You did what in Brazil?

Ask Granny Mary: The Ethical Butt Lift

She’s dead and she’s wise

Send Granny Mary your questions in the comments here or email to askgrannymary at gmail.com. Let’s look at the mailbox!

Dear Granny Mary: Many women are getting Brazilian Butt Lifts — BBLs — to increase their butt sizes. How do I volunteer to donate some of my butt to others? I have enough to help two other people. — Amply Generous

Hello, Amply! I salute your empathy for those who abound in slenderness. Your fellow feeling for fellows’ feelings is an example for fellows with feelings to follow. I’d celebrate if this weren’t an obviously gross and boneheaded idea.

The history of BBLs goes back far longer than you might think, to the reign of Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal. You shouldn’t be surprised. Every major advance in human depravity comes from the Portuguese, and Prince Henry — whose other nickname was “Planke Butte” — was famed for wading into moral cesspools right up to his low-hanging fruit.

In his surviving papers are designs and descriptions of a device to create a “reare ende of grate size and momente.” Diagrams of padding to be slipped into one’s pantaloons. Early models were of plain fabric. Later, lace and embroidery were added because the impressions left in the butt skin would “hotten op the bitchens.”

It is interesting to note these “body-altering fashions” were donned exclusively by Portuguese noblemen as a way of luring Portuguese noblewomen into amorous alliances. One especially roguish nobleman was known for the bodacious scarp of his bum. One humorous broadside called him “cock of the walk, ass of the talk.”

If the BBL’s pedigree of elite decadence doesn’t diminish your deleterious donation desires, then consider the moral hazard of your freely offered fundament.

Let’s say you do donate your butt to two deserving BBL recipients and they — unlikely as it seems — are thrilled to receive it. This demonstrates there is a demand for butts. If there is demand, then there will be a market for butts. If there is a butt market then there will be a butt black market.

Smuggling and violent crime will increase as the most desirable butts are hidden in the side panels of your El Camino and smuggled across the border from Canada into Vermont and then to Lowell, MA — the Butt Corridor of the Northeast — where they will be processed and distributed to all of the butt hubs of North America.

Eventually, this illegal and amazingly profitable trade will bring forth its own Walter White. A genius of keister design who, using his knowledge of high school chemistry, will create the first lab-grown butts. This was predicted by Margaret Atwood in her dystopian series Mad Addam’s Butt.

The government will step in to bring down the criminal derriere lord. They will legalize the butt trade and tax it to hell and backside.

Butts will be taxed. Is that what you want?

The last reason why butt donation is a bad idea — well, can you take a little tough love? A few home truths? Doesn’t matter, because I’m dead and I don’t care.

Yes, you can subdivide your butt into tracts and donate as you please. It’s morally wrong and historically problematic, but fine. You have that right.

But no one’s going to want your butt. This, my friend, is a butt that has lived. It is an experienced butt. It has seen some shit. You should be proud of your honest proletarian, hard-working butt. Your butt speaks truth to power. Your butt has fought battles.

And having fought battles — not least with gravity — your butt has scars. There is wear and tear in the rear. Imperfections. It would never be acceptable to the Brazilian, Portuguese-speaking elite who rule the fashion junta of Rio. It’s telling that the title of the film, The Devil Wears Prada, for Brazilian markets was O Diabo Tem Uma Bunda Grande. Even if you are not a member of the fashion junta of Rio, you are ruled by them.

And there’s your answer: you could donate as you describe, but then you would be like the Portuguese.

It’s true! Send Granny Mary your questions in the comments here or email to askgrannymary at gmail.com. No topic too vulgar or obscure!

Thanks to Rachael Ann Sand, Andrew Rodwin, and Holly J See for keeping me honest and hyphenated.