A growing
number of women across the world are getting plastic surgery to enhance their
behinds. But with the costs running into the thousands of dollars, many are
choosing cheap, illegal and life-threatening backstreet procedures, lethal
injection.
But getting
injections for a bigger behind was the biggest mistake Natalie Johnson ever
made.
At her home
in a Miami suburb, she shows me pictures of her scarred body, bruised and
blackened from decaying tissue.
"I
didn't need it, I was perfect without it," she says. "I was in a
lifestyle where I felt if I had a big old butt, I could make more money."Continue..
The pain she
has to endure is so severe that it is hard for her to sit down for too long.
Johnson relies on her nine-year-old daughter to help with the most basic of
tasks.
Johnson was
working as an exotic dancer when she met someone claiming to be a doctor who
offered to perform a buttocks-enhancement procedure at a fraction of the price
of a registered surgeon.
It did not
seem out of the ordinary. Other friends had it done and plenty of young women
in Miami desire a larger behind to look like the dancers in music videos,
Johnson says.
She says a
man named O'Neal Morris came to her house wearing white scrubs - "looking
professional" - and injected a substance into her behind using plastic
syringe.
At first the
results were good: a firmer, rounder rear, bringing her closer to her goal of a
"Coca-Cola bottle-shaped body".
She had two
more rounds of treatment. Soon after, the problems began.
"It
started making me really, really sick. I noticed it was starting to
disintegrate and my butt turned wrinkly," she says.
line
"I was
getting dizzy, and feeling fatigued."
On one
occasion Johnson was rushed to hospital after she stopped breathing.
Morris began
a one-year jail sentence in January for practising medicine without a licence.
Women who
came forward during the trial said Morris, who is not a qualified doctor, had
injected them with a range of substances including cement, superglue and tyre
sealant.
The Federal
Bureau of Investigations says the numbers of cases of people posing as fake
doctors to perform this kind of treatment are on the rise, especially in
Florida, New York, California and Texas.
At his
surgery in a Miami suburb, Dr Alberto Gallerani shows me vials containing
things he has pulled out of patients' buttocks, including olive oil and super
glue.
A certified
plastic surgeon, Gallerani has been treating Johnson and hundreds of other
women and men who come to him for corrective surgery after botched procedures.
Aderotimi |
His client
and friend, 20-year-old Claudia Aderotimi, died in 2011 after she flew from
London to Philadelphia to get injections from a woman she met online. Doctors
believe the illegal silicone shots spread to her organs, killing her. The
person accused of administering the procedure is due in court next year.
Ali says
Aderotimi believed a bigger behind would help her make it in the music
industry.
"When
girls go out and one of them has a big rear, she gets all the attention. She'll
get everything, free lifts, free drinks," he says. "It's well known,
girls with bigger bums have more attention and they have big jobs and they're
more in demand."
Ali says
young women to whom he has spoken are afraid to discuss the issue openly, and
won't admit they might want to get surgery in the first place, which also
drives many to underground procedures.
He says many
women fly to the US to get the injections because they are harder to find in
the UK.
Tragically,
Aderotimi is not alive to warn others of the dangers, but Johnson believes by
sharing her story she can save others from the same fate.
"Stick
with what God gave you," she says.
"I tell
girls, if it ain't broke don't fix it. You are beautiful the way you are."
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