Speaker 1: The Brazilian butt lift or b b L is the
Speaker 1: fastest growing cosmetic procedure in the world. Experts say it's
Speaker 1: also the most dangerous, and people are dying not by
Speaker 1: the dozens, but by the hunt. They say, she didn't
Speaker 1: make it. Wow. And in a Brazilian butt lift, almost
Speaker 1: a leader of fat is injected into each but a cheek.
Speaker 1: It's only a matter of time before we are going
Speaker 1: to see a death in real time. It will happen.
Speaker 1: This is supremely important. I remember waking up and I'm like,
Speaker 1: hold up a minute. I went from a B to
Speaker 1: a double D. We had a death of week before
Speaker 1: her and a death of week after her. How did
Speaker 1: we end up here? I was really trying to keep
Speaker 1: that from happening to people. Well, guys, this is going
Speaker 1: to be a very interesting WHOA for sure. Extremely I'm
Speaker 1: glad we're talking about this today. The b B else
Speaker 1: because I was considering getting me too. I think, let's
Speaker 1: be real, okay, I considered getting the tiniest little bit
Speaker 1: you did. But then I just got in the gym,
Speaker 1: That's why. And I told her, I said, you want
Speaker 1: to but one thing your mother know how to do
Speaker 1: is build a bun exactly, and you bet it. But
Speaker 1: I really to the point that people thought you got
Speaker 1: certain you know, you're right. I just feel like there's
Speaker 1: always been so much more pressure on women to look
Speaker 1: a certain way. You know, it's all about youth. So
Speaker 1: for somebody like me, the struggle has been extremely real,
Speaker 1: Like I had botox, and then you get to the
Speaker 1: point where how much are you gonna do? Then it
Speaker 1: almost becomes addictive. Both y'all know, I've been collecting my
Speaker 1: little surgeons for that inevitable, inevitable moment that this girl
Speaker 1: right here is gonna get a little snatch even though
Speaker 1: people think I have done it already, but I have,
Speaker 1: you really haven't. This is interesting. So due to COVID,
Speaker 1: cosmetic surgery has become even more popular because of what's
Speaker 1: being called the zoom boom. We spend hours staring at
Speaker 1: our own faces and not liking what we see. Like,
Speaker 1: to me, my face never looks right. Well, she nobody's
Speaker 1: face it looks right, because I don't think twenty year
Speaker 1: olds think that face looks right. Now that you can
Speaker 1: and all this stuff you can do with your picture,
Speaker 1: you know, all the voters and I mean just an
Speaker 1: insane amount of like self esteem like problems, like specifically nowadays,
Speaker 1: I feel like, but getting back to the butt lift,
Speaker 1: some people be looking real cute. Here's what we can't deny.
Speaker 1: It does change lives for some people. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like a BBL can get you forward in life and wait,
Speaker 1: whoas and like influencing all of these things like if
Speaker 1: you have this look, now you can get these two
Speaker 1: years it's lips, it's but it's I just want women
Speaker 1: to feel empower and I feel like there's a slippery
Speaker 1: slope with empowerment on this trajectory of of changing the
Speaker 1: way your body looks. We'll see it's it's it's what
Speaker 1: we always say, will aware. You can pretty much do anything.
Speaker 1: It's just a matter of where you're sitting within yourself,
Speaker 1: the why exactly the real so. But that's only for
Speaker 1: an individual person to figure out for themselves, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's not for anybody else. But one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why we thought it was important to do this
Speaker 1: particular show is to just really express I don't think
Speaker 1: people are aware of the risk. I know I wasn't.
Speaker 1: The Brazilian Butt Lift or BVL, is the fastest growing
Speaker 1: cosmetic procedure in the world. Experts say it's also the
Speaker 1: most dangerous new you of Magazine, USA Today, and Newsweek
Speaker 1: have all recently reported on it. They say the huge
Speaker 1: demand for BBL is due to a new social media
Speaker 1: trend where women are posting the entire process on social
Speaker 1: media for all to see. The hashtag BBL has been
Speaker 1: used more than three billion times. It definitely makes a difference,
Speaker 1: three billion. They're showing off not just their results. They're
Speaker 1: showing you before and after, but the painful, weeks long recovery.
