The BBL

0:00 [SPEAKER_01]: I just came back from upstate New York. [SPEAKER_01]: It was my first getaway to upstate New York. [SPEAKER_01]: I had we'd rented a little cabin where it's kind of normally a cabin. [SPEAKER_01]: It's just like at this little attachment to a house that overlooks this insane view. [SPEAKER_01]: It's up in the Catskills, so it's like at the top of a mountain and it has this insane view of the sunset and stuff.

0:22 [SPEAKER_01]: And the people that live there, so cute, they'll take you on hikes and stuff like that. [SPEAKER_01]: but I really was up there and I was like, wow, am I a country girl? [SPEAKER_01]: Do I need to leave the city? [SPEAKER_01]: And then I came back to the city and I was like, I feel spiritually decrepit.

0:33 [SPEAKER_00]: In the city. [SPEAKER_01]: In the city, yes. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just like, I'm thinking I'm feeling a bit fatigued with the city. [SPEAKER_01]: It's just like non-stop noise. [SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, of course, I grab into city, but New York is much louder than. [SPEAKER_01]: Toronto is, and my neighborhood is especially much louder than Toronto is, it's very noisy.

0:48 [SPEAKER_01]: It was just so nice to be around like green. [SPEAKER_01]: My neighborhood has very little trees, and it just felt so good to be like, wow, I'm surrounded by nature. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm surrounded by trees. [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't really grow up being an outdoorsy girl, but I think like the older I get, the more attracted to the outdoors I am.

1:02 [SPEAKER_01]: I do kind of want to go camping these days. [SPEAKER_01]: And I wonder if part of that is just getting older. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm now at this age where I'm like, I don't really, when I travel, now I don't really want to go travel to like a city. [SPEAKER_01]: I've done the city. [SPEAKER_01]: And now I just want to go somewhere that's extreme, or an R. And then like, what does this say about me?

1:17 [SPEAKER_01]: Am I, have I aged? [SPEAKER_01]: But it was so nice to just be somewhere where you could just simply hear the birds dripping. [SPEAKER_01]: And you can see the stars. [SPEAKER_00]: I totally get that. [SPEAKER_00]: I get the appeal. [SPEAKER_00]: I think I love, I love kind of settling in that when I know that there's an end date of me being retreated in the country.

1:34 [SPEAKER_00]: But I think long-term, the social element of country living, I think I just simply couldn't, couldn't do it. [SPEAKER_00]: But I do love nature. [SPEAKER_01]: No, and I totally got that too. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you know, we're at the age where maybe like starting nothing about the concept of raising a family and like what that would look like.

1:50 [SPEAKER_01]: And I've just been thinking more and more about how important it is to have people around you, if you were to have a kid, people who can help out, people who the kid knows, adults at the kid knows, other kids at the kids knows that aren't just like from school, like cousins, for example.

2:03 [SPEAKER_01]: And that started to be kind of a factor in my life. [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I do think living somewhere more isolated would be difficult with that. [SPEAKER_01]: Although I do think that rural communities are actually somehow more interconnected and communal than the city is. [SPEAKER_01]: Once again, my neighbors knew neighbors moved in and I said hi to them on the stairs and they simply just blinked at me and I was like, what?

2:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, are you guys allergic to politeness? [SPEAKER_01]: Like I don't understand what's going on here. [SPEAKER_00]: They were like confused that you had talked to them. [SPEAKER_01]: They're like stranger-dangering me or something. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, what? [SPEAKER_01]: I just want to talk to you.

2:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Like I just literally want to have a conversation in foster community, but I then again, I don't know if I want a foster community with a bunch of twenty-three-year-olds. [SPEAKER_01]: I guess. [SPEAKER_01]: That's, I guess. [SPEAKER_01]: This isn't even like whatever you're just a dumb bitch anyway.

2:45 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, you don't want to talk to me, but you're stupid. [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, no, it was so. [SPEAKER_01]: Upstate is gorgeous. [SPEAKER_00]: I was thinking about this a lot. [SPEAKER_00]: I've realized recently that cities have rhythms and places have rhythms and it's kind of interesting.

2:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Once you become like used to noise and like busyness and whatever movement it's I think hard to adjust to new places and I think you kind of but also sometimes when you do find yourself in the country you just forget what silence actually sounds like and that can be very nice. [SPEAKER_01]: It's just healing.

3:18 [SPEAKER_01]: It feels extremely healing. [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I know this isn't saying because I've just moved New York. [SPEAKER_01]: I obviously love the city. [SPEAKER_01]: It's insanely absurdly beautiful, driving in on like the George Washington Bridge. [SPEAKER_01]: You're like, oh my God, this is stunningly gorgeous.

3:29 [SPEAKER_01]: But you just feel so, I don't know how to explain it, but yeah, being outside of the city, being in like a rural setting. [SPEAKER_01]: You feel extremely connected to yourself, I guess? [SPEAKER_01]: I just feel extremely connected to my soul. [SPEAKER_01]: Or I was also in a place of like no thoughts, you know, which felt good.

3:45 [SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, I think you're feeling some of the city are also reflective of how you're feeling generally. [SPEAKER_01]: I've just, you know, maybe haven't been having the best few months. [SPEAKER_01]: So I associate the city where I project those feelings onto the city when in fact it is me or my problems.

3:57 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm sure that once things, if things start getting better, I would be like, oh, I love New York. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm probably just in a bit of a growing pain zero right now, as anyone would be, I guess, moving somewhere new. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, you're in that first year's lump, I think.

4:11 [SPEAKER_00]: And also, I think it's fair to love New York and want to be New York, but also not love it all the time. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a city like that. [SPEAKER_00]: Your relationship is going to be tumultuous. [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be a bit problematic. [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be up and down.

4:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and you know what? [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, well, I say that blah, blah, blah, it's me and not the city, but you know what the actual problem is? [SPEAKER_01]: The real enemy here? [SPEAKER_01]: Motor cycles. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh fuck yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Get your fucking iceberg to god. [SPEAKER_01]: If someone, when someone drives a motorcycle by me on the street, I become homicidal.

4:38 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I truly am like, what possessed you to bring such disruption into the world? [SPEAKER_01]: Only a man, first of all. [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, most of them are men, because they're so distracted. [SPEAKER_01]: And loud, noisy, but it's just like, why what possessed you to do this? [SPEAKER_01]: And what possessed you to harm this environment in this way?

