augmentation before & after photos should always be interpreted as a guide only, never as a catalog.
Here are some links that may be of your interest:
Butt Injections: How You Can Recover Volume, Firmness & Contour
Dermal fillers for buttocks: What should you know to avoid disappointment?
Non Surgical BBL: How does it work?
Aesthetic Medicine VS Cosmetic Surgery
The Dermal Filler of Choice For Non-Surgical BBL
Gluteal Augmentation with Polymethyl Methacrylate: A 10-year Cohort Study