Speaker 1: She's a little bruised up there, even letting their doctors
Speaker 1: go live from the operating room side back. This global
Speaker 1: phenomenon has sparked a worldwide search for the best butt
Speaker 1: at the lowest price. Stunning video shows a line of
Speaker 1: twenty four BBL post out patients in wheelchairs waiting to
Speaker 1: board their flight from the Dominican Republic to Atlanta. The
Speaker 1: big Butt Barbie Doll body trend has launched careers and
Speaker 1: created influencers. I had eight mills of fact injected in total.
Speaker 1: I personally wanted it way big up, but this was
Speaker 1: all the fact I had in my whole body. Wow,
Speaker 1: we're not here to tell anybody what to do, what
Speaker 1: not to do. I feel like people should be able
Speaker 1: to do whatever right. I just want people to be
Speaker 1: able to do their research. The BBL is very controversial
Speaker 1: and dangerous. One out of three thousand women won't make it.
Speaker 1: A mom and a ninth grade English teacher, Alicia Rennette Williams,
Speaker 1: had waited years to get plastic surgery, got on a
Speaker 1: plane to the Dominican Republic and tragically never came home.
Speaker 1: Alicia's sister Stacy is here along with Dr Mila Bennett,
Speaker 1: who was a Board certified plastic surgeon dr and did
Speaker 1: not treat Alicia, but knows her story all too well. Stacy,
Speaker 1: let me first just say we're really sorry about the
Speaker 1: loss of your sister. Thank you. Could you tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about her? Aelicia was the best list ever.
Speaker 1: She's been a school teacher for a long long time.
Speaker 1: She only had one child, which was Chad. She lost weight,
Speaker 1: gain weight, lost weight, gain weight, so she started looking
Speaker 1: into having a BBL. She did a research for a
Speaker 1: couple of years. Then she come across these groups on
Speaker 1: social media, which makes everything look so good and so easy.
Speaker 1: In these groups that they have, they put it out
Speaker 1: there that you know, all of us want to go
Speaker 1: to the Menic and Republic. So you find somebody and
Speaker 1: you go together. They were called surgery sisters. And the
Speaker 1: ladies from the groups say how cheap it is and
Speaker 1: you can just get this perfect body. So this is
Speaker 1: why she decided to go to the American Republic to
Speaker 1: get this surgery. She was so excited to go because
Speaker 1: she ever expressed why she wanted the BBL. She just
Speaker 1: wanted to look pretty and small, small ways, big hip.
Speaker 1: Most ladies are doing that. Yeah, exactly, that's exactly what
Speaker 1: it is. So then what happened next. So the nurse
Speaker 1: or the lady assistant that she had been talking to
Speaker 1: the whole time, my sister told her, I wanted to
Speaker 1: be the first one to have surgery. The next morning,
Speaker 1: my sister kept telling her that. It kept telling her that,
Speaker 1: and she kept ensuring her, Yeah, you'll be the first one,
Speaker 1: You'll be the first one. She did not get to
Speaker 1: be the first. She was the very last person to
Speaker 1: have surgery that day. During that day, when I talked
Speaker 1: to my sister, she was so upset. I could tell
Speaker 1: her blood pressure was so hot. Was there a reason
Speaker 1: why she wanted to be first. It's plastic surgery. It
Speaker 1: takes a couple of hours, and you're the last person
Speaker 1: the doctor's tired. She didn't want that to happen to her.
Speaker 1: Do we know around what time it'll very last? Was
Speaker 1: I think about six o'clock in the afternoon. Did she
Speaker 1: have an opportunity to meet the doctor before her procedure? No? No,
Speaker 1: she talked to this nurse's assistant the whole entire time.
Speaker 1: She was the orchestrator of all of this. When did
Speaker 1: you know that something wasn't work? She stayed alive five
Speaker 1: days after her surgery. About the third day, I got
Speaker 1: a message said that they had to send her back
Speaker 1: to the hospital for dehydration, and leading I tried to
Speaker 1: contact the nurse and they just give you minimal information.
