What’s the Barbie Back?

LONDON — As emerging beauty trends go, the Barbie Back is the most ridiculous we’ve heard yet. But according to plastic surgeon Dr Mike Comins, it’s what women want — even if it means going under the knife.

Don’t know what a Barbie Back is? Neither did we until Comins explained it to us: Think sculpted lower back with dimples just above the bottom, a la Kim Kardashian — apparently the pin-up for the perfect back, alongside Barbie.

“The lower back has always been a beautiful region of the female body; and I think it’s great that women are realising its importance. Globally, aesthetic surgery of the buttocks is one of the fastest-growing segments of plastic surgery (there were 10,000 butt-shaping procedures recorded in the United States last year) ... once you begin to look at this area, you find the back is equally important and one fails to look good without the other,” said Comins.

So now you know and probably feel just as confused as we are about the whole idea. Comins, however, is not. As a leading London-based aesthetic surgeon, he thinks it’s going to be so popular he has created his own Barbie Back treatment to get the dolly look. Called Dimples En V, the procedure involves the removal of fat and shaping the back using Vaser technology, a hi-tech form of liposuction of which Comins is a leading expert. It uses ultrasound and claims to be less intrusive, requires less downtime, no general anaesthetic and can even be described as a “walk in, walk out” treatment.

During the procedure, Comins specifically sculpts the love handles and lower back, creating dimples and a V shape in the sacral region of the back — just like Barbie’s!

At £2,000 (S$4,120), Dimples En-V isn’t cheap, but the price isn’t turning women away, said Comins.

When a Barbie doll (which is just that, a doll) with the eye-watering 36-18-33 vital stats starts becoming our body ideal, we can’t help but ask — wouldn’t that money be better spent on a confidence-boosting course instead? The DAILY TELEGRAPH