What is a Brazilian butt lift?
A Brazilian butt lift is two operations in one: liposuction to harvest fat from where it has settled, most often the back, waist and abdomen, and a fat transfer that places that fat into the buttocks and hips. Dr. Cat tells patients to picture the body as clay: liposuction scoops out and thins certain areas, and the fat transfer adds that volume to the buttocks and shapes it. It is reshaping, not weight loss; our guide to what a BBL is covers the operation in full.
What a BBL changes
- A narrower waist and a flatter back, because the harvest is a liposuction of the whole trunk
- Fuller, rounder buttocks with more projection, from your own living fat, permanent once it has taken
- Hip dips filled in the same operation, so the outer curve runs unbroken from the waist to the thigh
What a BBL does not do
A BBL adds volume; it does not remove loose skin, and a buttock that has dropped after major weight loss may need a buttock lift, which Dr. Cat does not perform; see flat or saggy buttocks. She does not place buttock implants or inject Sculptra or any filler into the buttocks: fat is her only approach.
Who is a good candidate for a BBL?
Most of Dr. Cat's BBL patients have a waist that holds fat no matter how they train, beside a bottom that stays flat or square. Three things decide candidacy: enough donor fat, a stable weight close to your goal, and six weeks without sitting directly on the buttocks. Our comparison of liposuction vs BBL explains when Dr. Cat recommends the transfer and when liposuction alone.
You may be a good candidate if
- You have enough fat on the abdomen, flanks, back or thighs to harvest a meaningful volume
- Your weight is stable and close to your goal, with a BMI of 30 or below
- You can keep the six-week rules: no direct sitting, no lying on your back, the pillow and the garment
- You are in good health, do not use nicotine, and have realistic expectations
Not yet, or a different plan, if
- There is not enough fat to donate; Dr. Cat has turned patients away for that reason
- The problem is loose skin rather than missing volume: that is a buttock lift, which Dr. Cat does not perform
- You smoke: Dr. Cat requires two months to a year without smoking before surgery
- You want the BBL on the same day as a tummy tuck or a breast augmentation: those are staged
The shapes patients ask for
The size of the result is a decision, not a side effect: Dr. Cat's goal is a shape that looks like it was always yours, proportionate and feminine, never over-filled. A heart shape BBL tapers at the waist and flares through the hips and upper buttocks; a bubble shape chases projection. Your starting shape, square, round, V or A, sets what is possible. Bring photos of buttocks you like, with one warning from Dr. Cat: many goal photos on social media, some posted by surgeons and clinics, have been edited to show results no surgery produces, and she will say so.
A BBL for slim patients
Slim patients are planned differently, not excluded. A skinny BBL, which some clinics call a mini BBL, is the same operation on a lean frame: every usable pocket is harvested with a full liposuction 360 and a smaller volume is placed for proportion rather than size. It is not cheaper, because collecting enough fat from a lean body takes more areas and more time, and the sitting rule is the same.
How Dr. Cat does it
Dr. Cat is a board-certified plastic surgeon who completed two surgical residencies, one in head and neck surgery, microvascular and facial reconstructive surgery, and advanced training in general plastic and reconstructive surgery, Harvard-educated and UCLA trained. She considers body sculpting an art, and because she also specializes in revision liposuction, she sees every week what over-aggressive fat removal does: bumps, irregularities and injuries that are often irreversible.
Step 1: gentle, multi-phase liposuction
The surgery is performed under general anesthesia with a board-certified physician anesthesiologist, and Dr. Cat also places a numbing solution in every treated area, so you wake up numb rather than sore. Through incisions of less than 4 mm she removes the fat with a thin cannula using tumescent and power-assisted liposuction, never a heat device, because of the burns and scar tissue she has seen them leave. Her multi-phase technique breaks the fat into tiny particles, removes it evenly on a precise grid with every stroke counted, and blends it a final time, so the waist ends up the thinnest point and every area blends into the shoulders and hips with no shelves of fat. Fat cells torn during a rough harvest do not survive the transfer.
Brazilian butt lift with Dr. Cat: liposuction and fat transfer, surgical footageReal surgical footage, shown with the patient's consent.
Step 2: washing the fat
Harvested fat is a mix of fat cells, numbing fluid, blood and oil from broken cells. Dr. Cat has it gently washed rather than spun, so only intact fat is transferred; fluid injected with the fat collapses within weeks, which is why a large early result elsewhere can shrink.