Speaker 1: And then I got a text message that they had
Speaker 1: to rush my sister back to the hospital and that
Speaker 1: was all that she said. And then I woke up
Speaker 1: and I had so many miss phone calls and my
Speaker 1: heart is like, okay, this is not good. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: called my sister boyfriend. They said she didn't make it
Speaker 1: and it was just down here from there, and how
Speaker 1: are we going to tell Chad? Dr Bennett, What was
Speaker 1: your relationship to Alicia? I learned of Alicia from Stacy.
Speaker 1: She d m me on social media and she wanted
Speaker 1: to let me know what it happened to her sister.
Speaker 1: She wanted me to know because she knew I had
Speaker 1: done so much speaking about the dangerous aspects of plastic surgery.
Speaker 1: It's pretty rare that I performed bbls because I believe
Speaker 1: that they're dangerous, They're risky. Did they say cause of death?
Speaker 1: She had a lot done at once. She did several procedures.
Speaker 1: She had several procedure, she had sat taken from under
Speaker 1: her arm, she had the fat transfer from her stomach
Speaker 1: from her back. They put something in her hips to
Speaker 1: give her some hips and Tommy Tuck also, it was
Speaker 1: a lot, and it's too much, too much to be
Speaker 1: done at one time. Based on the combination of procedures
Speaker 1: she got, it sounded like it was most likely a
Speaker 1: pulmonary embolism. That's usually a blood clot that forms of
Speaker 1: your legs and goes up to your lungs. Those can
Speaker 1: be dead lead. I think that's what happened to her.
Speaker 1: Did you ever have an opportunity to talk to the doctor. Wow,
Speaker 1: when my sister passed, they posted a thing it says
Speaker 1: the doctor have talked to the family, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I never talked to the doctor never. Okay, that's really shady.
Speaker 1: Well it's shady to do surgery on a person you've
Speaker 1: not met. Is the doctor who worked on Alicia? Is
Speaker 1: that doctor still practicing? Yeah? There was a lot of
Speaker 1: deaths after my sister. He had a death of week
Speaker 1: before her and a death of week after her. Is
Speaker 1: making me upset. Now, I'm like, how did you, like,
Speaker 1: how did we end up here? You know, I was
Speaker 1: really trying to keep that from happening to people, you know,
Speaker 1: and then when I saw her picture. We have to
Speaker 1: humanize her legacy. You know this, this this young man
Speaker 1: has got to tell people that his mom died from surgery.
Speaker 1: Alicia's son, Chaz, was fourteen when she died. Thank earlier.
Speaker 1: Set down with him to hear his message. Tell me
Speaker 1: why you wanted to come today. I just want to
Speaker 1: save another kid, keep them from losing their mom. Tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about your mom. She was the best.
Speaker 1: She was just a joyful person and she was sweet, funny.
Speaker 1: That was my best friend. We did everything together. What
Speaker 1: was your favorite thing about her. I don't think she
Speaker 1: ever saw a bad side of things. You have a
Speaker 1: bright soul. I can feel your mom through you. Thank you.
Speaker 1: He's very deicious. Yeah, if I just wanted to say
Speaker 1: to you both, thank you for coming. This will save
Speaker 1: a lot of people. Yeah. So, Dr Arthur Perry is
Speaker 1: a Harvard trained plastic surgeon with more than three decades
Speaker 1: of experience. He led an investigation on deaths caused by BBLS.
Speaker 1: Says he won't perform BBLS and he's going to take
Speaker 1: us through everything, so explain to us. Actually, what BBL
Speaker 1: is a Brazilian butt lift. That's what it's called. It's
Speaker 1: a very very poorly named procedure because one it's not
Speaker 1: Brazilian and two it's not a lift. What it is
Speaker 1: is taking fat from one area of the body where
Speaker 1: you don't want it, like your belly or your thighs
Speaker 1: hips wherever, and suction in a way and injecting it
Speaker 1: into the buttocks. It sounds great right too. For one procedure,
Speaker 1: you get liposuction and you get a larger buttocks if
Speaker 1: that's what you want. By the way I pronounce a liposuction,
Speaker 1: everyone in the world pronounces the LiPo, but the word
Speaker 1: is lipid, it's not. Yeah, all right. A Brazilian butt
Speaker 1: lift is a very dangerous procedure. There have been countless deaths,
Speaker 1: hundreds of deaths. So I have here. This is duck fat.
