When Glancey scrolls through Instagram, she sees it everywhere: beach-ball buttocks mimicking the most famous bottom in the world, a bottom so scrutinised, so emulated, so monetised, that it no longer feels like a body part, but its own high-concept venture, its own startup turned major IPO. It is the fastest-growing cosmetic surgery in the world. Since 2015, the number of butt lifts performed globally has grown by 77.6%, according to a recent survey by the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.

Now, in the course of a week, she does two or three and receives about 30 inquiries. “If you’ve had a BBL, it’s like you’ve already edited your body in real life,” Melissa said, “so you don’t have to edit your pictures.”Ī decade ago, Glancey rarely performed BBLs. She told me that her friends sometimes edit their pictures on dating apps to the point where they’re unable to meet up with anyone, as the version of themselves they’ve advertised is too far removed from reality. Melissa’s digital body, enhanced by the photo-editing app Facetune, acts as a kind of blueprint for her future physical body. “When you’re looking at what gets the most attention and what gets the most likes, they’re always girls of this shape,” she said. Most of the time, Melissa works in a gym, but she also makes money on the side modelling clothes on Instagram. The surgery, which can cost up to £8,000, also helps her earning potential. “I felt attracted to black men and mixed-race men, and they liked curvier women,” she told me. Explaining why she got her first BBL, Melissa, who is white, said she had wanted to fill out a pair of jeans and appeal to the kind of men she liked. In her teens, nearly a decade ago, when Cara Delevingne’s thigh gap had its own Twitter account, Melissa had wanted to be thin and flat like everyone else. She wasn’t seeing just its current form in the mirror, but multiple versions: her former body, her desired body, her digital body. Like anyone inspecting their own body, Melissa could see things no one else could see. “But here,” said Melissa, pressing the dip she could see in her right buttock, a flaw she’d noticed while on holiday. “You’ve kind of gained here,” she said, pointing at Melissa’s midriff. Glancey proceeded to work her way round Melissa’s figure, considering its contours with bracing candour. “This side,” said Melissa, indicating her left flank. Together, doctor and patient stood in front of the mirror and stared.

After a quick chat, Glancey – dark blue scrubs, coral toenails – asked Melissa to take off her clothes. When Melissa walked into the room, she didn’t exactly resemble her digital self, but then, who does? She’d swapped Dubai-luxe for Suffolk-casual – blue jeans and a pink sweater. “I said to her, I don’t see what else we can do.” “Look how good she looks,” said Glancey, admiring Melissa and her own work. As she waited for Melissa to arrive, Glancey showed me a picture of Melissa on the beach in Dubai, wearing a palm-print bikini and posing in a kind of provocative crouch – arms, breasts, thighs and buttocks all arranged for optimum effect. Glancey had performed Melissa’s first BBL at her clinic on the Essex-Suffolk borders, a suite of rooms boasting shining white cupboards, a full-length mirror and drawers stuffed with syringes. On a recent afternoon, Melissa visited the British aesthetic surgeon Dr Lucy Glancey for a consultation. Melissa’s bottom was already rounder and fuller than before, and she was delighted by the effect, with how it made her feel and how it made her look. In 2018, she’d had a Brazilian butt lift, known as a BBL, a surgical procedure in which fat is removed from various parts of the body and then injected back into the buttocks. In her mind, it resembled a plump, ripe peach, like the emoji. The quest was simple: Melissa wanted the perfect bottom.

A shape bbl