Regina's Rants

Warning:  This rant has graphic descriptions of surgical procedures.

My flight from Leeds-Bradford  to Faro in Tinned Sardine Class was noisy, and the unruly child kicked the back of my seat frequently, but the goods trolley glided by offering all types of unnecessary things to alleviate flight rage.  I overheard one  flight attendant  saying to another,  “Pass me a bonbon cream.”   Her colleague responded, “We’ve got only two bonbon cream left.  They’re going fast!”  With my penchant for chocolate fired up, I had to make sure the last bonbon cream landed on my hand.  

I quickly checked the inflight shopping magazine and flipped through offers of fake glow that would anoint me with  a “natural looking, radiant tan” for a whole week.  A  self-tan serum was rich with superfoods and antioxidants, another purported to contain crushed diamonds.  There was  stuff to smooth,  condition, illuminate, rejuvenate, resurface, renew, and  heal  my skin.  There was stuff to make me look fifty years younger, and make me smell like a goddess, whatever that meant.  But where was the bonbon cream?

When I found the bonbon cream in the magazine, the promises scared me:  “visibly tightening” with  “an addictive scent”.  Its smooth formula, it guaranteed, would  add “a hint of shimmer to skin.”  Who would have thought that a bonbon could do all that?   Ah, it was Brazilian! That explained everything.

But no.  To my dismay, the  makers of the bonbon cream did not even spell its name correctly, and the attendants also mispronounced it as bonbon cream, when in reality it was a bumbum cream.   

Notice the difference: 

Bonbon:  we all know what it is, and the word comes from the 17^th century French, where the word bon (good) is repeated;  it seems to come, also, from the Latin, bonus.   But chocolate is not a bonus, it’s le Must, like Cartier. Now in the 21^st century, some self-important chefs have diverged from sweet bonbons and concocted some savoury versions. Oh well.

Bumbum (pronounced boom-boom)in Brazilian Portuguese, is the repetitious sound of a large drum.  It is also an informal, non-offensive way of saying buttocks.

I snapped the magazine shut, lost interest when there was no bonbon in the bumbum cream.  But once home, my curiosity embarked in another flight… of fancy.

Bumbum Creams in the Buff

A quick search online yielded a glut of  bumbum creams, lotions, sprays, gels, capsules, exfoliants. Even though bumbum creams might have different purposes, most promised to lift, augment, firm, sculpt, hydrate, oxygenate, improve blood flow, dilute cellulite, eliminate bumbum acne AND unwanted stains.  Butt’s not all.

Different bumbum creams had different compositions, including  queen bee extract (it really is a venom) and aphrodisiac aromas.  Most included some type of fat:  cocoa, hazelnut, karité, cupuaçú, Brazil nut.  There was a medley of oils, some called “miraculous” without an explanation or a description, and others listing common essential oils such as chamomile and rosemary, or the upmarket rose oil (if that’s what it was).  Other cream or gel components, supposed to revitalise an imagined or actual past-the-sell-by-date bumbum, made up a fruit salad:  avocado, peach, cherry, papaya, guaraná, coconut, açaí. 

From my research behind the scenes, two creams have remained in my mind, perhaps for all the wrong reasons.  Cream One assured me that it was exceptionally effective to rejuvenate not only bumbum cheeks, but also the area around the eye, and could also be used as hair conditioner, lip balm, nail and cuticle conditioner.  It claimed to treat conditions such as “eczema, psoriasis, and atopic dermatitis,” and to “heal scars, blemishes, and stretch marks.”  I can only hope it had been formulated by a proper dermatologist, but it sounded like the old snake oil, which the concoction never claimed to include, but perhaps it did in spirit.

Cream Two was a good all-rounder haemorrhoid cream that claimed to also tighten the dilapidated skin on backside mounds AND perform as a “rich face mask.”  It promised to lift breasts, bumbum, and the libido; and heal cracked heels.   I’m not revealing its name – you’ll have to do your own research.

