Difference between a butt lift and a butt tuck

A butt lift is fat grafting after liposuction. Fat is removed, collected into a closed sterile container, and washed with an antibiotic irrigation solution. The tumescent solution is then taken off through a filter, and the fat that remains is injected to change the buttock contour. The drawing that follows marks that transfer below a line along the upper buttock. The fat sits in the subcutaneous layer over the glute. It is not placed in the muscle. Liposuction of the harvest sites changes the outline of those sites on its own, before any fat is returned.

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons describes buttock augmentation with fat as a change in size and shape. That description is the butt lift. It is not the tuck. The fee follows the harvest and the graft that are actually planned, including whether a skin excision is added because the cheek hangs. The exam is standing, at the offices where these operations are done, so projection, the hang of the skin, and the hip can be seen together.

A Brazilian butt lift enlarges and reshapes the buttock by adding fat. Liposuction removes fat from places where it is not wanted, the fat is processed, and healthy fat is reinjected into the buttocks and the hips. Fat fills a hip dip and can build an hourglass outline. Narrowing the waist, the step often called waistline snatching, changes how wide the buttock looks beside the waist. That narrowing is liposuction of the waist. It is not a skin lift. The Brazilian butt lift is a misnomer. It does not produce a significant lift of the buttock cheeks. Projection can increase because fat was added. The bottom of the cheek does not rise off the thigh unless skin is cut, and that cut is the tuck.

Before surgery the contours to be built with the harvested fat are marked, and so are the places the fat will leave. The plan follows the person's goals. The usual harvest is the belly and the back in both men and women, and the thighs as well in women. The photograph on this article is one such harvest: VASER liposuction of the upper back, the middle back, the lower back, the flanks, and the medial thighs, with a modest fill of the hip dip along the upper middle buttock height. That fill is a butt lift. The caption does not describe a butt tuck, and it does not say skin was excised.

Healthy fat is harvested with VASER liposuction while the person is face up or face down under anesthesia. The ultrasound separates live fat cells from the liposuction fluid so the graft is fat rather than fluid. The harvest uses a few small incisions that are sutured closed. When those incisions heal they are faint. The same VASER pass is not a butt tuck. It does not remove the sheet of skin on the lower back or the flank.

The cheek that is built should meet the neighboring regions in a smooth line: the upper buttock, the lower back, the lower buttock, and the back of the thigh. A common miss is leaving too much fullness at the upper pole. That extra fullness makes a shelf at the top of the hips. The shelf is a graft that sat too high, not a tuck that failed. Shape and size are chosen with the Brazilian butt lift assessment tool, and they stay subjective. The contour aimed at is rounded, without the creases or cavitations that read as cellulite. Volume for that contour comes from the liposuction fat. The page also names implants as another way to enlarge the cheek when the plan is not a fat graft. An implant is still not a skin excision.

Done as contour work, the butt lift shapes the hip, the waist, and the thigh relationship, not only the cheek. Proportion is the point of choosing where fat leaves and where it returns. A tuck is added only when skin hangs below the thigh. Someone whose skin is already tight, and whose request is a fuller cheek, is not given an excision because the word lift appeared in the request. Someone whose cheek has dropped below the thigh, and who does not want a larger cheek, is not given a graft as a substitute for removing that skin. When both are present, the difference between a butt lift and a butt tuck is still which tool does which job, and they can be planned together.

Reading a result as the wrong operation is easy when the only caption is a Brazilian butt lift. The 33-year-old photograph shows volume at the upper middle height after VASER harvest from the back and the medial thighs. It does not show skin cut from the lower back, and it does not show the buttock raised off the thigh. A modest hip dip fill can look like a lift in the everyday sense of the word. On this distinction it is volume. The difference between a butt lift and a butt tuck is still visible in what changed: fat arrived, or skin left.

The belly and the back supply fat for both men and women, and the thighs are an added source in women, because that is where the extra fat usually sits. Taking it from those places is what lets the waist look narrower beside a fuller cheek. An implant is the other volume tool named here, used when the plan is not a fat graft. It can enlarge the cheek. It does not excise flank skin, and it does not shorten the skin that hangs past the perineum. Choosing an implant instead of fat does not turn the operation into a tuck. Choosing a tuck instead of either volume tool does not fill a flat cheek. The standing exam is where those three choices are separated: graft, implant, or skin excision, alone or combined.