Interrobang and Myth

Photo: © Tschabalala Self Courtesy the artist, Pilar Corrias Gallery, London, and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich / New York 

(The Cut by Crystal Martin September 3, 2021)

For years now, the Black plastic surgeon Dr. Charles Boyd has noticed a common request among his white millennial patients. They want bigger lips, yes, but specifically a top lip that is the same size as the bottom, instead of the industry-standard recommendation of lip proportions of one-third to two-thirds, top to bottom. Through his work as a plastic surgeon and educator, Boyd knows that this 50-50 ratio is usually found on Black women. 

He started highlighting that fact for his colleagues, other physicians and practitioners whom he trains to create those lips via injections. “That one-third–two-thirds thing came from [the aesthetics industry] only studying white women who had thin lips, and that’s the proportion they had. But that’s not what’s desired anymore,” says Boyd, whose practice is based in Birmingham, Michigan. “They know that fact as well as I do, but it’s important to say it — to say these are Black women’s lips so they know what they’re asking for.”

He has seen the body ideal shift, too, from big breasts and straighter hips to what he describes as “all of the curves that Black women have been blessed with forever and many times ostracized for.” The look is an hourglass shape pushed to its extremes — tiny waist, wide hips, and the key: a large, high butt. It’s achieved primarily through a “buttock augmentation through fat grafting,” removing fat usually from the abdomen via liposuction, then transferring it to the hips and butt, a procedure popularly known as the  "Brazilian butt lift" or BBL.  Continue Reading 

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