Step 3: placing the fat in layers, above the muscle
The washed fat goes into the buttocks and, when the shape calls for it, the hips, in many thin passes at multiple depths and angles, so it lies in fine threads that living tissue can feed rather than in one pool. It is placed slowly with a blunt cannula in the subcutaneous layer, above the gluteal muscle, never into or beneath it, while Dr. Cat turns you to check the shape from every angle. In Dr. Cat's experience more than 80 to 90 percent of the transferred fat survives, which is why her patients rarely need a second round.
Four to seven hours, one patient, every step by Dr. Cat
A BBL with Dr. Cat takes four to seven hours, depending on the number of areas harvested. She schedules one BBL per surgical day and nothing else, and performs every stroke and every pass herself, with a physician anesthesiologist, in the practice's QUAD A accredited surgery center on Rodeo Drive. You wake in a compression garment and spend the first night in a plastic surgery aftercare center with nursing.
Combining a BBL with other procedures
BBL with lipo 360
Lipo 360 is the harvest: the upper and lower abdomen, the flanks, the hips and the upper, mid and lower back. With Dr. Cat, lipo 360 with a BBL is the BBL; a patient who wants only the smaller waist can have liposuction alone. Fat that is not transferred is discarded and cannot be banked, so the decision is made before surgery.
BBL with fat transfer to the hips
In Dr. Cat's BBLs the hips are grafted with the buttocks, so the outer curve runs unbroken from the waist to the thigh. When the buttocks are already the shape you want, fat transfer to the hips alone treats hip dips, at a surgeon's fee of $35,000 to $45,000 with limited liposuction; with a BBL, the plan is quoted as one surgery.
BBL and tummy tuck or breast augmentation
Dr. Cat never performs a BBL on the same day as a tummy tuck or a breast augmentation; those combinations are staged on separate days. After a BBL you sleep on your stomach and keep all pressure off the buttocks, while both of those surgeries have you resting on your back, and a combined operation pushes the time under anesthesia past what she considers safe. A mommy makeover with a BBL is planned over separate surgical days.
BBL recovery timeline
The pain is mild; the discipline is the hard part. For the long version, read our BBL recovery guide, week by week.
- The night of surgeryYou wake in your compression garment, numb rather than sore, and go to a plastic surgery aftercare center, where nurses watch you overnight, get you up to walk and keep you off your back.
- Day oneThe aftercare center brings you to our office for your first visit. Expect soreness across the liposuctioned back, waist and abdomen, tight, heavy buttocks and some bruising; Tylenol on a schedule.
- One weekMost patients are off all pain medication, walking comfortably and back at desk work on the BBL pillow, standing every half hour. Swelling peaks around days five to seven.
- Two weeksDr. Cat checks the incisions and starts scar treatment with products the office provides. Out-of-town patients usually fly home around this point, once cleared, on the pillow.
- Four weeksMost normal activities are back: walks, light chores, errands, part of the day standing at work. The garment stays on and the pillow goes everywhere; no squats, cycling or floor abdominal work yet.
- Six weeksIf healing is on schedule the rules end together: you may sit directly on the buttocks, lie on your back and take the garment off, because the fat has grown the blood supply that makes it permanent. Between six and eight weeks the shape rounds and softens, the stage patients call fluffing, and a graded return to training begins.
- Six months to one yearThe last swelling leaves the waist, the scars fade toward skin color, and the shape you see is the shape you keep, at a stable weight.
The sitting rule, and the BBL pillow
Transferred fat arrives with no blood supply, and pressure in the first weeks closes the new vessels before they mature. The rule with Dr. Cat is no direct sitting on the buttocks and no lying on your back for six weeks. For the moments you must sit, the office provides a BBL pillow that puts your weight on the backs of the thighs. You sleep on your stomach, or on your side if Dr. Cat clears it. She does not prescribe lymphatic massage: firm massage over the buttocks presses on the graft in exactly the way the sitting rule forbids.
Risks and safety
Every surgery carries risk, and the BBL is the operation where the surgeon and the technique matter most.
Fat embolism, and where the fat goes
The serious complication unique to a BBL is fat embolism: fat entering one of the large veins that run through the gluteal muscle. A 2017 plastic surgery task force review of 198,857 cases found 32 deaths, about 1 in 3,000, every one with fat injected into or beneath the muscle. By 2020, after the plastic surgery societies' joint warning to place fat in the subcutaneous space only, the surveyed death rate had fallen to about 1 in 15,000. Dr. Cat places the fat in the layer under the skin and above the gluteal muscle, never into it, with a blunt cannula in slow passes.
