What do you think you know about Brazilian women?
When Racialicious blogger Wendi Muse lived in Brazil she found that the first question her American friends would ask was, "Are the girls hot?"
It turns out, the answer is a little more complicated than you might think. Understanding beauty in Brazil means understanding how the concept intersects with gender, race, and class...in ways that are often very different from how the system works here.
...what we would consider "high maintenance" in the United States is the accepted norm for women's appearance. A woman must always be "bem arrumada." This means that even when one goes grocery shopping, heels, nice clothes, and styled hair is the norm. One of my students once told me that she felt absolutely dirty when her nails were not done, and another informed me she would never leave the house with wet hair because that was super "pobre" ("ghetto").
All three issues affect Brazilian's women's concept of themselves and our concept of them from the outside. Very interesting stuff and worth a read. Check out the posts on Gender, Class, and Race.
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The correct response, regardless the reality of the situation, is YES.
In "Eat, Pray, Love", I remember Elizabeth Gilbert remarking that beauty standards are different in Brazil. Specifically, she was talking about weight. Where being moderately fat, but somehow still slim, was a good thing and being skinny was considered ugly. I thought that was sort of interesting.
I guess that explains why I've never understood the "Brazilian women are hot" sterotype. The "high maintenance" look just doesn't do it for me. It's funny that what some consider hot can look outright trashy to others.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and recommend that Ms. Muse get higher quality friends.
Praise Freedom they don't feel compelled to wear head-scarves!
This sort of duplicates what Axx just said, but I think I'd rather live in where I had to cover up, Islamic fashion, than have to wear high heels everywhere. Culture oppresses in more than one way.
--Beryl
whatever the answer is, this post just makes me glad I don't live in Brazil since I don't wear make up, don't have my nails done, and leave the house with wet hair every day.
That's bullshit. You are talking about a 180 million population, spread along a continent-size country with several unique regions and cultures and trying to explain their (our) notion of beauty in a small paragraph. I don't know where this blogger friend of yours lived and with what kind of people she dealt, but any reasonable person will not try to explain a country based on the small group one knows.
You should take a few days to visit 3 or 4 different brazilian regions and view the amazing diversity of people and cultures you will find.
If you want my opinion, the beauty of Brazil and brazilian people is in the mix. It's the fact that you can find every kind of person just by looking though the window. It's all about diversity and mixed cultures/races/whatever.
Dear Ms Muse and the Editor of BoingBoing, Absolutelly nonsense ! As a brazilian, I have to tell you, that these comments were issued by someone that reallyand completely ignores our Country and Girls. How could it be tru, or supportable, considering the fact we live in a tropical Country and our bests & hotests girls are in the beach area ? How could be "bem arrumada" a girl in biquini, quite naked, in the beach ? Probably the comment came from an ex-husband complaining high costs of ex wife ! Tks, Fabio from São Paulo / Brasil
Similar applies in Italy: the ideal of bella figura dictates that a person should look elegant and effortlessly 'put together' whenever they are out in public. I was at uni with Italian girls who could slob about in a dressing gown (US: house-coat) and look stylish doing so.
I know we don't have the glorious Italian climate here in the UK, but I still find the way people dress here depressing. We invented the three piece suit, the top hat, the bowler, the idea of the city gent /and/ we gave the world mass-produced clothing, but as a country we either dress like children or bag ladies.
I'm siding with "Antinous" on this.
When I moved to Krakow, Poland about five years ago I was initially struck by how absurdly good-looking (basically "all") Polish girls were. To be honest, I still am. However, being conscious of this phenomenon, I realise that my intial opinion that "all" were good-looking was incorrect. Not all are, though many, many are fairly slim though not necessarily fit.
Many women here do spend a fair amount of time/money to look good, though I suspect perhaps less than their Brazilian counterparts. That being said, I know plenty of women who don't put much into their appearance - a bit of make-up, nothing fancy - before heading out the door. Though it hasn't been a conscious decision, I am not friends with anyone who I would consider "high maintenance". Partly that may be my friends average age, around 28-32. Perhaps at this point we've collectively settled down a bit?
Living in Miami and having dated one or two Brazilians, I feel I can comment.
-Very nice butts
-More boob jobs/plastic surgery
-Often 'hit the wall' in their late 20s. But I guess who doesn't!
