Are butts back? Why Kim Kardashian and her Skims Ultimate Butt collection are banking on a plastic surgery trend.
Kim Kardashian has deemed herself the “Fairy Butt Mother” in a new Skims campaign video, cementing her role in the latest trend of body contouring with a new shapewear line called “The Ultimate Butt.”
The lifestyle mogul announced her latest product line on Feb. 11, with a witty campaign video where she finds a woman unmotivated to work out. “I know, I know. I should stand up. I should work for the body that I want,” the woman says, rambling off her frustrations over not seeing results from her efforts to appear more sculpted. Kardashian tells her that it doesn’t have to be so hard.
“With Skims’ new shapewear, you can get a butt, boobs and amazing curves immediately,” Kardashian says in the commercial. She then waves her wand to magically place the brand’s new “push-up butt enhancing padded mid-thigh bodysuit” onto the young woman, who is immediately impressed by her augmented physique.
It begs the question: Whatever happened to the supposed end of the Brazilian buttlift (BBL) era and slim-thick aesthetic with the ushering in of the ballet body? Experts say those enhancements never went away — they just evolved, as have the Kardashians.
“We call it Kardashian 2.0,” Dr. Kristy Hamilton, a Texas-based surgeon with the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, tells Yahoo Life of the updated style of butt implants that patients still ask for. “Basically, [it’s] the newer version of [the sisters’s bodies] where they’re more toned up and athletic because they all kind of slimmed down.”
So what is this new line of enhancing shapewear accomplishing? According to Hamilton and other plastic surgeons, it’s something like the latest iterations of BBLs, which emphasize the buttock’s shape more than its size.
What is the ultimate butt?
According to Skims, the ideal butt is lifted and rounded. But the brand’s “Ultimate Butt” line goes beyond that. Shorts, leggings and bodysuits with built-in butt pads are the foundation of the latest collection, but there’s also a new balconette push-up bra that promises a breast lift and new shapewear pieces that promise to reduce a wearer’s waist by 2 inches.