A Brief on the Derrière

The derrière, in a state of repair or disrepair, is an important part of our anatomy (otherwise it wouldn’t be there, or, come to think about it, here).  Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to examine one’s booty in detail, or full on, like we do with our face every day, several times a day.  But if you could, you’d rejoice with your three gluteus muscles on each back cheek: minimus, medius, and maximus.  People who exercise madly, and personal trainers, call them glutes.  Glutes are really hard workers and they link the spine to the hip and to the femur, and are part of almost every movement you make, even if you’re just sitting down writing about the state of other people’s bottoms.  The glutes also act as shock absorbers when walking or running, and protect hip joints. They help the body’s balance, and some say that their existence is the only reason we are able to stand up.  I bet Darwin never thought that we evolved from quadrupeds to bipeds because of our posteriors.

Due to hormones, women acquire more fat in the derrière than elsewhere.  In evolution terms, it signifies that she is ready to procreate.  Besides, the tush works as a larder, becoming a reserve that the body activates and uses up when food is scarce, or when women breastfeed. Big bottoms have become synonym of plentifulness and survival from the time we were hunter-gatherers, hence their importance for humans to this day, added of aesthetic and sexual meanings.  No wonder emojis that represent buttocks are wholesome fruits:  peach, apple, pear, and two cherries.  

Buttocks, whether real, imagined, or faked, have expanded, acquired a life of their own in cultural, sexual, and economic circuits.  Pop stars, celebrities, influencers, and even that super-skinny, pin-buttocked, odious neighbour to the left, look like they have had their derrières enlarged and stretched to that last millimetre before they reach critical mass and pop like overfilled balloons.  Exposed from different angles by a good camera, with their butt pimples hidden under thick make-up and filters, big bum owners accumulate fame and stratospheric retirement funds, not to mention all types of freebies.

The Best Bum Deal

It’s not surprising that people have taken derrière care into their own hands.  If people are unhappy with their buttocks, or any part of their anatomy, a jar of cream is a relatively cheap option to feel good about themselves and hope that it’s only a matter of time (according to unverified claims) that their booties will be rejuvenated, reshaped, refilled.  The difference can be from €30 for the cream and up to €15,000 for a surgical lift.

The only thing that’s cheaper than cream seems to be butt and hip shaper underwear, which can be reused, and I suppose washed, ad infinitum.   It is sold in online and high street shops, and I am sure that many an unsuspecting shopper whose eyes alighted on their different shapes, inserts, sizes, and colours, have discreetly bought several sets and combinations for different days of the week, or at least one for a special occasion of ABC sex, that is, Anniversary, Birthday, and Christmas. 

A Bum Cycle

It all started with a Brazilian (Again!) surgeon, a Dr. Ivo Pitanguy, who trained in Brazil, America, France, and England.  He believed that his specialization, reconstructive surgery, was the same as cosmetic surgery, and did much pro bono work.  His clinic was in Rio de Janeiro and he was so gifted a surgeon that, allegedly, Sophie Loren, Jackie Kennedy, Gina Lollobrigida,  Elizabeth Taylor, Niki Lauda, Frank Sinatra, and many famous others committed to a spot of very exclusive cosmetic tourism and went under his scalpel. He was said to have “Michelangelo’s hands.”  Since my childhood, Pitanguy was synonymous with successful and beautiful transformations;  he appeared in newspapers and he did good. 

As my seventh birthday approached (I lived in Niterói, near Rio, then), I felt mounting excitement for what felt like a double birthday:  I would unwrap my presents and blow my candles one day, and the next I’d attend the premiere of the Grand Circus Norte-Americano with the capacity for 3,000 people under its great new nylon tent imported from India.  I imagined my first time at a circus as unforgettable:  trapeze artists and their breathtaking leaps;  clowns with their unending pranks.  I was going  in the company of a neighbouring friend the same age as me, her pregnant mother, and her father.  But for some reason I don’t recall, at the last minute I wasn’t allowed to go to the circus.  I did what kids did, and still do:  cried, begged, threw myself on the floor.  My tears would not stop.  My uncle’s intercession on my behalf led to nothing.  My excitement and joy turned into despondency and, later into horror.  For during the trapeze artists’ performance, the new tent caught fire.  Some cite electrical failure, or that the tent had turned out to be made of cotton coated with paraffin.  Pitanguy and his team, and countless out-of-state medical responders, worked to help the disfigured, burned people.  Who knows how many people they helped, but, sadly, their gift wasn’t enough for the 500 people who died that day.  Among them were my young friend and her pregnant mother, both trampled to death.