Speaker 1: It looks just like human fat. Got it. The way
Speaker 1: we do a b B L. The first step is
Speaker 1: to extract fat. We do liposuction, liposuction, whatever you want
Speaker 1: to call it. This is a what's called a canula
Speaker 1: is a liposuction. And if this were your abdomen, I
Speaker 1: would be going back and forth with this liposuction canyla.
Speaker 1: And this end is attached to a very fancy vacuum,
Speaker 1: and the liposuction machine is basically a vacuum. It is.
Speaker 1: So what we do in a procedure like a Brazilian
Speaker 1: butt lift, we'll take the fat and draw it up
Speaker 1: in these syringes. This is just how it's done. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's already been taken out of the body and filtered,
Speaker 1: so we'll get the blood out. This is a typical
Speaker 1: syringe that we might use. This is a sixty c
Speaker 1: C syringe and in a Brazilian butt lift, as much
Speaker 1: as eight hundred ccs. That's almost a leader of fat
Speaker 1: is injected into each buttock cheek peach, So that's a lot.
Speaker 1: Imagine thirteen or fourteen of these injected into each buttock.
Speaker 1: So all of that fat, that eight hundred ccs is
Speaker 1: coming from several different areas in their belly, their hips. Sure,
Speaker 1: now we have to be very careful. I will go
Speaker 1: ahead and make an incision and go ahead, and there
Speaker 1: it is. But that is basically how it's done. And
Speaker 1: where I've placed this is above the muscle. I could
Speaker 1: go into the muscle. That's not a good thing, and
Speaker 1: that's where a lot of the problems with the Brazilian
Speaker 1: butt lift have occurred. Now you might be wondering why
Speaker 1: I have these. These are straws, just regular drinking straws,
Speaker 1: and they represent the blood vessels in the thigh, in
Speaker 1: the buttocks. These are pretty big. This is three millimeters.
Speaker 1: The current recommendation is that we don't go smaller than this.
Speaker 1: But look what happens. I can take this three millimeter
Speaker 1: and put it right in this blood vessel. So this
Speaker 1: is going up what's called the Vinta cave, that's the
Speaker 1: big van of the body, into the heart and then
Speaker 1: right into the lungs and then you simply die. And
Speaker 1: that's the danger of a Brazilian butt lift. This much
Speaker 1: fat will kill you, in fact a lot less. So
Speaker 1: what happens in a procedure where someone's injecting three hundred
Speaker 1: eight hundred ccs or more of fat? Could I injected
Speaker 1: straight into a blood vessel? Yes, that could happen, even
Speaker 1: if we don't go into the muscle. Is it just
Speaker 1: like a game of chance, like when you when you
Speaker 1: try to find that spot like, that's correct? It is?
Speaker 1: It is? It is. Now there are things that classic
Speaker 1: churches are trying to do. They're trying to develop technology
Speaker 1: that will tell people when they're in the muscle. I
Speaker 1: don't think that's good enough because some of these very
Speaker 1: large veins traverse, they go through the fat. Also, so
Speaker 1: even if we're in the muscle, we could be getting
Speaker 1: fat into the blood vessels. And each rain has a
Speaker 1: different way of mont and we know where most of
Speaker 1: them are, but we don't know where exactly. You don't
Speaker 1: have X ray eyes, you can't see. That's correct. So
Speaker 1: when this fat goes into that big blood vessel, goes
Speaker 1: into the heart and then then into the lungs, the
Speaker 1: game is over and I think over the years this
Speaker 1: will become safer. But the problem is we're doing this now.
Speaker 1: We're doing this now. Plastic surgeons are doing this, and
Speaker 1: other surgeons are doing this now when it is not
Speaker 1: considered uniformly safe. Think about this. So, if I were
Speaker 1: a cardiac surgeon and I invented a device like a
Speaker 1: new heart valve, do you know that it takes almost
Speaker 1: ten years to get that on the market. That's to
Speaker 1: keep you safe in my field in plastic surgery. I
Speaker 1: think up an operation today, I say, let's see if
Speaker 1: I can have someone do it. And if I do it,
Speaker 1: then I get a public relations agent. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to make many friends and plastic surgery saying this, but
Speaker 1: this is true. You get a public relations agent and
Speaker 1: the next morning, after you're on this show or some
Speaker 1: other show, your office is filled with patients, whether or
Speaker 1: not the procedure has been proven safe. And that is
Speaker 1: where we are. That is why the British plastic surgeons
Speaker 1: told their members don't do this procedure. It's not considered safe.