4:54 [SPEAKER_01]: And you get to fart across the street on your motorcycle. [SPEAKER_01]: It's loud, it's humanly possible. [SPEAKER_01]: I have to live with that noise. [SPEAKER_01]: I did not consent to you writing that motorcycle beside me like that. [SPEAKER_01]: And so yeah, maybe the real problem here is motorcycles in that in the countryside.

5:08 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't really hear him as much. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think the world to that motorcycle is a better world, no matter where you are. [SPEAKER_01]: I completely agree. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, no one will get rid of motorcycles. [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: So Ron honestly would.

5:25 [SPEAKER_01]: And do you know what people sit on motorcycles with? [SPEAKER_01]: They're fat BBLs. [SPEAKER_01]: They're fat asses. [SPEAKER_01]: So on that note, I'm Maria. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm Hannah. [SPEAKER_01]: And this is Rihash, a podcast about the internet phenomena that strike a nerve in our culture only to be quickly forgotten, but we think are due for a revisiting.

5:45 [SPEAKER_01]: This season is about beauty on the internet. [SPEAKER_01]: Social media may have snatched our faces, but has it also snatched our souls. [SPEAKER_01]: If you like our show and you want to hear more from us, you can support us on Patreon at patreon.com slash rehash podcast where we have bonus episodes, a whole back catalogue of mini episodes, and early access to our regular programming.

6:06 [SPEAKER_01]: If you don't want to join the Patreon, feel free to rate and review us on Spotify and Apple podcasts because that helps us out a lot. [SPEAKER_01]: In twenty eleven, Kim Kardashian stood before the reality TV cameras of keeping up with the Kardashians and smuggly pointed to a scan of her ass.

6:54 [SPEAKER_01]: Shortly after the episode aired, Chloe Kardashian tweeted, ''See, it's real! [SPEAKER_01]: With Kim responding, ha ha, the things my sisters have me do, proof baby. [SPEAKER_01]: The world was stunned. [SPEAKER_01]: How was it that Kimberly Kardashian, reality TV princess, could be equipped with such a dumpy?

7:14 [SPEAKER_01]: Certainly she was not naturally blessed with what today called certified Armenian meat. [SPEAKER_01]: It just couldn't be so. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry certified Armenian meat. [SPEAKER_01]: Kim was characterously silent about what was likely really going on, but even back in twenty eleven and even more in the years following, the answer was on people's tongues.

7:36 [SPEAKER_01]: Three letters. [SPEAKER_01]: B. B. L. Now in our KimK breaks the internet episode, Hannah talks pretty extensively about the Kardashians and their alleged putting of the booty on the proverbial map. [SPEAKER_01]: Kim, appearing nude and asked first on the cover of a wildly viral issue of paper magazine, kicked off a whole discussion about the era of the big booty, held by our particularly stupid Vogue article, which cited Kim and Miley Cyrus as instigators of the trend, which was then quickly followed up by a counter discussion about the culture co-opting traits natural to black women that had been demonized in mocked for years, only now seem to have value because they were appearing on the bodies of white women.

8:14 [SPEAKER_01]: Since we've already trolled in that ground, this episode will take a slightly different approach to the BBL as a procedure. [SPEAKER_01]: Both it's somewhat dark history and it's specific present day application. [SPEAKER_01]: Hannah, please tell us what is a BBL? [SPEAKER_00]: A BBL is a procedure where I believe the fat from one's like stomach or like torso is taken out and put into their ass.

8:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Is that correct? [SPEAKER_00]: To give them a large butt? [SPEAKER_00]: That is somewhat correct. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I think that is mostly correct. [SPEAKER_01]: So gluteal fat grafting, which has been cloaked really termed the Brazilian butt lift or BBL, is a two-step procedure which begins with liposuction of fat from an area of the body.

9:01 [SPEAKER_01]: So usually the abdomen, the thighs, the back, or the flanks, so the lower back. [SPEAKER_01]: and then injection of that fat into the hips or buttocks to make it larger and more protruding. [SPEAKER_01]: When and where did you first learn about the BBL? [SPEAKER_01]: This is a multi-part question, so please pay attention.

9:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Pay attention. [SPEAKER_01]: What is that quote from? [SPEAKER_01]: Pay attention? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I can't say, is it Teresa Judas? [SPEAKER_00]: Teresa Judas is prostitution, wha? [SPEAKER_01]: Oh no no, it's the woman who she's yelling at, whose name I can't remember.

9:36 [SPEAKER_01]: She's like pay attention. [SPEAKER_01]: And then Teresa's finger is like lingering in the air pointing out her with her mouth like a cape. [SPEAKER_01]: Anyways. [SPEAKER_01]: Pay attention. [SPEAKER_01]: When and where did you first learn about the BBL? [SPEAKER_01]: Have you seen these dummies in the wild?

9:51 [SPEAKER_01]: And since transparency is hot these days, please be honest with the listeners. [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have one? [SPEAKER_00]: Wow, wow. [SPEAKER_00]: I've actually never been asked like, why thoughtful questions in my life frankly. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, let's see. [SPEAKER_00]: The first time I heard of a VBL, I must have been around twenty nineteen or something.

10:11 [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like when we were really just talking a lot about plastic surgery. [SPEAKER_00]: Suddenly, it was becoming apparent that people's asses weren't natural and I think I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: I think there's maybe a period where we were like celebrating naturally fat asses and then [SPEAKER_00]: Because there was a while when no one wanted a butt and then once we started doing that then people started getting more BBLs I imagine and so I can't be sure when I first heard of one Have I ever seen one in the wild?

10:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, yes, if you take a walk down King Street West in Toronto You will see many a BBL in many a Spendex Pant and I for the longest time like I'm not the most observant girl in the world So sometimes like I wasn't really like [SPEAKER_00]: noticing it and then someone pointed out to me how common they are.

10:56 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it was probably you and how easy they are to spot. [SPEAKER_00]: I know it is quite fun to go okay well there is a BBL but maybe I don't know BBL's [SPEAKER_00]: are something that I think are more popular amongst a type of baddie like a girly that like we don't usually hang out with.

11:12 [SPEAKER_00]: So like I don't think I've ever hung out with someone with a BBL although like I'm always trying to expand my fun group. [SPEAKER_00]: No, I have a BBL. [SPEAKER_00]: No, not yet, but you know. [SPEAKER_00]: Who knows where the future's going to take us? [SPEAKER_00]: I made a stage of metamorphosis and will that translate to my ass?

11:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Who knows? [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to go right down to the ass. [SPEAKER_01]: I just didn't know it. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, someone recently asked me like, they're like, why does Toronto want to be LA so bad? [SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, yeah, that is a good point because the prevalence of absurd filler and BBL's in Toronto in Spandex, which is just horrible.

11:50 [SPEAKER_01]: The Toronto Spandex take over has just been brutal the athlete. [SPEAKER_01]: take over. [SPEAKER_01]: You just don't see that as much in New York. [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know, I actually couldn't tell you an area where I think I would see that. [SPEAKER_01]: That's kind of hyper LA.

12:00 [SPEAKER_01]: Like we had like a wellness strip in Toronto, which we definitely do in like Williamsburg here, but it's just a bit different. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what it is. [SPEAKER_00]: I think the beautiful thing about Toronto is that it takes some of the worst parts of LA and New York but like gives you like the she inversion and then like puts them in a blender and makes a city.

12:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's how I would describe young people in downtown Toronto. [SPEAKER_00]: They were in the lower east side or they wish they were like shopping on Melrose or something. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, it's so, so real and true. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I think like the wanting the BBL, the worshiping of the natural fat ass kind of had a short shelf life because it came with this concept of, oh, unnaturally fat ass would also come with naturally bigger thighs and the cellulite.

12:43 [SPEAKER_01]: And so, of course, we were like, well, we got to get rid of those. [SPEAKER_01]: And so, BBL kind of offers this type of ass that doesn't have, like, you could still have skinny little thighs and no cellulite, you know, and that's [SPEAKER_01]: It's a weird look which we'll get into, but people like it.

12:58 [SPEAKER_01]: So in the US alone, the number of BBLs that have been performed between twenty-fifteen and twenty-nineteen increased by one hundred and three percent. [SPEAKER_01]: It became almost commonplace for people mostly women to fly to Turkey, Mexico, Thailand, to get BBL's first cheap as three thousand dollars a pop, where in the states it could be double or more when you factor in the cost of it.

13:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Aftercare and whatnot, in the US, South Florida is the largest hub for the procedure, which I guess isn't really shocking. [SPEAKER_01]: Miami Core. [SPEAKER_01]: So by twenty-twenty-one, the BBL was the fastest growing cosmetic procedure in the world. [SPEAKER_01]: It was also the one with the highest mortality rate.

13:37 [SPEAKER_01]: In twenty- seventeen, the chances of dying from complications related to lupial fat grafting was one in three thousand, which is alarmingly high for something called medic. [SPEAKER_01]: Thankfully in the years since there's been more innovation and education in this regard, so the mortality rate has lowered to one in twenty thousand, which is a pretty big decline, but it's still higher than the mortality rate for regular liposuction, let's say, which is now one in fifty thousand, but also had a mortality spike when it was popularized back in the nineties.

14:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Kanye West's mother was a victim of this type of procedure. [SPEAKER_01]: So the main reason that the mortality rate is so high is because of improper technique. [SPEAKER_01]: Basically, your ass has a lot of large blood vessels in it, which if your surgeon [SPEAKER_01]: If a surgeon were to inject them with fat by accident, the fat can travel to your lungs and cause a pulmonary embolism, which can kill you.

14:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Usually they should be very sparing with the amount of fat they insert, but I'm sure as you've seen from the dumpies that are prevalent online, this often isn't the case. [SPEAKER_01]: Hannah, can you imagine why in the world surgeons would be playing so fast and loose with their technique?

14:50 [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like it always goes down to money I also think that perhaps because cosmetic procedures are like sort of taboo and people kind of will maybe go to the last reputable places to the in order to like save money or people are like less open about it that like maybe there's I have no idea this is speculation like maybe there's less of a sort of in [SPEAKER_00]: medical integrity that's like expected of plastic surgeons?

15:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, maybe it might, maybe it's the opposite. [SPEAKER_01]: No, that is interesting. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there are a few factors. [SPEAKER_01]: One of them definitely is just like them being money grubbers. [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, in like cheaper places, they found that the demand is so high that these clinics are pumping out these procedures at much higher rates.

15:28 [SPEAKER_01]: So they're less discerning about which patients may not be the appropriate candidates for a BBL. [SPEAKER_01]: One doctor in this article for Vox said that about thirty percent of the patients who come to him aren't appropriate for the procedure. [SPEAKER_01]: Also in the US, and this, let's put a huge asterisk on this because I read this from that same box article, but I did have trouble kind of verifying the specificity of this claim.

15:50 [SPEAKER_01]: I tried to check in with my friend who's in med school, but she was very confused. [SPEAKER_01]: She's been mostly studying in Canada, so it was hard for her to corroborate it. [SPEAKER_01]: But basically, I was reading that the field of medicine in the US is largely self-policed, which makes it difficult to regulate.

16:03 [SPEAKER_01]: Apparently, in every state, every single state, this article said, medical doctors are allowed to practice and treat patients in any field, as long as they obtain that patient's consent. [SPEAKER_01]: So, they were saying that a plastic surgeon could perform cardiac surgery out of their office if they wanted to, and only be charged a civil penalty for malpractice, as opposed to a criminal one.

16:23 [SPEAKER_01]: Which means that there are people out there performing luteal fat grafting surgery who are trained in other fields of medicine altogether. [SPEAKER_01]: Fabulous. [SPEAKER_01]: Fabulous. [SPEAKER_01]: Also, I just like, have you seen those plastic surgeons who are famous on TikTok? [SPEAKER_00]: I've seen videos of people possibly surgeons who talk about, like, oh, this person has this, this person is that, this person, like, should have this or, like, speculating about, like, what people have had for seizures?

16:49 [SPEAKER_01]: These guys who have, like, hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok who kind of have made a name for themselves promoting plastic surgery in this kind of meme format as something that's socially necessary and also fun. [SPEAKER_01]: They're kind of funny guys. [SPEAKER_01]: I fucking hate them.

17:02 [SPEAKER_01]: I think the score is more society. [SPEAKER_01]: Truly, but they're there and a lot of VBL content was coming from these guys around like the peak of the BBL who were providing little to no information about the possible risks or even just basic aftercare for the procedure. [SPEAKER_01]: And after you're super extensive, you have to sleep on your stomach for at least six weeks.