A few years after that tragedy, Pitanguy was the first cosmetic doctor to write a scientific paper and describe what is known today as Brazilian Butt Lift (BBL) – now you know why it’s called that. Pitanguy’s idea was to  produce an hourglass figure, by removing a person’s belly fat and immediately inserting the harvest in specific places in the buttocks and thighs. As you can surmise, the BBL is not a lift at all, but a way of filling in a person’s backside, and it is tailored to a patient’s wants.  I wonder if Pitanguy, a widely travelled man, was inspired by Michelangelo’s works: the sculpture of David, or the only depiction of the Holy Backside in the Sistine Chapel ceiling, in the scene creation of the sun, moon and plants.

These days, while Pitanguy’s BBL paper is probably forgotten, some cosmetic surgeons who have inveigled themselves with a Michelangelo complex call their BBL jobs “sculpting.”  Which is nothing like the real thing.

BBL sounds easy to do and easy to recover from.  It isn’t.  It is a full-blown, serious  operation under general anaesthesia.  According to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, in 2020 over 396,000 people had a BBL worldwide, an increase of over 19% o the previous year.   According to Web MD, in 2021 there were 61,387 BBL done in the United States, up 37% from the year before. It’s the plastic surgery that’s growing the most in numbers.  It’s also the plastic procedure with the highest death rate of all, 1 in 3,000 procedures. 

These days, similarly to Pitanguy’s procedure, a doctor will harvest the fat through liposuction, refine it, and reposition it between the skin and the gluteus maximus muscle.  Therein lies the danger, because the repositioned fat can go into the bloodstream and cause embolism.

Recovery from the successful operation requires the patient to spend eight weeks lying down on the side of the body or the belly, without sitting down, so that the fat consolidates and stays where it’s supposed to stay.  You are duty bound not to squish that holy harvest toward the wrong places, say your waist or the belly where it came from.  All a patient can do is take the medication prescribed and hope that there would be no complications such as infection, fat cell necrosis, sepsis, leakage, pus, bleeding, all accompanied by their characteristic unpleasant odours.  Even without complications, there is great pain, not easily managed with painkillers, as well as bruising and swelling.  Local loss of sensitivity can last for about a year.  Loss of injected fat is up to 50%.   A patient may return to work within two or three weeks, depending on the job, but is advised to not sit down normally for at least eight weeks, during which time patient will wear compression clothing.  Normal activities could be resumed after two to three months.

The final result, hopefully two symmetrical half-globes without skin discoloration, will be reached after six to twelve months.  Even when some doctors declare that the great results of this operation last forever, nobody mentions that Mother Gravity always wins, and the patient could end up with a droopy booty, also known in the industry as ant booty.  Which might need another operation to correct, thus starting an unending bum cycle.  

The Rump and the Hump work in Mysterious Ways

While the door of BBL was opened to cosmetic doctors all over the world, and many have had proper training in the procedure, prospective butt lift patients must beware of countless charlatans who have been performing different cut-rate versions of the procedure, or totally different procedures, or no medical procedure at all, where unfamiliarity with medical knowledge allies with ignorance of sterile protocol. There have been cases of death when people were inserted with fillers such as industrial silicone, cement, caulking, a glass substitute called Perspex, and other unfathomable liquids, while the points of entry into the skin were sealed with superglue.  These  fraudulent procedures have caused nerve damage, deep vein thrombosis, and permanent scaring.  Some of these fillers were applied in a haphazard way, entered the patient’s blood stream, caused life-long illnesses, impairment, or death. The wrong positioning of the fillers can supress the blood supply, cause necrosis, and as a result, parts of the body would have to be removed to save the patient’s life.

