The real danger of wanting a bottom like Kim Kardashian

Kim Kardashian’s bum is turning the world derriere delirious. Not only does barely a day pass without her famous bottom dominating headlines, it seems our desire to achieve a peachy butt like the reality TV star is fuelling something of a cosmetic surgery revolution.

Recent statistics from Whatclinic.com has revealed that injection treatment Macrolane™ is the currently second fastest growing non-surgical treatment, seeing a 139% increase in enquiries in recent months. Macrolane™ is used to enhance body contours, and is commonly used as a non-surgical treatment for buttock augmentation. And it’s likely our Kim could be the inspo behind the rise.

Likewise, back in 2014 – the year of the 36-year-old’s Internet busting belfie – buttock implants became one of the most popular procedures, with enquiry levels spiking to a staggering 182%. A further survey by Longevita revealed that almost half of all British women who enquired about improving their bottom with the help of cosmetic surgery cited Kim as their role model for the perfect posterior.

Prof. Dr. Fuat Yuksel from Longevita told Daily Mail: “Kim has been popular among women seeking bottom augmentation or “Brazilian butt lifts” as they are more commonly known, for a few years, but in the last 12 months we’ve had a massive rise in the numbers asking for a Kim Kardashian bum.”

“Kim has risen from just outside the top ten to the number one position in record time and is a firm favourite among women in the UK and elsewhere around the world,” he continues.

But keeping up with the Kardashians in the bottom stakes comes with a health warning.

“The butt thing is really concerning, because they want to go big,” plastic surgeon and Botched star Terry Dubrow told The Hollywood Gossip in a recent interview.

“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,” he said.

“Some of it’s going to die. You can get into fat necrosis and scarring. The buttocks is really, really hard to fix.”

There’s an even more worrying side to seeking a significantly enhanced bottom. In 2014 news broke that Joy Williams, 24, had tragically died after travelling to Thailand for buttock augmentation.

And back in 2011 Hackney dancer Claudia Aderotimi also died after suspected industrial grade silicone was used in her implants, causing a blood clot.

Of course, Kimmy claims her ample backside is au naturel, even consenting to having her rear X-rayed on television to prove there was no artificial padding. But there’s no doubting her bottom has changed shape rather dramatically over the years, and whether she’s had cosmetic surgery or not, its hard to ignore the impact seeking to replicate a bottom like Kim could be having on influential young girls.

Google get a bum like Kim Kardashian and it will throw up literally thousands of pages suggesting natural ways to help boost your buttocks. But can diet and exercise alone give you a peachy butt a la Mrs Kardashian-West? Unlikely. And if squats and the like aren’t going to be enough to give you #bumgoals are we not therefore setting up a generation of Kim K wannabes for a lifetime of hankering for a figure that is most likely unachievable without some form of surgical help?

Despite losing a rumoured 100K followers following the recent airbrush scandal after pictures of her dimpled bot in a bikini did the rounds, Kim has an astonishing 99.2 million followers on Instagram and a further 55.3 million on Twitter. That’s a pretty big captive audience.

If Kim wears it, girls buy it, if she does it, they do it too. Case in point, the “waist-training corset”. When Kim posted a picture of her wearing the device designed to sculpt bodies into Jessica Rabbit-esque curves, sales of the waist trainer skyrocketed, despite warnings from some healthy experts that the devices weren’t healthy.

But while grown-ups are often, well, grown-up enough to know where to draw the line. The Kim effect could potentially be rubbing off on our youngsters.

A survey published by the Girl Guides last year revealed that girls as young as seven are feeling under pressure to have “the perfect body.” And older girls are affected too, with a further survey revealing that over the past five years, there has been a worrying increase in the number of girls, aged from 17 to 21, who say they are dissatisfied with their appearance. It was 36 per cent in 2011; today, half of all young women can’t stand the way they look.

Of course, Kim can’t shoulder the blame of this entirely, and in fact there is an argument to say that whatever everyone else thinks of her body, there’s little doubting Kim seems supremely body confident, particularly when it comes to her booty, and when we’re striving to empower women to appreciate their bodies that surely has to be appreciated?

Experts do believe our obsession with Kim’s butt will wane, predicting a return to popularity for a more athletic looking behind. Indeed the same survey claiming enquiries into bottom surgery rose astronomically after belfie gate in 2014, has seen enquiries rise by only 15% of late. And a recent survey by ProWater revealed that Rachel Riley, not Kim was the world’s backside idol. So maybe Kim K’s bum moment is passing.

For many that will no doubt mean breathing a sight of relief, but it is important to make the point that whatever you think of Kim Kardashian’s bottom, she seems to be comfortable with it and surely we need to applaud that. Because tearing her down, when she’s proudly flaunting her curves sends a counter-damaging message to youngsters about the freedom to love your bum, no matter its shape or size.

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