by ANDI ZEISLER
From butt masks to “holecare,” consumer beauty obsession is now hitting both ends
A quote long attributed to Catherine Deneuve
is, “At a certain age, a woman must choose between her face and her
ass.” Deneuve turns 82 this week, and while I’m certain both parts of
her remain stunning, the premise of the quote — that striving for
thinness will show on the face in gaunt cheeks and lined skin, while
retaining the fat needed to keep a face youthful risks unwanted ass
expansion — has become obsolete. For one thing, the beauty and
cosmetic-surgery industries have spent decades innovating products and
procedures to ensure that any woman with the time and money to invest
can keep both face and ass in aging lockstep by way of lifts, fillers
and resurfacing treatments. But perhaps more important is that having junk in the trunk is no longer seen as a dreaded marker of middle age.
Instead, a confrontation with normative beauty standards has put
women’s rear ends at the center of a cultural and commercial sea change.
Butts are big business: Products and services including glute-focused
workouts, padding-and-lifting shapewear, and athleisure pants with
built-in wedgies have proliferated, and butt augmentation
is among the fastest-growing subsets of cosmetic surgery. Demand for
liposuction, butt implants and fat-grafting procedures like the
Brazilian butt lift has grown dramatically since 2000; as of 2023, the
market for butt-augmentation procedures was valued at $2.81 billion, and
is expected to hit $13.23 billion by 2030. The category of products
formulated to firm, plump and smooth a part of the body you rarely see
continues to grow, with masks, serums, spa treatments, and what’s called
“holecare” peddling via social media to younger generations that have never known a time when butts weren’t celebrated.
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