17:21 [SPEAKER_01]: Whenever you sit, it has to be on a special pillow. [SPEAKER_01]: You have to get frequent painful post-aught massages and you have to wear this corset type thing called a phah-hah-fajah at all times because basically your new fat is training itself to connect with your old fat. [SPEAKER_01]: So gross, I know.

17:39 [SPEAKER_00]: I hate that. [SPEAKER_01]: It's so, there's something so McCall about it in a way that I'm just like, how is this aspirational? [SPEAKER_01]: It's like so scary. [SPEAKER_00]: As a deeply squeamish girl, I really, really hate that. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Yucky's. [SPEAKER_01]: When I was researching, I came across an article by the American Board of Plastic Surgeons, which was trying to debunk various misinformation about the Brazilian butt lift, and they said that despite its name, it isn't Brazilian.

18:03 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure why they said that, but they are wrong. [SPEAKER_01]: And here's why. [SPEAKER_01]: So a little bit of history, this is where I'm going to talk about it, but like feel free to interact whenever. [SPEAKER_01]: Brazil is a super diverse country, and it has the largest population of African-decented people outside of Africa.

18:21 [SPEAKER_01]: This is of course because they were brought over by the Portuguese as enslaved people during the transatlantic slave trade. [SPEAKER_01]: When slavery was abolished in Brazil in a teenage eight, there was a goal among the white settlers to create a white nation. [SPEAKER_01]: But they were vastly outnumbered by the recently liberated Black population.

18:36 [SPEAKER_01]: So then comes along a eugenesis named Renado Kale, who put forth this idea that blackness could be slowly diluted over time and eventually erased through different state sanctioned eugenics initiatives. [SPEAKER_01]: So racist policies played out pretty differently in Brazil than say in the US, which had been implementing segregationist policies like [SPEAKER_01]: actual segregation, criminalizing misagination as a way to preserve whiteness.

19:01 [SPEAKER_01]: Instead in Brazil, misagination was actually encouraged to misagination is interracial, coupleings, marriages, which obviously took on a less overly racist tone over the years and instead in the twentieth century was rebranded as a way for Brazil to move towards being a post-racial society.

19:19 [SPEAKER_01]: But racism was still very much underscoring the sentiment here. [SPEAKER_01]: Kale was also a big proponent of plastic surgery, which he viewed to be, quote, the cure to ugliness. [SPEAKER_01]: Ugliness here being code for blackness, right? [SPEAKER_01]: It's bad. [SPEAKER_01]: The focus was placed on improving people's bodies to achieve a wider standard of beauty.

19:42 [SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to ask though, given that eugenics is so preoccupied with this concept of like selective reproduction, I do think it's kind of contradictory that they'd support a practice that isn't going to affect what your progeny looks like. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like the way that everyone talks about how Kylie Jenner's kids are going to look like what Kylie Jenner used to look like instead of what she looks like now, kind of deal.

20:04 [SPEAKER_01]: What do you think they'd be promoting plastic surgery if the goal was to like dilute racialized features over time? [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's an even plastic surgery that I think in cultures where it becomes more common place. [SPEAKER_00]: There are some cultures where like, plastic surgery is something that like, people do generationally, which I guess, like, doesn't necessarily like change the gene pool.

20:29 [SPEAKER_01]: But, well, yeah, and still being ethnically, you're, you're still being born into an ethnic, a society that, you know, might be discriminatory towards your ethnicities and maybe you'd be compelled in that way. [SPEAKER_01]: in by having that handed down in various ways. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I do think it's this idea of giving, I think I agree also with what you've said about intergenerationaly being handed down just because like, yeah, you're still being born into a racist society.

20:52 [SPEAKER_01]: I do also think it's this idea of giving like a short term fix to what they saw to be a societal flaw. [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe this idea of creating a homogenized look for the country in the meantime. [SPEAKER_01]: Brazil hasn't incredibly overrepresented working class population and class hierarchies in Brazil are very harshly defined.

21:12 [SPEAKER_01]: So beauty there is explicitly tied to social status. [SPEAKER_01]: There's a Brazilian phrase called Gentay Bonita, beautiful people, which is used as a euphemism for light-skinned people, which is then a euphemism, obviously, for being higher class and having social capital. [SPEAKER_01]: On the other hand, the phrase Pulbright Preto, a Fio, I'm sorry, I don't speak Portuguese.

21:33 [SPEAKER_01]: This is [SPEAKER_01]: I'm, we're angle-sizing these words, which means poor black and ugly is used as a pejorative. [SPEAKER_01]: There's also a phrase, a belleza, a beret portus, I'm sorry, which means beauty opens doors. [SPEAKER_01]: We obviously know that this is the case in our own society here on the West, like of course, you know, whatever if we want to talk about pretty privileged that is a thing, but in Brazil it's very literal.

21:56 [SPEAKER_01]: For example, there was this famous story that people dubbed Omen Digo Gato, the handsome beggar, which was where a photo of a third year old man who had been begging on the streets was posted to Facebook and then went viral because he was light-skinned and had blue eyes. [SPEAKER_01]: This led to a media frenzy where the public came together to lift him out of poverty and outlets were documenting his rehabilitation.

22:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Purely because they were like, he's too pretty to be poor. [SPEAKER_01]: We're like, I don't know necessarily if you'd see them as explicitly in the States, like of course, maybe people. [SPEAKER_00]: There's hot felon, does he count? [SPEAKER_01]: Hot felon, yeah, but it feels like there was a full community effort basically to a nationwide effort to lift this guy out of poverty in a way that in the States, like, huh, that's interesting, you know, and I think a lot of it does have to do with this, like, oh my god, he has these, like, Eurocentric features.

22:43 [SPEAKER_01]: There's like a video about it and all the comments are from these Brazilans being like, this is so Brazil, you know, to like select this man out of all of our impoverished people and make him have money, or like give him money because he's simply, [SPEAKER_01]: Looks good in there. [SPEAKER_00]: I guess it's technically what then model it like the modeling industry is the only place where you usually see that which is like well, I think a lot of people use it.

23:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And guess where recruiters go so often where's all bunching from Brazil? [SPEAKER_01]: I like what does she look like German? [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, their name also, very diverse. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, exactly. [SPEAKER_01]: But it's like the modeling industry will kind of like pluck these people out of obscurity, who are just like extremely Eurocentric.