I've found the same to be true in Romania. I've witnessed it from my own experiences there and I've listened to my best friend (who is a native) tell me about how she can't stand the need to be a barbie doll all the time in public (she spent 5 years in the states getting her bachelors and masters and she has adopted the American Uniform: Tshirt and jeans).
The only difference from what was mentioned in the post and what I've seen in Romania is that SUPER THIN is the ideal, not healthy slim. My friend is a S/XS here in the states, at home she is a large...it baffles the mind.
As a Brazilian I say: Brazilian women can´t be confused with Rio de Janeiro women, they´re totaly different from the rest of the country.
It might be true that girls in Romania (24 now but I left there at around 14) are beautiful, but not all of them. Yes if you go to the cultural and social centers of Romania you will most likely meet a lot of well dressed and overall maintained images. This is copied a lot throughout the country. Everyone wants to be seen beautiful and cosmopolitan. It's like being cool in the North American culture. If you move away from these centers things change. The ratio goes down due to the different needs of the environment they live in. You try to do farm work and not break nails. Or whatever the case may be. In the end what one considers high maintenance might be normal or if you're like me a pain in the arse (different occasions require different preparation times for both men and women of course!). It's all very subjective. From geographical area to cultural differences throughout the country.
And don't even get me started as to the fucking lengths some cultures will go to attain this subjective thing called beauty. I'm referring to the difference in dress sizes and such.
Just as happens in any other country, brazillian population is made of various types of social groups. What Wendi Muse describes is a group of girls called "Patricinhas" which is a minority, and does not represents the standard behavior of the female population in my country. This group is usually taken as futile, rich wannabes and dumb. The kind of girl Alicia Silverstone is in "Clueless" and Reese Witherspoon is in "Legally Blonde", which implies that kind of people are found also in USA and for sure all over the world.
this is true for most of the world. there are social and cultural standards that women are held to which connect with their race and class.
i dont see how that makes brazil special? this article was not written by a brazilian historian, or a specialist in brazilian sociology, or anything they just seem to be a bunch of anecdotal evidence strung together with a weak thesis that brazilian women work hard at being pretty.
like there is bad astronomy and bad science, perhaps someone can make a bad sociology and cultural studies blog where articles like this can be put up and thoroughly dissected?
How is this different from what happens in the upper middle class of most countries?
Refer yourselves to "Sex in the City" and "Desperate Housewives" for example; go have a look downtown Montreal where the money is. It is the same in Paris (has been so for a looooong time) and British women aren't that ugly... too many of them come from abroad nowadays I guess (it is just a joke!).
dude this post is ridiculous. i am from Rio, lived in Ipanema from birth to 28 then moved to SPO where i left when i was 33 and now i live in germany. one cannot judge a country, a huge country, by the half-a-dozen people one knows. please broaden your window. looking thru a funnel and with prejudice, you can achive nothing but making narrow-minded americans who barely know where South America is located, belive that brazil comprises just a few blocks in the Jardins area of Sao Paulo. what a shame, what a shame!!
"looking thru a funnel and with prejudice... narrow-minded americans who barely know where South America is located"
Nice.
same stereotypes about France and frenchwomen... You know, it's that many of youg parisian girls are slim, even skinny (yuck, to my average heteroguy's opinion, but they don't care anymore about guys opinion ), but if you go further in the countryside, I mean a matter of a few kilometers, you'll see pots of "normal" women ( not afraid of being chubby in public or without nails done ). It's just like thinking that Carrie Bradshaw is just the average farmer girl from Arkansas...
"it's true that many..." I meant :-)
Another major contribution to the mythology of Brazil. I'm sure that everything that she says is right, because in a country with a main city larger than many countries at somewhere between 16 and 20 million, a lot of things are true.
But she never does say where she hung out, although I suspect it's Rio. Rio is fantastic, but you can spend all your time in places like Tijuca where it's malls, beach, shopping and as middle class boring as downtown LA, or you could live 500 meters away in one of the favelas and see a totally different reality. My bet is that Ms Muse is more of a Tijuca kind of gal. It's not a criticism, it's just an observation that you'd have a hard time making accurate assessments of what happens in Bed Stuy on the basis of a couple of months living in a condo in the East Village. On the other hand, your experiences in the condo would give you some insight into aspects of life in parts of San Francisco, Chicago or any number of other cities with large, prosperous districts of wealthy professionals.
