Booty businesses boast bigger butts
NEW YORK — Gym classes that promise a plump posterior are in high demand. A surgery that pumps fat into the buttocks is gaining popularity. Padded panties that give the appearance of a rounder rump are selling out.
The U.S. booty business is getting a big bump. Companies are cashing in on growing demand from women seeking the more curvaceous figures of their favorite stars, who flaunt their fuller rear ends.
Nicki Minaj, for instance, raps about her “big fat” butt in “Anaconda.” Reality star Kim Kardashian posts photos of hers on Instagram.
As a result of the pop culture movement the butt is having, sales for Booty Pop, which hawks $22 foam padded panties on its website, are up 47 percent in the last six months from the same period a year earlier. The company, which declined to give sales figures, has sold out of certain styles and colors this year, including its Pink Cotton Candy Boy Shorts.
Susan Bloomstone, Booty Pop’s co-founder, says customers have asked for larger sizes. So, the Boston-based company plans to begin selling pads that are 25 percent larger this month. “People just want more booty,” she says.
Feel Foxy, another maker of padded panties, says 2014 has been its best year since launching nearly a decade ago. Sales are up 40 percent from a year ago, but the company declined to give sales figures.
“The Nicki Minaj song gave women the idea to pay attention to their rear end,” says Jessica Asmar, co-owner of the company.
Deborah Santiago squeezed into a $40 Feel Foxy one-piece for her 30th birthday. The shapewear flattened Santiago’s waist and boosted her back side. Lopez is her butt idol, but she also covets the bottoms of reality TV stars on “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” and “Love & Hip Hop.”
Large booties long have been preferable in Latino and black communities, says Dr. Dionne Stephens, an associate psychology professor at Florida International University who has researched sexuality in popular culture.
But recently, the desire for a bigger bottom became more mainstream, in large part due to pop culture influences. Mainstream celebrities like Lopez and Minaj accepting their ample assets on camera have given the butt cachet. “When people see things repeated on TV more and more, it becomes normalized,” Stephens says.
A Brazilian butt lift, in which fat is sucked from a patient’s stomach, love handles or back and put into their buttocks and hips, is increasingly popular in the U.S. This type of surgery, along with buttock implants, was the fastest-growing plastic surgery last year, with more than 11,000 procedures, up 58 percent from 2012, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.