23:24 [SPEAKER_01]: And they're like, how do we find this diamond in the rough, you know? [SPEAKER_01]: I was reading an article called The Biopolitics of Beauty, Cosmetics, Citizenship, and Affective Capital in Brazil. [SPEAKER_01]: Which talks about this instance of the handsome beggar, where they say something that reminds me a lot of what we talked about in the looks maxing episode about beauty and wealth.

23:41 [SPEAKER_01]: They say, magical thinking is becoming a common characteristic of late capitalism. [SPEAKER_01]: Because the economic promise of upward mobility is fragile and precarious. [SPEAKER_01]: Leading people to put their faith in non-economic means of advancement. [SPEAKER_01]: So in the article, they interview Brazilians who saw it of beautification, like plastic surgery, not so much in terms of vanity or even beauty itself, but as a means for social mobility, explicitly.

24:04 [SPEAKER_01]: And of course, beauty is like an extracable in this context from race. [SPEAKER_01]: So I could see a plastic surgery would provide this immediate solution to tangible problems like social welfare. [SPEAKER_01]: If that is the currency it holds in Brazilian culture, beauty will lift you out of poverty.

24:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Is the thinking here so like why not try to ascend out of my class status? [SPEAKER_01]: And of course that exists here, but this is like in a very explicit sense. [SPEAKER_01]: Because of this, plastic surgeons are positioned in the Brazilian society as heroes and healers. [SPEAKER_01]: Because they have this power to exact that kind of magical thinking we talked about.

24:35 [SPEAKER_01]: the power to make someone beautiful and by virtue of that potentially ascend their economic status. [SPEAKER_01]: Plastic surgery in Brazil was slowly expanded into the country's health care system, making it more accessible, or in some cases free for working class Brazilians. [SPEAKER_01]: What do you think of that?

24:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Like do you think Blastic surgery should be like democratized? [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think it kind of mirrors to like a more extreme extent this pragmatic approach to cosmetic procedures that we've also kind of got going on now in North America where whether or not we are willing to like say it out loud in such a way like there is just a very there's like a it's like pretty clear that like looks actually do play like a huge [SPEAKER_00]: role in your social mobility, your economic mobility, like your ability to get a job or to attract people or to get into the right rooms, like, looks matter.

25:29 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think a lot of people do use that as reasons why they get plastic surgery, where they're, yes, we can talk about ethics, we can talk about whatever, but ultimately, I'm trying to better my life, even to, you know, the story of Anna Nicole Smith. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like she got a boom job so that she could work and make proper money as a stripper.

25:44 [SPEAKER_00]: It was like an investment economically. [SPEAKER_00]: And it first step and obviously she was working in a field where your breasts are like part of the job. [SPEAKER_00]: but I do think that we see that mirror to another place as well. [SPEAKER_00]: So like, I don't, I think it's very interesting to see a kind of, to just be like, admitted outright, a culture like values that, but I think it's probably just more subtextual, but still very present in North American society as well.

26:10 [SPEAKER_01]: For sure, yeah, I know it is extremely present here. [SPEAKER_00]: But that is a crazy idea, yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: The thing allowed part and like the state implementation part is so fascinating to me. [SPEAKER_01]: Um, so there was this one surgeon in the twentieth century who became the most highly regarded healer of his time.

26:25 [SPEAKER_01]: His name was Ivo Pizngi. [SPEAKER_01]: Um, and he became famous in the sixties for pushing for plastic surgery to be made available to the poor and became the first to open a clinic to low-income patients in a philanthropic Catholic hospital. [SPEAKER_01]: in Rio de Janeiro. [SPEAKER_01]: You would talk about Mother Teresa in this way, you know what I mean?

26:44 [SPEAKER_01]: It's fascinating, but it's like a plastic surgeon. [SPEAKER_01]: He was also the first person to pioneer the Brazilian butlift. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yes. [SPEAKER_00]: So wait, the Brazilian butlift is also a Catholic invention. [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe this was pre-soldier about a Sunday. [SPEAKER_01]: We got the good.

27:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Those nuns got the dumpies under their habits or whatever they were. [SPEAKER_01]: Thinking about the ways that beauty can be sanctioned by the state in the way that it has been in Brazil, there's this amazing writer and scholar named Mimi Tai Nguyen, who speaks directly to this in her book, The Promise of Beauty, where she says, the presence of beauty might be secured through bio power, bringing together the disciplinary power operating on bodies with the exercise of power over populations, especially in their shared capacity to make live.

27:32 [SPEAKER_01]: Recruited as physical fitness, emotional well-being, or cultural competency, [SPEAKER_01]: Beauty might be directed at purposes as specific as eliminating welfare dependency, and as comprehensive as nurturing whole personhood. [SPEAKER_01]: Biopower being the idea that beauty can be like a powerful tool for top-down control, and we've seen how that plays out with plastic surgery in Brazil, and it's eugenics origins.

27:52 [SPEAKER_01]: But why is Brazil so obsessed with the butt? [SPEAKER_01]: What on earth would a big butt have to do with eugenics? [SPEAKER_01]: Especially considering its pursuit of Eurocentric features, like why are we retaining the bum? [SPEAKER_00]: I perhaps like a hips indicate a reproductive quality, uh, birthing hips.

28:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, they're not really birthing hips because they're fake. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, exactly, but it like signifies that, I guess? [SPEAKER_01]: That's the ideal. [SPEAKER_01]: So during the time where these promo-segmentation policies were being put into place or pervading Brazilian culture in the mid-twentieth century, an emblem of this ideal post-racial society emerged in the form of a hyper-sexualized mixed-race woman known in Brazil as the mulata.

28:42 [SPEAKER_01]: She is typically lighter-skinned with Eurocentric features, but also very bodacious. [SPEAKER_01]: The biopolitics article talks about the ways that the Mulada became the subject of a Brazilian national myth of post-racial reproduction, of course, underpinned by those elements of eugenics.

28:59 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think her bodaciousness and hyper-sexuality is meant to amplify this ideal of fertility, propagating an ultimately white body politic. [SPEAKER_01]: There's even a wildly popular contest called Miss Bumbum, that happens every year in Brazil, where twenty-seven women compete for the title of the best button the country.

