Jenice Armstrong: A trend to watch: Building up the backside

BOOTIES are a-popping. And they aren't all natural.

Thanks to celebs like Nicky Minaj, Kim Kardashian, Beyonce, Angel Lola Love, Buffy the Body and the rise of the urban model, bubble-shaped derrieres are all the rage and not just in hip-hop music videos or on the red carpet. The designer backsides in demand are exaggerated almost cartoonishly as fashion stylist Phillip Bloch described them last week.

"We see them everywhere. They are particularly sculpted and firm," Bloch told me.

Be clear, this isn't about just having a big booty. There are plenty of those around. It's all about having the right shape. Women - and some men - are going to great lengths to get the desired dimensions, obtaining a Brazilian butt lift, getting dangerous, unregulated injections of silicone and other fillers in salons and apartments, or buying padded panties.

"I like to have curves and it's now," said Canise Tortez, a commercial-print model from West Philly who dons padded underwear for appearances in videos such as Chris Brown's "Back to the Crib." "It makes a big difference but it's a subtle difference.

"By me maintaining a normal size, I can throw the butt pads on doing a video real quick," said Tortez, who's 5 feet tall and weighs about 130. "It doesn't look fake at all."

Mediatakeout.com, a hot urban website, has made a sport of watching whether Minaj, Kardashian and Beyonce have done anything to enhance their already-hourglass shapes. Practically any day you log on, there's a "does she or doesn't she" going on.

I don't have the answers. All I know is that pear-shaped women are forever in the debt of all those who have helped make it fashionable to carry extra junk in the trunk.

It's still hard for me to imagine wanting to have something extra attached, surgically or otherwise, to the backside. But that's coming from an amply-endowed woman who is just a generation behind those American females who practically lived in girdles to flatten their bottoms.

The zeitgeist has shifted big time. According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, there were nearly 5,000 butt-lift surgeries in the U.S. in 2009. And the trend continues.

"It was the only procedure in 2010 that went up. Everything else went down," said plastic surgeon Constantino Mendieta, the pioneer of the Miami Thong Lift, which creates virtually no visible scar. "Everybody is interested in getting a shapelier butt.