Speaker 1: We're studying. This is at this point experimental, so so
Speaker 1: I just want to be clear. The BBL procedure it's
Speaker 1: not considered a certified procedure. Basically, well, for the most part,
Speaker 1: the government stays out of medicine when it's surgery. They
Speaker 1: regulate things like drugs, of course, and they regulate devices.
Speaker 1: They don't regulate what I can do in the operating room.
Speaker 1: For the most part, neither does the state government. The
Speaker 1: exception has been with this procedure in Florida when there
Speaker 1: were all those deaths. And my role in this was
Speaker 1: that I was recruited by USA Today as a newspaper
Speaker 1: to look at all the deaths, the autopsy reports and
Speaker 1: try and help them understand what was going on. Now
Speaker 1: Florida has taken the step. They have said, because of
Speaker 1: all those deaths, doctors cannot by law go underneath the
Speaker 1: muscle or into the muscle with an injection of fat.
Speaker 1: If you do, they said, even accidentally, you lose your license. Wow.
Speaker 1: H Are your fellow um plastic surgery friends like tiffed
Speaker 1: at the stance you're taking about this. The ones that
Speaker 1: do it, certainly are the ones that don't do it
Speaker 1: have said, you know, good job. The dangers are real
Speaker 1: and people are dying not by the dozens but by
Speaker 1: the hundreds. Wow. How much does the BBL costs? It depends.
Speaker 1: If you go in Manhattan, everything is three times it's expensive.
Speaker 1: It would be well over ten thousand dollars in Manhattan.
Speaker 1: Going down to the places you know, hardly call them
Speaker 1: doctor's offices in Florida and around the country that will
Speaker 1: see you without ever seeing a doctor, it's not uncommon. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: those might charge you three or four thousand dollars. And
Speaker 1: while that's still a lot of money, people scrape together
Speaker 1: their dollars and they say, I want to look beautiful.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the really sad things about this
Speaker 1: because some of the most dangerous places are the least
Speaker 1: expensive places. So let me ask you, Dr Perry, how
Speaker 1: should we go about trying to uh do research and
Speaker 1: find the best doctor for whatever procedure is trying to
Speaker 1: have done. You know, it's it's not the easiest thing.
Speaker 1: It really isn't because every website is really an advertisement,
Speaker 1: right And I'm sorry to say this, but you know
Speaker 1: all the best doctor lists, which you know I'm on
Speaker 1: the New York doctor list. Those unfortunately our popularity contests
Speaker 1: now because many of the hospitals they prompt their doctors
Speaker 1: to vote for their colleague. Sorry, Uh, this is where
Speaker 1: I'm going to get the emails because it's true, and
Speaker 1: so can you trust all those lists? They just want
Speaker 1: you to buy the plaque seventy do and you can
Speaker 1: put best doctor in whatever right that is a problem.
Speaker 1: Here's how I I suggest. It is extremely important that
Speaker 1: you choose a proper plastic surgeon. A real plastic surgeon
Speaker 1: calls him or herself a plastic surgeon. You want to
Speaker 1: find the doctor that is certified by the American Board
Speaker 1: of Plastic Surgery, that's the real word. You want to
Speaker 1: look at their training and and learn what medical school
Speaker 1: that doctor went to and where they did their residency.