29:14 [SPEAKER_01]: Usually the contestants are bodacious and light-skinned or full on white, again, despite the country's large population. [SPEAKER_01]: So, researching all of this, I kept thinking about how it was so strange that the BBL would translate so seamlessly from Brazil to the US, considering how very different these cultures are.

29:35 [SPEAKER_01]: We've kind of touched a bit on how the US is a bit more subtextual, but I did want to pose this question to you, like, why do you think the BBL specifically transferred so easily into American culture, even though it's so seemingly different from Brazil? [SPEAKER_01]: Because when we think about Brazil, we're like, oh, it's like dancing.

29:49 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, it's just, it's a different vibe that maybe it's been in grain, but we're like, oh, yeah, bodaciousness being the overall trend. [SPEAKER_01]: But like, America being founded upon this like, wall-spish ideal, and like, these more puritanical concepts, like, it's interesting to me that the butt would become so popular there.

30:05 [SPEAKER_00]: I think because by the time the VBL picked up, I think that like, wall-spishness, how it totally gone out of fashion. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think, you know, it is, it is that thing of like, a lot of white culture wanting to absorb black culture. [SPEAKER_00]: a lot of sort of you know fetishizing of like black body parts and but also you know white women that like taking you on for themselves and sort of I think that it makes a lot of sense that it would translate to the states because like perhaps like some of the cultural artifacts going on are different but the prominence of hip hop especially in that era like the prominence of certain stars who like embraced their bodies I think it just does make sense that that would make it a desirable tray I mean we just turned the ass until such a

30:46 [SPEAKER_00]: cultural phenomenon. [SPEAKER_00]: It was the ass era. [SPEAKER_00]: It was kind of interesting to think of a singular body part having such a strong grasp on the culture. [SPEAKER_01]: No, yeah, I think Blackness having social currency in the States with its own, you know, marred history and like relationship with the Black community, which was obviously quite different than Brazil's, but but also the way that the Black community kind of came up through these popular media outlets and like [SPEAKER_01]: the way that blackness has always kind of been on the forefront of popular culture, but then always robbed of its credit.

31:21 [SPEAKER_01]: I think that that makes a lot of sense that it had a lot of specific social currency in the States as well. [SPEAKER_01]: I also think in the past few years, Brazil is up in the West in general. [SPEAKER_01]: There's this whole episode of an infetal alumni where they talk about global South core.

31:35 [SPEAKER_01]: And I've just been mulling over why the aesthetics of these countries are so on-vogue in the West right now. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the Brazil jersey. [SPEAKER_01]: Brazil bikinis Brazil, like booty shorts are such a thing or like really had their moment. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think given the fact that the West became allegedly less segregationist has undertaken these very liberal representational politics of multiculturalism or in the US specifically melting pot multiculturalism.

31:56 [SPEAKER_01]: I could see how that like post-racial misbumbum ideal would be going to take on new importance over time because it represents a very cherry-picked superficial notion of racial harmony, but with racism still at its core. [SPEAKER_01]: I, you know, if we were to look at, you know, the way that paleness once had a currency among the elites and now it's being as bronze as possible, you know, like that aspect of racial ambiguity becoming more of a thing.

32:21 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what we do, you also mentioned, like, you know, these pop culture figures [SPEAKER_01]: embracing their own bodies. [SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I do think that we see over the past few decades, like a new beauty ideal emerge in the US, almost top down. [SPEAKER_01]: Like we have the luxurious racialized, light-skinned women like Halle Berry and Jennifer Lopez becoming the new sex symbols for America.

32:43 [SPEAKER_01]: And with that, we see other female celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Ariana Grande. [SPEAKER_01]: Women who don't necessarily have those features naturally attempt to emulate that standard. [SPEAKER_01]: Unless we forget Ariana's mixed girl era. [SPEAKER_01]: Never forget. [SPEAKER_01]: What do they call her?

32:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Afrocona Grande. [SPEAKER_01]: I do think that the very conspicuous hyper-sexuality of having a big butt is interesting, though, in a more pure-tonical, like, well-spish country like the US. [SPEAKER_01]: You'd kind of imagine that having a big dumpy wouldn't necessarily have the same tangible promise of economic mobility in the US as it doesn't Brazil because the US is so anti-sex.

33:18 [SPEAKER_01]: So why do you think that women in the US would be striving for a bum bum to a comparable degree as Brazilans? [SPEAKER_00]: I can't say these things. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that it depends on the types of career paths we're considering, right? [SPEAKER_00]: We're also like a lot of the girls we're seeing on King Street are with BBLs.

33:37 [SPEAKER_00]: I just am that automatically assume probably work in social media and some capacity as content creators or how dare you. [SPEAKER_01]: They can grow with a BBL can work an environmental policy. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, but if we're thinking about the investment [SPEAKER_00]: No, I agree.

33:56 [SPEAKER_00]: I think there is a career-centered investment. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just the types of careers have changed. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, again, it's like in the industries where it's always mattered how you look, then it helps. [SPEAKER_00]: And then I also think it's perhaps [SPEAKER_00]: tied to upward mobility, not necessarily in a career pathway, but more so in a dating way.

34:15 [SPEAKER_00]: It's like dating men with money. [SPEAKER_00]: There's a pragmatic reason beyond, like, yeah, I don't think having a great ass is gonna get you a job at the bank. [SPEAKER_01]: Your middle school teacher is not gonna be able for obvious cultural career reasons, but also because she literally can't afford it.

34:31 [SPEAKER_00]: We need to create a society where middle school teachers can afford BBLs. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, don't worry. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm working on it. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm working on it. [SPEAKER_00]: And I once I get it together and my campaign starts, it'll happen. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, it's a different type of like upward mobility I suppose.

34:49 [SPEAKER_00]: People have been getting pasta surgery for years. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, yes, it's to like look [SPEAKER_00]: nice, but it's also to benefit from those nice looks. [SPEAKER_01]: Definitely. [SPEAKER_01]: And we talked a lot in our sex and the internet season about the way that social media has created something of like a gig economy for online sex workers in the sense that they can create something of a small business for themselves via only fans and other platforms like that.

35:11 [SPEAKER_01]: I've said this before, but I think the US is extremely perverse when it comes to sexuality and the sense that it both demonizes it and suppresses it, but also is as hyper-sexual as you can get in this distorted way. [SPEAKER_01]: So long as that sexuality is profitable. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think like Instagram offers women a lot of opportunities, just by virtue of their looks.

