Cardi B cautions against plastic surgery after removing butt injections

American rapper Cardi B has warned her fans to think carefully about getting plastic surgery after removing her butt injections. “In August I got surgery and I removed 95% of my biopolymers… if you don’t know what it is, it’s ass shots. It was a really crazy process,” she said in an Instagram live video, posted on Thursday.

Speaking to her 140 million followers, she added: “All I’m going to say is that if you’re young, if you’re 19, 20, 21, and sometimes you’re too skinny, and you be like ‘OMG I don’t have enough fat to put in my ass,’ so you result [sic] to ass shots, DON’T!”

Last year, in an interview with Mariah Carey, the 30-year-old singer confessed she got the injections out of insecurity. “When I was 20, I went to the urban strip club, and in the urban strip clubs, you had to have a big butt. So I felt insecure about that. It took me back to high school. So I got my ass done,” she said.

Gluteoplasty – the procedure to augment buttocks via implants, fat transfer or contouring – is becoming increasing common throughout the world. In a recent report in EL PAÍS, Isabel Moreno, the president of the Spanish Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, said that demand for the surgery has risen 50%. According to a 2017 report in the Aesthetic Surgery Journal, the process is relatively low risk, but has more associated risks than other plastic surgery. The report found that of nearly 199,000 cases of gluteal fat grafting, 32 patients died from a pulmonary fat embolism.

In the recent book Butts: A Backstory, journalist Heather Radke looks at how contemporary culture has become obsessed with this part of the female anatomy. Radke said this fascination peaked in 2014 thanks to trends such as belfies (taking a selfie of one’s own behind), twerking and interest in celebrities such as Nicki Minaj, the Kardashian family and even Cardi B.

The 30-year-old rapper has never shied away from discussing her experiences with plastic surgery. She has talked about getting rhinoplasty and two breast implants, as well as having liposuction in 2019 after the birth of her first daughter. She even said she got illegal silicone shots for $800 in a basement in 2014. The New Yorker is not critical of plastic surgery, but in her video on Thursday, she recommended that her fans think hard about where and how to have the procedure.

Cardi B – who became the first solo woman to win the Grammy for Best Rap Album in 2019 – is famous for not mincing her words. Her spats with fellow singers such as Madonna and Nicki Minaj often make headlines. The rapper has two children, Wave, 15 months old, and Kulture, four, with her husband, Migos rapper Offset.

Cardi B had a difficult childhood, which she talks about openly in her Instagram live videos. At age 16, she ran away from her home in New York and joined the Bloods street gang. Soon after, she found herself broke and stuck in an abusive relationship. She became a stripper, a profession she practiced for five years. She also admitted to drugging and robbing men when she was a stripper. “I never claim to be perfect,” she said in an Instagram message, after one of her live videos from that period resurfaced. “There are rappers that glorify violence, murder, drugs and robbing [...] I’ve never glorified the things I brought up in that live [video]. I never even put those things in my music because I’m not proud of it and feel a responsibility not to glorify it.”

She continued: “I made the choices that I did at the time because I had very limited options. I was blessed to have been able to rise from that but so many women have not.”