Speaker 1: Very important. So what you want to do is find
Speaker 1: a doctor who has privileges to do the procedure that
Speaker 1: you're looking at having in a hospital, not a surgery center,
Speaker 1: and not an office. You don't necessarily want to have
Speaker 1: that procedure in the hospital, but you want the doctor
Speaker 1: to have privileges at the hospital. And the reason for
Speaker 1: that is because there are other doctors that are looking
Speaker 1: at that doctor and saying in a committee format that
Speaker 1: they are properly trained and they can do that procedure. Here. Again,
Speaker 1: not a popular thing. I won't make friends with this
Speaker 1: interview here. This is supremely important because I didn't know
Speaker 1: that either. The other thing is whether your doctor wants
Speaker 1: it or not. See a board certified INTERNALT prior to
Speaker 1: surgery internest. Sorry Gang, not a family doctor. And again,
Speaker 1: no friends going to be made here. But honestly, if
Speaker 1: you're an adult, you see an INTERNETS beforehand. Now in
Speaker 1: California that's a law, but not in the rest of
Speaker 1: the United States. Everyone over the age of sixty, I
Speaker 1: have them get an exercise stress test. And if you
Speaker 1: pass an exercise stress test, I know your heart is
Speaker 1: going to be just fine in the operating room. Right,
Speaker 1: So there are things that you can do to protect
Speaker 1: yourself from disaster. There's one other thing that I suggest
Speaker 1: also ask your doctor who they would go to a
Speaker 1: doctor's right, that's what you want. What questions should patients
Speaker 1: ask when they meet their doctor. The consultation must be
Speaker 1: with the doctor, and we've heard of consultations with nurse.
Speaker 1: Sary on your nurse, I want to have my surgeon
Speaker 1: to the consultation, including imaging. Imaging is important plastic surgery,
Speaker 1: and if the nurse does that, well, you know they
Speaker 1: don't really know what the doctor can do in the
Speaker 1: operating room. It's got to be the doctor. Sit down
Speaker 1: with the doctor. A consultation is a minimum of half
Speaker 1: an hour. If it's one of these five minute things,
Speaker 1: forget it. And honestly, everybody wants to save money. But
Speaker 1: a free consultation you get what you pay for. You're
Speaker 1: not going to get an hour with a doctor at
Speaker 1: no charge. You want to know if you can relate
Speaker 1: to the doctor. I want to see pictures of patients.
Speaker 1: If the doctor doesn't show you pictures, there's something wrong.
Speaker 1: Should someone ask a doctor if they've ever had a
Speaker 1: death during a procedure that they have performed. Why not?
Speaker 1: Are they going to tell you the truth? They better?
Speaker 1: It's reasonable to ask have you had malpractice suits? How
Speaker 1: many have you had? Any action taken against your license?
Speaker 1: You can find out. Most state boards have websites in
Speaker 1: most states, the disciplinary action is out there, so you
Speaker 1: don't have to ask the doctor did you get a
Speaker 1: reprimand did you lose your license? Because you can find
Speaker 1: that out and people should. If you're willing to go
Speaker 1: on Yelp and look for restaurant reviews, you know, go
Speaker 1: to the state board website and find out whether your
Speaker 1: doctor got disciplined. How well do the butt lift last? Like,
Speaker 1: what what is the long term effect all of that?
Speaker 1: What's going to happen that you asked that question, because
Speaker 1: you know what, if you look out there in the
Speaker 1: global information available about the Brazilian butt lift, you will
Speaker 1: not find that information. That study does not exist. So
Speaker 1: fat gets injected, it needs to get a blood supply.
Speaker 1: Each and every fat cell has to get nutrients, It
Speaker 1: has to get oxygen anywhere from ten lives to maybe
Speaker 1: we don't know. The studies have not been done. So now,
Speaker 1: what does it look like in a year, five years,
Speaker 1: ten years when someone's push eight d cs of fat
Speaker 1: in each buttock almost a leader of fat. No one knows.
Speaker 1: I'll bet you we're gonna find out pretty soon because
Speaker 1: people are going to be coming in with buttocks that
Speaker 1: do not look pretty lumpy bumpy. Some fat survives, some
Speaker 1: fat doesn't survive. The skin will retract in funny ways,
Speaker 1: not everybody, but there's gonna be a lot of people
Speaker 1: that are deformed. I would imagine that you aren't too
Speaker 1: pleased with people who decide to go live, you know,
Speaker 1: on social media in the operating room with this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I worry a lot about that, and I call me
Speaker 1: old school, but you know, surgery is not entertainment, a
Speaker 1: potentially deadly undertaking, and it's only a matter of time
Speaker 1: before we are going to see a death in real
Speaker 1: time on whatever social media it will happen. Man, Thank you,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be thinking about I opening. Yeah. For years,
Speaker 1: Michelle Massage was known for her double deep breasts, but
Speaker 1: one day she made a dramatic decision that saved her life.
