I hated my Brazilian butt lift — and paid $25,000 to have it reversed

In 2017, Tina visited an Upper East Side plastic surgeon looking to reduce the cellulite in her lower body.

The doctor convinced her that the best means of dealing with it was a Brazilian butt lift, in which fat would be removed from her lower back and thighs and injected into her butt.

She paid $12,000 for the popular procedure, but was not happy with the results.

Clothing didn’t fit right on her new body, and people would whisper and point when she walked by.

“I looked like a Queens stripper,’’ said Tina, who lives in Bayside and requested her last name be withheld for privacy.

“It wasn’t an appropriate look for me professionally,” said the 35-year-old, who works for a payroll company. “I am petite with skinny legs, and then this giant butt. Some people might have thought it looked good, but I found it embarrassing … I was devastated.”

She was so unhappy with her new look that she eventually decided to go under the knife to correct it.

This past October, she visited Manhattan plastic surgeon Dr. Ryan Neinstein, whose office is located above Bergdorf Goodman, and had a three-hour operation to reverse the procedure, at a cost of about $25,000. 

The recovery, she said, was painless, and she was driving herself to work a few days later.

“It’s a significant change,’’ said Tina. “Now my hips are much smaller, and all my clothes fit better. Even my shirts fall more normally.”

A growing number of women are regretting their Brazilian butt lifts — which take fat from other parts of a patient’s body to enlarge the buttocks — and other booty-boosting procedures, such as silicon implants.

Last month, Blac Chyna went public with the news that she was removing silicon from her butt, while rumors have been swirling that the Kardashians have surgically reduced their supposedly plumped rears.

Crazy curves are no longer en vogue.

“The pendulum is swinging from one extreme to the other,’’ said Neinstein. “Right now, people are gravitating from an extremely narrow waist and wide hips, to a more elegant, timeless look with longer, leaner lines. I am doing this reversal on all spectrums of society from lawyers to celebrities, and there are 10 times as many people requesting the reversal this year than last year.”

Butt lift reversals are performed under general anesthesia and use ultrasound to melt fat and break down scar tissue. 

Plasma energy is then use to tighten the skin around the newly contoured body. Recovery is minimal, but it does take two to three months after surgery for for the optimal shaping and tightening to occur.  

And, Neinstein notes, reversals can only do so much.

“We can always change the shape, but the problem is the skin quality,’’ he said. “The skin has been stretched from overfilling, and it’s difficult to regain a smooth appearance.’’

Dr. Matthew Schulman, another Upper East Side plastic surgeon, said he has done about 500 butt-lift reversals in the last four years, and requests for reversals have increased by about 40% in the last year.

He equates the wave of procedures with the move away from larger breast implants.

“It’s like people in the ‘90s who decided they wanted smaller breasts,’’ he said. “Most of them don’t want all the fat taken out; they just want less volume and fewer curves. They want to be perkier and rounder, with a more athletic and less dramatic appearance.’’  

He said that sometimes it’s not simply a matter of changing trends, it’s also that some patients are at a new stage in life.

“Maybe they are socially in a different position so they want a different appearance, or have gained weight in the years since they had the lift, so it doesn’t look as attractive,” he said.

Krystal Lopez, 29, was immediately unhappy with her butt lift, but she wasn’t compelled to go back under the knife until her life and tastes changed.

In 2017, she was a young, single woman when she went to a New Jersey plastic surgeon looking to make her flat butt perkier.

“I originally wanted more of a round shape, and, in the beginning, I thought maybe I was still swollen, but it never went down,’’ she said. “It was much larger than I expected or asked for, and the doctor said, ‘This is what everybody wants.’ I said, ‘It is not what I want.’  It looks so unnatural, and there are so many things I can’t wear.” 

Now a married mother of two, she can’t live with her butt anymore.

She’s scheduled to have a reversal with Schulman — who charges $15,000 to $20,000 for the procedure — for the end of May.

“I didn’t want to go under the knife again, but I am a small girl, and here I am coming with this big butt,” said Lopez. “It’s not a good look and not my taste anymore. I was young and dumb, and now I am paying for it. But thank God there is a solution.”