
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.