Speaker 1: Breast implants are still one of the most in demand
Speaker 1: plastic surgeries in the world. RuPaul's Drag Race star Michelle
Speaker 1: Vissage has an urgent warning about the debility taking side
Speaker 1: effects she experienced from hers for decades. Michelle says she
Speaker 1: suffered from hair loss, sudden weight gain, and fatigue, and
Speaker 1: believes her signature double D s Those aren't breath. These
Speaker 1: are breath. Girl, We're making her sick. I'm scared, nervous,
Speaker 1: I'm petrified. Michelle stunned fans when she made the bold
Speaker 1: decision to remove her implants, revealing the entire journey in
Speaker 1: a deeply personal documentary called X Plant. I'm so happy
Speaker 1: to have been learning a lot, listening and watching, it's
Speaker 1: just frightening. So with finally made you decide to get
Speaker 1: them removed. Had I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's thyroid artists,
Speaker 1: which is an autoimmune condition that attacks the thyroid. It
Speaker 1: happened pretty soon after my first set of implants, and
Speaker 1: so my journey started there. I would have these flare
Speaker 1: ups where I would gain a ton of weight, my
Speaker 1: body would go bloat up and down, and I would
Speaker 1: go to my doctors and I'd say, if this is
Speaker 1: an autoimmune issue and my body is attacking an invader
Speaker 1: and just happens to be attacking my thyroid, the only
Speaker 1: invader are these two blobs of silicon in my body,
Speaker 1: So why wouldn't I take them out? I even had
Speaker 1: one doctor say, just don't take them out yet because
Speaker 1: we want to make sure it's not something else. But
Speaker 1: I was kind of be yeah, I've done everything else,
Speaker 1: because you can't imagine what I have done after twenty
Speaker 1: plus years of chasing my health constantly, continuously things getting worse,
Speaker 1: and um, I couldn't understand why that was my last step,
Speaker 1: And to be honest, I was over them anyway. Michelle
Speaker 1: says she exhausted all avenues to get to the bottom
Speaker 1: of her disease. I'm sick of being sick. A symptoms
Speaker 1: started soon after she had her first of three implant surgeries,
Speaker 1: eventually filling a double D cup. So you had three surgeries,
Speaker 1: I had three breast augmentations. Should go bigger? Yes? It
Speaker 1: was like your size tiny, teeny tiny. I remember always
Speaker 1: wanting the boobs growing in a household where my father
Speaker 1: was a subscriber to Playboy magazine. I would look in
Speaker 1: the magazine and said, when am I going to get that?
Speaker 1: I was adopted, and when I met my biological mother,
Speaker 1: the two things I asked her first, why do I
Speaker 1: have no boobs? And why do I have a bump
Speaker 1: in my nose? When I came to your first it
Speaker 1: was like charging on my credit card. I didn't even
Speaker 1: have the money to do it. And I remember waking
Speaker 1: up and I'm like, hold up a minute. I went
Speaker 1: from not even like a double A, not even A
Speaker 1: to a B. And I remember waking up going I
Speaker 1: did not pay ten thousand dollars for a B cup.
Speaker 1: He was like, calm down, you wait less than a
Speaker 1: hundred pounds. You are too tiny. You didn't have the skin.
Speaker 1: I was like, I have se born stars with boobs
Speaker 1: the size of my head and they are smaller than me,
Speaker 1: So don't lie to me. You're lying to me. And then,
Speaker 1: like an idiot, three years later, I went back to
Speaker 1: the same doctor. So finally, um, after having both of
Speaker 1: my children and nursing both of them, I noticed one
Speaker 1: was bigger than the other, and I said, oh, I
Speaker 1: think one s to flee. So I ended up going
Speaker 1: to doctor nine O two one oh who. I said,
Speaker 1: can you please give me the boobs of my dreams?