What can go wrong
- Fat embolism, the complication above: rare, most likely in the first 72 hours
- A fluid collection (seroma), a blood collection (hematoma), or infection
- Fat necrosis: fat placed in large pools dies in the center and turns into firm lumps
- Asymmetry, a shelf where the lower back meets the buttock, or dents in the donor areas
- Fat that mostly disappears: fat damaged during the harvest, an over-filled pocket, or pressure from sitting too early
- A blood clot in the leg that can travel to the lungs: rare, serious, and the reason you walk the first night
How Dr. Cat reduces these risks
- Fat placed only in the subcutaneous layer, above the gluteal muscle, with a blunt cannula, in slow passes
- Gentle multi-phase liposuction with thin cannulas and no heat devices, every area blended into the next
- Fat washed rather than spun and placed in fine threads rather than pools
- Careful patient selection: donor fat, a stable weight, a BMI of 30 or below, no nicotine, medical clearance and lab work
- The volume removed tracked with the anesthesiologist, within the five-liter legal limit
- Walking the first night, the garment, the six-week sitting rule with the pillow, and follow-up visits until she clears you to sit, exercise and fly
Call us right away for a fever over 101°F, spreading redness, warmth or foul-smelling drainage at an incision; a soft swelling that sloshes when pressed; a firm lump in the buttock that is tender or growing; or swelling or pain that keeps getting worse on one side.
Call 911 first, then us, for shortness of breath, chest pain, a racing heart or confusion, most likely in the first 72 hours; for pain or swelling in one calf; or for bleeding that does not stop with pressure. And for anything that worries you: Dr. Cat and our staff are available throughout your recovery.
How much does a Brazilian butt lift cost in Beverly Hills?
Dr. Cat's surgeon's fee for a Brazilian butt lift is $56,500 to $63,500, for the liposuction of several areas and the transfer to the buttocks and hips. The operating room and the board-certified physician anesthesiologist are quoted at your consultation, once Dr. Cat has examined you and set the operating time your surgery needs: operating time varies with your anatomy and with the areas treated together, so it is set by her, not by a price list. Surgeon's fees are typical ranges: a more complex case can cost more, and your fee is set at your consultation and is final only in your written quote. The quote is itemized in writing, with no second invoice after surgery, and includes your compression garment, your BBL pillow and your follow-up visits. The number of areas harvested, the volume you need and your BMI set the exact fee. Lipo 360 on its own is $45,500 to $52,500; fat transfer to the hips on its own $35,000 to $45,000; and revision liposuction with fat grafting to correct another surgeon's BBL $60,500 to $95,000, in surgeon's fees, quoted after Dr. Cat has examined you.
The price reflects what is behind it: one surgeon who performs every stroke herself, one BBL per surgical day, a physician anesthesiologist and an accredited facility. For context, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons puts the national average surgeon's fee for buttock augmentation with fat grafting at $7,264, before anesthesia, the operating room and follow-up. Please do not fall for cheap or fast surgery: fat placed in the wrong layer can be fatal, and liposuction done fast leaves damage that is often irreversible. Our BBL cost guide explains what a quote is made of.
Consultation fee and financing
A consultation with Dr. Cat is $500, or $1,500 for a revision consultation, credited in full toward your surgery. The practice partners with Cherry, its primary financing partner, and also accepts CareCredit and Alphaeon Credit; see financing and payment plans. A BBL is cosmetic and not covered by insurance.
BBL revision
Dr. Cat is sought after for revision liposuction with fat grafting, and much of that practice is BBLs done elsewhere: dents and shelves in the waist, uneven buttocks, lumps of fat necrosis, fat that did not survive. She works through the scar tissue of the first surgery, smooths shelves and lumps and blends them into the waist and back, fills dents with fat grafts, and corrects asymmetry. Cosmetic problems wait six to twelve months from the original surgery; a medical complication is treated at once. Our page on a botched BBL separates normal healing from a real problem.
Your consultation with Dr. Cat
It starts with a free 15-minute discovery call with our Patient Concierge, who books your consultation. At the consultation, in person on Rodeo Drive or, for out-of-town patients, by private video consultation through OnPatient, the HIPAA-secure patient portal, Dr. Cat evaluates the fat available in each donor area, your skin, your frame and the shape you want, and gives you a realistic opinion of what a BBL can accomplish for you. You leave with an itemized written quote and, once scheduled, the preparation she considers critical to the result: no smoking for two months to a year before surgery, and no aspirin, anti-inflammatories, alcohol or herbal medications for two weeks before. About a third of her patients travel from out of state or abroad.
