LOUISVILLE, Ky. – It was inevitable that the reign of the BBL would come to a pear-shaped end. The extreme feminine curves resulting from a Brazilian Butt Lift, a cosmetic surgical procedure that sucks fat from the waist and stomach and deposits it in the buttocks, has defined a certain type of beauty standard for the better part of the past decade.
Beauty trends change, however, and November marked the first time the once-obscure hashtag #TBT surpassed #BBL in trending metrics across social media platforms. Videos of young women posed at flattering angles inside of 100-year old sanatoriums are flooding TikTok, all showing off their Tuberculosis Tits.
What is #TBT?
For decades, the Gothic-inspired halls of the Waverly Hills Sanatorium outside of Louisville stood vacant and crumbling, a reminder of a past century when patients with a deadly disease would journey there for treatment, bloody handkerchiefs to their lips. Tuberculosis, a bacterial infection of the respiratory system, was one of the leading causes of death in the United States at the turn of the 20th Century. Prior to the development of antibiotic treatments, wealthy patients would travel to specialized tuberculosis hospitals and sanatoriums like Waverly Hills where they would receive a regimen of healthy foods, fresh air, bedrest, and what was considered the most effective medication at the time.
With her forehead wrapped in a crisp, white 100% linen scarf from Quince, 24-year-old fashion influencer Trini Zangief (@trinning_clothesline on Instagram and TikTok) looked the picture of bliss as she reclined in a hospital bed beneath stiffly starched sheets. She sipped from a tall glass on a large third floor balcony, where her iron-framed bed stood in a row of other patients’ beds beneath the golden Kentucky sunlight. “It’s surreal that I’m going to be discharged in a few days! I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself when I’m not eating lotus seeds all day and drinking all this cod liver oil!” She took a long sip of the viscous fluid in her glass and then handed it to an orderly. “The engagement with my followers is going to be intense, though. I have three sponsors lined up already for my first video where I walk to the car after six weeks of bedrest! Speaking of which, excuse me–” A ring light switched on and Ms Zangief posed for a cellphone camera, smiling and swaying side to side under the loose bedclothes before two white-smocked orderlies on either side of the bed pulled the sheet tight to showcase her curvy figure.
Bedrest Beauty Lifestyle
Despite the infectious online popularity of Tuberculosis Tits treatments, many style experts are skeptical. Ken St. Kämfer (@hurricainekick on Instagram) is an editor at Token American Vogue and an outspoken critic of TBT. “I really don’t get it. At least a BBL or breast augmentation is a legitimate cosmetic procedure. This is just…sitting in a wicker wheelchair with a blanket over your legs while you watch someone play ragtime piano – for weeks! Sure, these people lose muscle tone and with all the insulin they’re shot up with they come out puffy and bloated, but I just don’t get it. Get up!! It’s too early for you to be defeated!” Mr St. Kamfer ended the interview abruptly when he was told he only had forty seconds to smash a car in the parking lot belonging to a rival editor from Harper’s Bazaar.
USA vs. TBT
Despite the abundant Tuberculosis Tits-driven revenue flowing into formerly abandoned facilities in unquestionably shitty states like Kentucky, many conservative leaders in the US are worried about how quickly the trend is spreading on Chinese-controlled media like TikTok and what the implications could be for American youth. While some think that it could be a Chinese ploy to make Americans weak and feeble, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY, @spankingbirdkick on X) had a different take which he tried to get out through a mouthful of sawdust: “This is just another example of America regressing under the Biden administration. I was born before the polio vaccine and lived through that epidemic, and back then we respected women like Chun-Li, who has wide, muscular thighs. The kind of thighs that could suffocate a man and send him to the sweet hereafter. You can’t get a body like Chun-Li if you’re lying in bed in a tuberculosis ward. I’m sorry, that’s just reality. Chun-Li’s thighs and pert buttocks and taught biceps come from daily training at some form of dojo. Not from lying in an adjustable bed, eating granola. I don’t have anything more to say.”
This is a developing story. The Reality Register will meditate, and then destroy you.
Ronald Sampson