Women in Rio do go out to impress, particularly at night. But Sao Paolo has a totally different vibe, as do Salvador, Fortaleza, Recife and Floripa. They look good there, too, when they're in a club. But I spend my time with Brazilian friends in pretty typical residential districts when I visit these cities. I don't usually see people who you would count as tourists in these areas, and I don't see the women that Ms Muse describes in their high heels and makeup at the supermercado either.
Brazil + Boing Boing = Sabrina Boing Boing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsBzNYOQWqI&feature=channel
I'm with 11:44am, 12:42 pm, and Cloroforme. I lived in Sao Paulo from 1998-2002 and agree that the beauty of Brazil is in its diversity. It's interesting that the author, Wendi Muse, references one of her "students" as an example of a typical Brazilian. Assuming Muse is either British or American, she was likely giving classes to upper-class Brazilians, who make up only a small percentage of the population. (Correct me if I'm wrong, Wendi - were you teaching in a favela or Jardins Paulista?) In any event, I'm disappointed in the posting. It's something I would expect to read on the yahoo homepage or cnn.com, but not on boingboing.
I always thought that Adriana Lima was quite good looking. In a quirky sort of way.
I'm a third culture kid... and my observation has been that it's in the mix... ie: if you mix races, you get beautiful offspring, and I think that the slightly stereotypical notion of Brazilian Beauty is down to the fairly spectacular mixing of races... particularly evident in Rio etc.
I mean what's Adriana Lima? African, Indian, Swiss... with bits of French and Portuguese thrown in for good memeasure.
I think you get a similar sort of thing in Eastern Europe - with its thousands of years of invasion and reinvasion - the Estonian mix of Russian and Scandinavian can be pretty formidable as well. If you like that sort of thing.
What is "high maintenance". I went out with a lady who could have her hair done and makeup on before I was done showering. By the time I was shaved and dressed she had made coffee. Just because it looks like it may have taken a lot of time, does not mean that it did. Check with her.
I'd say the same is true for Tokyo.
Totally duded up with heels or knee-high boots and oversized Chanel sunglasses is the norm for taking your baby out for a stroll here it seems.
Being there just one time for a month, I can tell you I saw some of the most natural beautiful women...so stunning as I have never seen before...not in the magazines, nor films...never. Such a beauty that it made me as an declared atheist believe in god for a moment. And the best thing is, they where open-minded and absolutely not stuck up. But...(like with everything) there is a sting...they are jealous like hell...because there are so many super looking girls, there is a enormous competition going on...if one loves you, she will use teeth and claws to hold you. B
Many women go to great lengths to look "naturally beautiful" and you just can't tell from looking at them.
AHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAH
this is not an example of a brazilian girl. This is an example of one kind of girl that is found anywhere in the world.
Hello all!
I felt I had to comment for many reasons, I was born in Brazil and grew up in the US,so in many ways I am too Brazilian to be American, and too American to be Brazilian.
I thank my mother everyday for her courage to pack our bags and move us here where I have learned a woman is before anything a person, someone who has the right to choose, the right to an opinion and the right to be heard.
When I was 23 I returned to Brazil for my second University, my mother wanted me to learn my roots and understand my culture. I attended Mackenzie University in Sao Paulo, which is a private university.
I grew up in NYC, where my daily uniform was Levis, a white t-shirt and boots, I am not a girlie girl, I don't get my nails done and sometimes I shave and sometimes I don't. and to tell you the truth I don't really care.
However in Brazil, these are standards for any self respecting girl, you MUST wax as soon as you start to show, you MUST get manicures and pedicures, even if you don't let your nails grow. People will come up to you and say that you look like a slob...
We must remember that Brazil is a catholic country, having said that the most important thing in a girls life is to get married, and when you have a ratio of 17 girls to every man, the competition is fierce.
When I attended university I was 23, when all the girls were 18 and 19, most of my classmates already had breast augmentation, Botox and Restylene. They would wear low cut shirts and complain the professors were looking down their shirts, all in all knowing very well this was the behavior they were enticing from the moment they put those shirts on.
Most of their conversations would always lead to boys, and one day i remember asking a group of girls what were their plans for after graduation, their reply was almost unanimous "I'm going to marry so-and-so and we will have babies withing 2 years after graduation" baffled by this response I asked "why would you even put yourself through 4 years of school if all you want to do is to get married?" and the reply again unanimous "University is a much better place to find a rich husband than a bar"
So my 6 years in Brazil i was called a "gringa", I know the language, and my passport is green, however the American in me made it impossible to cultivate friendships during those years.