Speaker 1: And I went from a B to a double D
Speaker 1: and I was thrilled. So, Michelle, do you feel like
Speaker 1: you lost a piece of your identity once you took
Speaker 1: out your implants? It's a great question. My breasts were
Speaker 1: always part of the fun, the caricatured news, and I
Speaker 1: have a wonderful therapist, and I was so ready and honest,
Speaker 1: I don't regret a thing though I have a padded
Speaker 1: bra on now. When I see myself, it's literally a
Speaker 1: rib cage. There is a nipple on top of a
Speaker 1: rib cage. And I love it. Yeah, I wish I
Speaker 1: loved it it. At seventeen and eighteen and nineteen. I
Speaker 1: wish to god, I did you know? And both my
Speaker 1: daughters I try to instill on them how perfect they are,
Speaker 1: you know. And my daughter said when I told the
Speaker 1: family I was going to take him out, She's like, well,
Speaker 1: I go to your career. It was like, I bet
Speaker 1: you people do think that. I honestly got scared that
Speaker 1: your career was gonna end if you got your boobs
Speaker 1: or I remember vivially telling you like crying, telling you
Speaker 1: I didn't want you to get them out because like
Speaker 1: you weren't gonna know you weren't crying. How when was this, well,
Speaker 1: there goes your career? Okay, that's how you really think
Speaker 1: your entire brand is like based off that? Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but do you think that I am just my boobs?
Speaker 1: I never said that. I just know I'm asking you. No,
Speaker 1: I don't think you are. But you're like, entire brand
Speaker 1: isn't built your boobs? Yeah? True, But my entire brand
Speaker 1: is based off my talent. And I'm not saying I'm
Speaker 1: not insecure because I have imposter syndrome. I struggle with
Speaker 1: that all the time, where I'm on sets of things
Speaker 1: and like do I really belong here? Shouldn't somebody else
Speaker 1: be doing this job like pinch me. You know that
Speaker 1: type of thing. I think that exists um in me still,
Speaker 1: especially in this industry, industry, sorry, especially for women. It
Speaker 1: always has been there's a standard that we cannot live
Speaker 1: up to unless this purchase. And that's unfair for the
Speaker 1: younger generation. I bet you for your daughters, this has
Speaker 1: been a really powerful journey for them to witness, for
Speaker 1: better or for worse than because I have struggled with
Speaker 1: body image my whole life. I'm eating disorder survivor, and
Speaker 1: my younger one struggles and she has seen me, and
Speaker 1: though I've tried, it breaks my heart to see her
Speaker 1: struggle with that food and body image. Then you throw
Speaker 1: in social media and she'll go, oh mom, this girl
Speaker 1: is a perfect body. And I tell this to my daughter.
Speaker 1: We all have these hungarian humps in our nose right,
Speaker 1: and my my Lola that's your age, has one as well.
Speaker 1: And she hated it for a while. And my whole
Speaker 1: life I was the same way. I always wanted to
Speaker 1: shave it, always wanted to shave it. And it was
Speaker 1: RuPaul who said, I wish you can see yourself through
Speaker 1: my eyes. I wish you can see yourself through God's
Speaker 1: eyes and see how that's it you go and it's deep,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't ready for that depth, to be honest,
Speaker 1: and I was like, that's cute, but I still hate
Speaker 1: my nose because of social media and your generation has,
Speaker 1: it's so rough. It's tough out there, kid, it's really bad.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of girls trauma. They're just like, no,
Speaker 1: I must be I must be this, and they look
Speaker 1: on social media and that's just their every day. It's
Speaker 1: not real. It's not real. But I think I kind
Speaker 1: of went the opposite way of like she's just gonna
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna do it a right on, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: shave my head, I'm gonna grow out my armpits care
Speaker 1: But can we just look at this child's face? Oh?
Speaker 1: I know? Can we just look at this child's face
Speaker 1: and not like that's what you call face and there
Speaker 1: is nothing and you could do that all you want,
Speaker 1: just to skin the eyes. It's just the structure. If
Speaker 1: you could see yourself through our eyes, you wouldn't touch
Speaker 1: a thing. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, this was great. Sweet.
Speaker 1: I love you. I love watching you on TV, and
Speaker 1: I love being next to you today my darling, thank
Speaker 1: you so much. You know we're fanning out of it. Well,
Speaker 1: my daughter, when I told her I was coming, she's
Speaker 1: your age. I said that I was coming to do
Speaker 1: red table talk and she's like, if you see Willow,
Speaker 1: please bow to her feet. I was like, I will not,
Speaker 1: but really, she'll go to my feet. Yeah,