Recently, we decided to try wearing butt enhancers.
The Product
Oh my.
After opening the boxes we found that the butt padding involves giant chicken cutlets that you insert yourself into underwear. They were delightful to poke and toss around. Although it was easy to see where in the underwear you were to insert them, it was not easy to tell what direction they needed to go in; it took a bit of finagling.
Emmy
Overall: The first glance in the mirror was delightfully surprising, as was each subsequent glance. My booty boost was so natural-looking, but the accentuation was enough to make me want to stare at my butt for a few seconds longer. Only complaints I have about the experience: 1) the fabric of the underwear itself — it was a little itchy on my upper thigh area after a few hours, though nothing unbearable, 2) they create a tiny bit of a VPL in tight jeans, and 3) the effect was too subtle to really notice in non-formfitting dresses/skirts.
As someone with a pretty angular body (read: no boobs, smallish butt, twig-like limbs), having a curvier backside made me feel sexy, sure, but in a fun way — not in a "now that I've experienced having more curves I feel inadequate without them" way. (I actually was catcalled on a day I wasn't wearing them and the guy said, verbatim, "I see that booty"; no catcalls when wearing said butt pads. Not really sure what conclusions I can draw from this aside from men who enjoy street harassing will harass you regardless of the shape of your butt.)
Day 1: I am so excited about my pseudo-lift that I can't help but ask one of my friends, "Notice something different about me?" as I sashay around her apartment. "You look really skinny!" is her reply. "And your butt looks great!" Natural-butt look affirmed.
Day 2: I wear them to a bar where my boyfriend is hanging out with his friends. He says my jeans look tighter and my butt looks nice. Butt pads FTW again.
Day 3: I wear them when I run into my mom, and again, can't help asking, "Something look different?" She can't tell. But she also has a very plump backside and maybe everyone else's just doesn't look noteworthy in comparison? Or her vision is going. IDK.
Day 4: I wear them walking around with friends during the daytime one weekend. One friend comments that my "ledge" looks great; the two others I was with agree. I tell them I've been doing a lot of squats lately. 🙌
In the end: Would wear again, maybe on a night out when I want an extra boost to fill out my jeans a bit more, just for fun.
Matt
As someone with an already pretty cool butt (I have Yelp reviews to prove it), I think the butt pads made my ass look cartoonish. As a gay guy, the butt is a pretty crucial tool in courtship, but (hehe) I couldn't help but feel like it was getting in the way. I felt that I couldn't fit through narrow hallways or save children in wells. It felt exaggerated whenever I touched my ass, like I got stung by particularly thirsty bees.
I can't deny that they did draw attention though! I was at the gym — a particularly gay gym, if gyms could be gay — and I felt more guys looking at me up and down while I wore the butt pads under my Lululemons. I went to a bar with friends with the pads on and a friend asked if I'd been taking ballet classes again because my butt looked "bigger." Not necessarily "great," I noted, just more...there.
As shapewear, it encouraged me to suck everything in. Therefore, everything felt extremely tight. I feel like I couldn't wear it for more than four hours. Taking off pants is already a luxury; to take off the butt pads were like having multiple orgasms. So don't let anyone tell you men can't have them.
It'd be great to wear for a night out or if you wanted a little cushion on the subway seat, but it's a pass for me. And sure enough, I had ended up putting them in my hamper and dropped it off at the wash-and-fold. They came back clean with just one pad left. Womp.
Loryn
Overall: As someone who has a butt that is so flat it is almost inverted, I was extremely excited to try the butt pads. They were fairly comfortable but a little on the heavy side. I could feel them hanging from my butt as I walked around — it almost felt like I was wearing a diaper, which is pretty much the opposite of feeling sexy. I felt too weird in them to wear to work, so I ended up only wearing them on weekends.
Day 1: I went to a comic book convention, which was the perfect place to debut my new rounder, weirdly heavy butt. It was really good timing, too, because I happened to run into an ex! I don't think he noticed but I'm sure he could see in my eyes that there was something new and special about my butt.
