Booty Enlargement Ended Up In Amputation

Teased by her family and friends about her flat “pancake” booty, Apryl Michelle Brown had always been insecure about her backside. Once she got enough money, she told herself, she’d buy herself a better one. “I didn’t know if I wanted to look like Janet Jackson or J. Lo,” the Los Angeles cosmetologist, 46, says in an exclusive interview featured in the November issue of ESSENCE magazine. “I just wanted a new, bigger booty.”
Tragically, her quest for curves cost her all her limbs and almost her life.

In 2004, Brown says she paid a “pumper,” an unlicensed person, to inject industrial-grade silicone into her

buttocks. Brown can’t recall how much the woman actually charged — maybe $500, maybe $1,000 — but

 over time, she says, the area became intensely irritated and painful, and the skin blackened. By early 2006

she says the silicone had hardened, causing severe pain and infection, ultimately requiring her to have

life saving amputation of her limbs last year.

Now adjusting to her new life with prosthetic, Brown shares her story — and her warning for others