Which brings me to the Miss Bumbum Competition in Brazil, something that has also made Brazilians famous in certain circles.  Perhaps the most famous (Ahem!) person in Brazil who did a type of BBL was Andressa Urach, a former Miss Bumbum runner-up (nobody knows what happened to the winner). Urach has been also famous, since 2015, for allegedly having had one sexual encounter with football player Cristiano Ronaldo (CR7 to those in the know) when he paid for a private jet to fly her from Brazil to Madrid for a tryst.  (Oh, the things I think about when I recall my Tinned Sardine Class flights!)  Not much is known about Urach’s return to Brazil, except that it appears to have been immediately after the fact, without so much as a churro and chocolate sauce to replenish her spent energy.  Portuguese and Brazilian media rehash Urach’s story regularly, knowing that readers old and new have great interest in the fact that CR7, according to Urach, lacks body hair and is big where it matters.  No, not his real state.

As it so happens, Miss Bumbum competitors in Brazil fall under the same stringent rules as contestants at the international celebration of all things Bedouin in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the unsurpassable Camel Beauty Pageant:  woman in Brazil or camel in UAE, must not resort to Botox, fillers, inserts, or any cosmetic surgery.  Camels are inspected by especially trained veterinarians and some wise men to make sure their humps and rumps have not had inserts or been injected with extraneous substances; and their lips have not been injected with silicone to produce the much desired droopy lip that is the hallmark of the most exquisite winner.  In 2021, forty camels were disqualified from the beauty contest because they had received Botox injections and other inadmissible enhancements. Despite the rules at Miss Bumbum, I have not heard that such inspection occurs.  Perhaps the check-up is done in a different way.

One must keep in mind that perhaps quality of quality control inspections will vary according to location, competition, and prizes.  The winner of the Miss Bumbum competition gets the prize of about €9,000, while the winner of the Camel Beauty Pageant gets over €15 million.  Who would you rather spend your money on? 

Austrian multibillionaire Richard Lugner, when he was alive, knew what he wanted:  each year, he paid one female VIP to accompany him to the distinguished Vienna Opera Ball. Lugner’s list of companions is long:  Goldie Hawn, Gina Lollobrigida, Faye Dunaway, Joan Collins, Paris Hilton, Jane Fonda, and many more.  While Lugner paid Sarah, Duchess of York, a relatively modest €30,000 in 1997,  Kim Kardashian received over €450,000 in 2014 (and the sobriquet of being “annoying” for not dancing with her host).  Mind you, it’s possible that none of Lugner’s companions was as expensive as a prize camel, but his dealings show that a big caboose talks.

So, Urach, thinking about talking louder in the future, and how Miss Bumbum inspections had lapsed, had her buttocks and thighs filled with hydrogel, which is best described as a whazzit that, once injected into the body, attracts water to itself. The hydrogel expands, a bit like that gel that you mix with potting soil and pour water on to keep plants moist for longer.  Theoretically, that water concentration with hydrogel would increase booty size and create a firm fundament to a new, happier, wealthier, Vienna-Opera-Ball-type of life.  But nobody told Urach that hydrogel has a will of its own and moves around, and could eventually end up in any part of the body.  Hydrogel, sooner or later, melds into the receiver’s tissues and it becomes impossible to separate the two, whether the surgeon has Michelangelo’s hands or not.

Urach’s buttocks and legs got infected.  She underwent several operations, and almost died.  In her new-found, promising but largely deflated life, she wrote her memoirs as a drug addict and escort; she converted to the Universal Church, where she thought her days as Miss Bumbum were behind her.  She preached, among other things, against Covid-19 vaccines.  But Urach reached rock bottom when she realised that the church had sucked all her cash.  She abandoned her religious pursuits and turned multitasker as presenter of Miss Bumbum 2023 competition, a porn star, and a producer of adult content. More recently, Urach announced that she is going to start her own church, exclusively for all types of sinners.  The Lord works in mysterious ways.

The Great Unwashed

Even when a BBL is successful and the doctor says, “You’re rarin’ to go!” some in the know caution that a butt that has been greatly augmented can produce a reaching out problem.  The arm, forearm and hand are oftentimes not long enough to reach deep between the cheeks and to produce pristine hygiene. The issue was made famous by an amorous guy during his girlfriend’s Brand New Tush Unveiling Moment, after what must have been a long and unfulfilled waiting period.  During the prelude to their greatly enhanced love life, and as he approached the perfectly formed, dream bottom cleavage, I dare to paraphrase him, he was buffeted by his girlfriend’s absolutely repugnant backside smell. I hasten to clarify that the zero-kilometre booty owner did not emit a fluffer-doodle (I have been cautioned by a distant family member not to use the word fart, which I think is short and to the point, but whatever);  nor was it a stink bomb like the one my First Teenage Son bombarded the inside of a restaurant in Milton Keynes and occasioned its partial evacuation. (No pun intended, but what else is there to do in MK?)