35:29 [SPEAKER_01]: So we see this whole industry pop up of women getting major brand deals because they become influencers for posting hot photos. [SPEAKER_01]: And that would include a hyper-sexual big booty. [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I also think that America is drawn to like, and I'm not saying that people with BBLs look like freaks, but I think that this sort of like uncanny, almost trick mirrorish kind of way that they look is there's [SPEAKER_00]: America loves it almost almost like a spectacle or like a freak show and I think there's like something about seeing something that almost looks normal but it's slightly off that does sort of attract people it's like your eyes are sort of drawn to it and I think people want to be shocked they like hearing that someone

36:13 [SPEAKER_00]: obtained to this through like a shocking and for some people like morally dubious manner. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and I think that it's one of the few ways that you can express sexuality in the States is if it's somewhat not good task because I'm not calling a BB algorithm task, but if it's like, I mean, it is kind of grotesque.

36:29 [SPEAKER_01]: That's okay. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, yes, if it's something, you're literally sucking fat out of another part of your body and it's like bloody dangerous procedure and shooting it into your ass. [SPEAKER_01]: And like maybe dying. [SPEAKER_01]: It is grotesque. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that a lot of North America wants things to be packaged up in these ways for ultimate entertainment value.

36:48 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think even just a story of VBL is more like interesting to us than, well yeah, it's a very go bigger, go home kind of place. [SPEAKER_01]: America, I do think it's a country that celebrates like you're saying, artifice and extremity. [SPEAKER_01]: There was a time that Pam Anderson's insane fake tits, which they were so scary looking.

37:07 [SPEAKER_01]: They look like they were about to pop. [SPEAKER_01]: we're considered a sort of beauty standard on our own. [SPEAKER_01]: And I just think we're seeing that kind of go in the other direction with the BBL, totally. [SPEAKER_01]: I also think, I don't know, there's such a sort of cartoonishness on candy, that's like you're saying to the BBL, that makes it look like you kind of jumped out of a fun house mirror.

37:21 [SPEAKER_01]: If you were to stand in one of those, you're butt would kind of shoot out in this funny direction. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that those boats well for influencers in the sense that the more extreme you can go in their mind. [SPEAKER_01]: The more money you make because you're standing out, because you're playing to that freak show, voyeurism that the US is so known for, that kind of like, mori povitch, like, exactly.

37:39 [SPEAKER_01]: TLC, type of America. [SPEAKER_01]: So it creates this sort of like fun house mirror effect, with then regular women are looking at these extremes and turning just morphically inwards, all in themselves and being like, why does my body looks like that? [SPEAKER_01]: And then it's just kind of like this trickle effect.

37:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you forget that like that's not how almost anybody looks. [SPEAKER_00]: Even people with naturally large asses. [SPEAKER_00]: Like that's just not what a body looks like. [SPEAKER_01]: No. [SPEAKER_01]: Well again, you would have thighs. [SPEAKER_01]: You would have silly legs. [SPEAKER_01]: You'd have all these things.

38:06 [SPEAKER_00]: But you see it enough and your brain forgets because your brain has seen it so many times. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_01]: The BBL hashtag on TikTok. [SPEAKER_01]: TikTok. [SPEAKER_01]: The BBL hashtag. [SPEAKER_01]: TikTok. [SPEAKER_01]: The BBL.

38:18 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry. [SPEAKER_01]: Um, the BBL hashtag on TikTok as of twenty twenty one had three point nine billion views. [SPEAKER_01]: There were tons of women on the app documenting their BBL journeys and talking about how their BBLs changed their lives and made their dreams come true and how like it not only enhanced their asses but also snatched their weights because again, it was taking this kind of hourglass figure and making it.

38:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Extrem, literally taking the fat out of your stomach. [SPEAKER_01]: There was also this influence her named Anthony Bumba, who made these videos that I love where they parody like a Kylie Jenner-esque character called Miss BBL in different social situations. [SPEAKER_01]: Like the one where she eats with a finger hooked over her mouth.

38:57 [SPEAKER_01]: Do you remember those at all? [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes, I actually do remember it. [SPEAKER_01]: But like we talked about in the Kim Kay episode, the big booty has allegedly come to an end, although Vogue has been smart enough and I'll tube call it this time. [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, there's a lot more information about the potential dangers of the Ludial background procedure, even though there's been quite a bit of innovation and regulation in the past few years that have made it safer than it was at its peak.

39:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Even though Anthony Bumba is generally friendly in their shadowizing of the BBL, those videos were a part of a broader wave of anti-BBL discourse and like talks about the types of people who get BBLs. [SPEAKER_01]: The King Street Gurlies. [SPEAKER_01]: There was discussion about BBL fashion, like that fashion Nova stretchy synthetic cut-out body colon aesthetic that dominated the late twenty-tenths that I am personally so glad to see you go.

39:43 [SPEAKER_01]: In terms of just exhausting, in twenty-twenty-one there was also this viral video of a flight to Atlanta that was delayed for two hours because twenty-four black women were boarding the plane in wheelchairs after all-flying to the Caribbean to get BBLs. [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's pretty iconic, personally.

39:59 [SPEAKER_01]: We'll post the video on Instagram. [SPEAKER_01]: It's honestly so great. [SPEAKER_01]: I love it. [SPEAKER_01]: We've talked extensively about this bodacious trend going out of fashion and like skinny coming back in and the ways that black trades that were co-opted are now being discarded.

40:12 [SPEAKER_01]: So we won't go too deep into that, but I will say that it was interesting to learn in researching for this episode just how directly racist the origins of the BBL really were. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you hear a lot of people cherry picking different trays from different ethnicities, but it's crazy that there was a time where like a government was actually propagating this.

40:29 [SPEAKER_01]: I was reading one article which questions whether the BBL era has finally come to an end and it interviews this person who runs a TikTok account called [SPEAKER_01]: Kardashian colloquium that takes an academic approach to the Kardashians and they have this quote where they say, we don't know yet if it really is the end.

40:45 [SPEAKER_01]: We don't have enough data yet, but the Kardashians are aging and will commodify themselves in different ways. [SPEAKER_01]: And then they article points out that like even super influencers remain vulnerable to patriarchal ideas of female expiration dates. [SPEAKER_01]: which like I'm not out here feeling bad for the Kardashians, but I honestly haven't heard this hypothesis brought up in conversation with this end of the booty, income skinny trend, and I wanted to know what you thought about that, like this kind of variable of age.