Day 2: I wore them around the house in pajamas. My husband said he couldn't really tell the difference and he loved my natural butt, but I'm pretty sure I caught him eyeing my butt slightly more than usual. Again this could have been in my head.
Day 3: Once again I was pumped to wear them out. I wore them to brunch with friends and then out on the town. It was warmer that day, and it became apparent that if you wear them for too long they can get extremely hot and sticky. It was not comfortable.
Day 4: The last day I wore them, I went out with friends. Although this time it involved some very honest male friends. I asked them what they thought and the consensus was "it looks you're wearing a diaper" and "your butt just looks wider but still flat." My enthusiasm about them definitely deflated after that. But I think the reaction was partly because of the pocketless pants I was wearing. It was a nice reminder that confidence is all in your head.
In the end: I would wear these for special occasions with certain dresses. But definitely not an everyday thing.
Alex
Overall: I grew up in Miami, which is basically ass central, America's Asstopia. So I've always grown up thinking big butts were pretty and made clothes look good. Even throughout the '90s, when the waif look was popular in mainstream media, the ideal female form at home remained one that was thick, curvy, with a tiny waist and a very round ass, ideally poured into a body-con dress or Brazilian jeans. And while both body types can be beautiful and desirable in their own way, they're also fairly difficult to attain if you're not born with them. I've been chubby, I've been underweight, but I have never, ever been curvy. And, while I've grown pretty comfortable with the sack of flesh and hair I reside in, the one thing I could change about my body (if I were not legit afraid of ass implants exploding while I'm standing in line at Taco Bell) would be to have a larger, rounder ass.
Day 1: I think I literally screamed when these arrived in the mail. My first impression was that the material was really dense, firm, and a lot heavier than I expected... A dream butt, basically. To test them out, I slipped the butt–panty hybrid on under my tightest jeans and sort of did a little dance for my fiancé, who just kept insisting he likes my butt as it is, because I mean, what else is he going to say? The next person I showed was my best friend, who also happens to be my ride to work every morning. "Notice anything different?" I asked, wiggling. "IS THIS THE ASS?" he yelled, because this is basically all I'd been talking about for the past two weeks. He absolutely loved them, and also helped adjust them so that they rested a little higher up. What are friends for, after all? At work, I placed my new butt as close to my co-workers' desks as I could manage without creating an HR nightmare. Again, I asked if anyone noticed anything different and, to be honest, they couldn't until I literally tried to knock down their laptops with my new butt. But once they figured it out, they were very supportive and happy for me.
Day 2: I wore them on a trip home and my mom laughed at me, but I inherited my pancake ass from her, so really, this is funny for neither of us. "They actually look great," she later admitted. Because they do.
Day 3: Working at BuzzFeed means you find yourself writing stuff like, "I wore my fake butt to work to play Kim Kardashian for a post," which is a true thing that happened. I wrote a pretty tight dress that day and from the back, I looked — I mean, I can admit this — specfuckingtacular, but the underwear portion left an especially visible panty line along the front of my outfit, giving me a sort of phantom FUPA.
Day 4: The End of Time — Seventeen hundred peach emojis.
In the end: I don't think most people noticed a difference, truly, but this wasn't really about other people's reactions. At least not for me. This was about trying on a look I'd always found appealing, but unattainable. Wearing them made me feel happy. I think I even had better posture with these on, because I felt like my clothes draped better and finally hugged my form instead of just sadly sort of giving up in the back. Not that I'm not happy with my body the way it is; I think it's possible, and probably even the norm, to be OK with your body, to be confident and happy with yourself, and to still want to change something about it if you could. I don't think most people who modify their bodies, be it with surgery or tattoos or bodybuilding, do it because they don't like themselves. I think they're just going after the aesthetic they like. And why not? It's YOUR sack of flesh. You have to live in it for a lifetime. So do with it want you want. This is all to say I will definitely continue to wear these with body-conscious outfits, like tight skirts and pants, as long as the material is thick enough to mask some VPL and potential FUPAge.
Overall, we had a surprisingly pretty good time wearing them.