Arm length in hygiene is not helped by fashion-dictated extreme talon-like nails.  They prevent cleanliness due to the danger of causing local abrasion or laceration, hence the proliferation of internet videos and articles on how-to keep nates and other body confluences from stinking when you have those showy, red-carpet, very long, art-like nails that you wave about like a sharp sword. Look, leave those nails to Kardashian-types who think the sun shines out of their backsides, for their entourages are there to make them smell nice, if you get my drift.

A few days after I read about that ill-fated lovebirds’ reunion, and the very long nails,  I nearly choked on my granola as I watched a CNN ad.  I asked Husband, “Did I hear that right?”   As always, he said he wasn’t paying attention.  So, I waited for the next ad break, and lo and behold, there was the ad again: a cream that promised viewers would smell great regardless of their pongy conditions.  According to the fast-talking woman in the ad, the cream was good enough to be used any- and everywhere:  feet, armpits, under-boobs, belly button, balls, and butt crack. If you’re shocked at my use of certain words, be not! Those words at 9 a.m. in the Algarve (OK, 4 a.m. in New York), have turned into a rallying cry, and that cream has become part of the movement “don’t ah just hate myself for sweating so much I gotta get that whole body deo and never sweat or stink so everyone will love me again”.  This movement plays us to feel inadequate about ourselves and buy, buy, buy what they offer.  Fortunately, that ad didn’t last long, but its new version retains some pointedly descriptive words.

Quick calculation:  the skin weighs about 16% of a person’s body, say about  9kg (20 lbs). It’s the largest organ of the body.  This wonderful organ which we have been feeding, injecting, filling, stretching, exfoliating with all types of creams and ill-gotten potions, does a great job on its own, when it sweats to keep our body cool and gets rid of certain toxins.  Besides, the skin helps the body during a fever or during the fight or flight response, and is the body’s armour against infections.  Now, imagine suffusing your whole skin with something that prevents it from working.  Would you do that to your heart?  OK, you like butter and cheese, who doesn’t.  Or your liver? Fine, you like Portuguese red wine, bottoms up!

 After much research online, and reading paid and unpaid reviews of whole body deodorants, I concluded  that the simplest and best thing you can do for your body is a good shower with soap.  Or use a bidet in case of emergency.  

Be glad your body sweats.  If it didn’t, you’d end up like Prince Andrew, who claims his life is no sweat (really), even though his big brother wants to evict him.  And you’d also have Sarah, the Duchess of York, swearing to all who’d listen to her that you’re a true gentleman (or woman).

The Bottom Line

Regarding that extensive list of exotic ingredients I compiled at the beginning.  Any middling chocolatier who graduated from a middling catering school could find a pleasing, flavoursome combo of ingredients and come up with a glossy, delicately shaped bonbon, filled with the most scrumptious ganache.  Eaten in more than reasonable, or acceptable quantities, the bonbon would settle straight on one’s hip and bumbum.  That would be the true Bonbon For Your Bumbum, no need for the costly (in many ways) BBL.  Believe me, I know a highly regarded nutritionist, and I know what I’m talking about. You heard it here first.

But I digress. This ranting instalment started with the simple hope of a chocolate bonbon during  a nightmarish flight.  Now, apart from the fact that I’ve been to one of the malodorous blackholes of the universe and actually managed to return, and that life is a circus in more ways than one, I found out about stuff that is far annoying and scarier than a flight in Tinned Sardine Class.  Besides, you must agree that my Sitzfleisch (Look it up!) resulted in sheer erudition!

I’ll leave you with a favourite waltz, Wiener Bonbons (nothing to do with sausages) by Johann Strauss II, played by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, under conductor Zubin Mehta (YouTube).  To me, a sliver of hope appears every time I listen to a bit of good music and eat a couple of bonbons. At the same time.