41:09 [SPEAKER_01]: As it relates to body trends shifting. [SPEAKER_00]: My way I always feel like the Kardashians suddenly like getting it at the BBL was just like you kind of outlined that BBL became safer, became maybe bit more widespread, more accessible. [SPEAKER_00]: It just became so popular that the thing that made them famous that made them stand out when they have almost nothing else to offer.

41:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Just became too mainstream. [SPEAKER_00]: There were so many clothings of them. [SPEAKER_00]: that I think they probably went into an image management crisis mode and were like, but what can we do to differentiate Kim from the fifty billion girls who now could be her identical twin? [SPEAKER_00]: And they're like, well, let's just get rid of the trait that has made her so iconically hurt.

41:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Not to say she doesn't love an ass, but like, let's take away the bodacious. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's do this thing and probably also, I'm sure someone predicted that inevitably once things got so bodacious, centric. [SPEAKER_00]: Things would just inevitably go back to hyper skinny. [SPEAKER_00]: There was the twenty year trans cycle, all of that.

42:08 [SPEAKER_01]: What about what about the idea of age itself more specifically? [SPEAKER_01]: Because we talked a lot about the idea of skinny coming back in. [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I think the Kardashians, it's hard because like look at Chris Jenner, that bitch just got a new face. [SPEAKER_00]: It's true.

42:22 [SPEAKER_01]: It's true. [SPEAKER_01]: But I wonder if extremeness or cartoonishness holds up. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if the older you get, you can be keeping up with these trends. [SPEAKER_01]: Keeping up with the Kardashians. [SPEAKER_01]: But like, I just think that there's been very little talk about the longevity of these types of procedures, physical longevity until the Kardashians started getting them reverse.

42:40 [SPEAKER_01]: It does maybe wonder whether influencers like the Kardashians will start going down like the Guendeth Paltrow like wellness route as they get older because it's seen to be more sustainable, both like health-wise and aesthetically and economically. [SPEAKER_01]: It's just the interesting idea that you can age out of a beauty standard.

42:54 [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's kind of fascinating. [SPEAKER_01]: Obviously women who just naturally have those features will just have those features, but the BBL is so invasive and so aggressive a procedure that it's just like, oh yeah, older women can't really sustain the booty. [SPEAKER_01]: It also just maybe isn't associated with older women, like having a booty, because you lose muscle mass, you lose all this stuff, it's you've got a older.

43:16 [SPEAKER_01]: So I just wonder if they're trying to switch that up for longevity purposes. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I definitely think that their public image is generally aesthetic. [SPEAKER_00]: change in such a way where like, yeah, maybe, okay, let's say Kim wants to be considered a serious CEO. [SPEAKER_00]: We were saying, like, I don't necessarily know how important the BBL is in that and perhaps does less for her position in the business world.

43:39 [SPEAKER_00]: I definitely, like, I mean, Courtney Kardashian is so goop coded that she even tried to make her own goop knock off. [SPEAKER_00]: Literally, literally. [SPEAKER_00]: But I, push. [SPEAKER_00]: I think also like you can see on the Kardashians, them adopting a bit more of like a nineties minimalist aesthetic.

43:57 [SPEAKER_00]: I think yes, perhaps there's a youthfulness that they were associating with those body types and realistically it came Kardashian. [SPEAKER_00]: Her body is going to age in some capacity, whether she likes it or not. [SPEAKER_00]: And like, you know, considering how vain she is, I'm sure we'll reach a place where she is less interested in showing it off to the extent that she historically has.

44:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And as it looks older, and then at that point, what's the point in having this almost like sculpture-esque figure, right? [SPEAKER_00]: If your priorities aren't necessarily in showing it off, that being said, maybe she'll surprise me, and maybe she'll be, you know, posing naked until like her skin is completely sagging, and then, you know, maybe that would actually do some good for the world, or at least, you know, because, except her generous acceptance of, you know, yeah.

44:47 [SPEAKER_00]: but I think realistically probably not yet. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that like they stopped wanting to traffic in the currency of shock value and started actually wanting to be taken seriously as entrepreneurs and I think that once their priority stopped being aligned with leaning into this like more freak show side of things.

45:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Even you can see on the progression of the show like it used to be them doing crazy stuff and having to be personalities and now it's such them like sitting around and having really mundane conversations and I think [SPEAKER_00]: part of that is them kind of becoming more boring and having higher stakes in like having some sort of degree of rapid ability, repeatable, repeatable, because they're business owners.

45:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think like, I don't know if you're just thinking about the BBL as being this emblem of fertility, like fertility is a young person's game. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they're the most powerful. [SPEAKER_00]: They're all bombs. [SPEAKER_01]: For them all, yeah, they've already given birth, they've already done that.

45:41 [SPEAKER_00]: And so it's kind of like, they also like be using circuits. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's exactly. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and then extending outside of the Kardashians. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, it's just interesting that plastic surgery was something that once belonged to older women as a form of anti-aging is now thought of like, like, we're talking about as a young person's game that young people are now dominating the plastic surgeries I guys.

46:01 [SPEAKER_01]: I just feel like I'm kind of fascinating. [SPEAKER_01]: But I can't say I'm sad to see the BBL go. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm definitely down for it to make an EO. [SPEAKER_01]: Am I sad to see that like curvaciousness is going [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, but like also once again, when you can just say this a million times over, but just yeah, bodies aren't trans blah blah.

46:21 [SPEAKER_01]: We all know this. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that last exchange surgery has I think just I mean, we're going to talk about this maybe with T's the next episode is like we will be talking a bit more about the like almost mundane nature of public surgery today and how it's no longer taboo. [SPEAKER_00]: It's no longer shocking and [SPEAKER_00]: because of, you know, technological advancement.

46:43 [SPEAKER_00]: It is becoming affordable to the point that, yeah, I think it used to be mostly associated with older people because older people also had money. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, yes, it's a been anti-aging thing, but it's also a, I have the money to spend on this. [SPEAKER_00]: Now younger people are able to put some of these procedures more into their budget range.

47:04 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that that makes a big difference about who's doing it to. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, you don't necessarily have to like wait till you [SPEAKER_00]: married to a rich husband. [SPEAKER_00]: You can grow up all your way into a VBL. [SPEAKER_01]: RAP Karl Marx, you would've loved the VBL.