Brandi Glanville is nothing if not a wide open, wildly entertaining book, whether she’s talking sex, drugs, or plastic surgery. We know she’s gotten Botox, filler, a breast augmentation, and vaginal rejuvenation, but she had drawn a line at liposuction and said she “didn’t believe in it”—until recently.
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum explained her change of heart on a recent episode of Watch What Happens Live. “I had a little laser liposuction on my fupa because everyone was saying, ‘Are you pregnant?’” she told host Andy Cohen. “But I’m like, you know what? I’m gonna gift myself. So I have a garment on that I can barely breathe in, but I’m here,” she went on to say.
While the pubic area may seem like a very unusual spot to liposuction, according to Dr. Johnny Franco, a board-certified plastic surgeon in Austin, Texas, it’s actually more common than people think. “As fashion trends have changed and leggings have become common attire, I think individuals are more aware of this area. We liposuction it frequently in combination with the abdomen so that the entire area is smooth and transitions well,” he says. That being said, he admits he doesn’t entirely understand Glanville’s motivation.
“It is a little unclear how liposuctioning the ‘fupa’ area would change someone’s appearance if they were worried about appearing pregnant. It’s also why physicians and patients have to be cautious when describing body parts using some of these terms that mean different things to different people,” he points out.
Dr. George Bitar, a board-certified plastic surgeon in Fairfax, Virgina, adds that not everyone is the right candidate for pubic liposuction. Ideally, a good candidate is somebody who has excess fat only in the pubic area, but whose skin and muscles are tight. “If they have loose skin and/or loose muscles, the removal of fat can make the skin even looser and look less attractive,” he says. (To that point, he says that laser liposuction in particular is a good choice for the pubic area, since it both has a skin-tightening effect and causes less bruising and swelling in this sensitive region.) He also notes that it’s important to make sure the patient doesn’t also need lower abdominal liposuction. Addressing only the pubic area and not the lower abdomen—if there is in fact excess fat there—can create the appearance of a divot in the pubic region, he explains.
While, as Dr. Franco said, it’s more common to liposuction the entire abdomen along with the pubic area, targeting just the latter does make for a shorter recovery period; most patients can be back to work in a few days, he says. The cost is around $5,500, though it could be less if there’s just one specific spot being liposuctioned, as this could be done without general anesthesia, he points out. And while Glanville didn’t specify when exactly she had the procedure, Dr. Franco says it takes about three months post-procedure for all the swelling to resolve and the skin to shrink. Knowing Brandi, we’ll likely be seeing the end result on Instagram in no time.