The friends that I did make in Brazil, took to the same ideas that I had. Many don't wear make up, but wax and manicure is like a part of the daily hygienic routine, like brushing their teeth. In many ways most of my friends are called "estranhinhos"- little weirdos... but then again so am I.
I'd hate to generalize my own people but the truth of the matter is that Sao Paulo and Rio have become the most capitalist cities in Brazil, and they live on the pages of the magazines... much like how we do in NY.
The right shoes, the right label, the right accessory and the right size boobs are all part of daily maintenance... That's why I always say "God Bless The US of A"!
As a Brazilian form Rio I can guarantee that these comments are not about girls in Rio. This sounds like the elite of São Paulo, where the rich women are similar to the wealthy in major cities of the world like Paris, London, or even New York (very high mantainace).
In Rio it is very common to leave for work in the morning with wet hair, specially in the summer. It is just so hot that a hair dryer is pure torture and it is a nice feeling to have a wet hair for the few minutes it stays dry once you hit the streets.
Yes, we like doing our nails(specially if thier is a party to go to or a nice date!), but we are not slaves to it. I can go weeks without polish on them, but I clean them and make them look nice myself about 2 a week.
About make-up: We don't like wearing much (much less than in Mexico and Las Vegas!)Sun tan, and hot weather are not good combinations to wear make-up. What we love though is a nice lip gloss (it always goes well with a sun tan!)
What we are all CRAZY about though is having a lean and muscular body. The focus is to look go wearing a bikini, not expensive clothes. For us good clothes are new clothes, even though it may be a t-shirt and a pair of shorts!
Oh Boy, I'm terribly sorry to say Ms Muse couldn't be more wrong. She just took a sample for the whole, and like lots of you pointed before me, she clearly teached to upper class (rich spoiled kids) which is quite obvious from their quotes, and those do not differ anywhere in the world. I should know, I've lived in Rio all my life AND I happen to work in a very upper class IB school here, so I can see where she got those misconceptions from.
Nevertheless, I won't go on ranting to full extent on this one, because you guys probably noticed by now that barzilians tend to be overprotective of their culture, specially because we get a lot of shit like that, eg people saying we live in the jungles, speak spanish and samba all day long in the streets of Buenos Aires (trust me I heard that before).
I guess Muse is crazy.. I'm a brazilian girl, I live in Rio, and girls here are NOT as she discribed!! This is the most INFORMAL country in the world.. people use flip flops everywhere (Havaiana's are ours!), and we DO go out with wet hair (of course we wont arrive at a wedding with wet hair, but people NEVER dry their hairs.. this is a warm weather country!)... and this is not at all "pobre"... I guess Muse met the WRONG girls here!! AND THIS IS KINDA INSULTING!!
Remember: Beauty must be defined as what we are, or else the concept itself is our enemy.
I'm going to have to join the chorus of Brazilian people crying bullshit. I'm Brazilian and female, grew up in Sao Paulo, and the one thing I noticed when I first went to the US (could be wrong) was how HIGH MAINTENANCE American girls are in comparison, wearing make up daily, which is something the vast majority of Brazilian girls I know don't do.
I am a Brazillian and answering the qustion: yes they are very hot regardless if they are from Rio, Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, north, south, east, west.
And the best of it. they are hot, smart and nice to talk and hang around. Do I have to say that sex is most delicious thing/ Even better sex all year... with clean nice ladies that not only good looking but also independent, intelligent and.. oh do I mentioned HOT?
hi...i am a 44_yo brazilian with a lot of international experiences, due to my profession.
its really funny and educational to read the post and the comments in these virtual days, cause they converge totally different opinions and visions...thats the beaulty of this media!
what about i give you my brazilian impressions about girls i met? due to the nature of this post, i believe i have the right...right?
1. americans: fat and conservative
2. argentines: marvelous and psychologist-dependents
3. french: blasé and bad-humor's
4. mexicans: catholic and religious
5. colombians: living la vida loka
6. germans: cold and cold
7. japanese: submissive and forever teenagers
8. italians: voluptuous and where-is-my-rich-man??
9. east-europe: sex-sex-sex
hummm.hard stuff isn't??
I could right a "bible" here...you know what i mean? if my personal experience could reflect an entire society, i would be GOD, or "THE GUY" according to what Obama said about Lula...
This is quite impossible, for obvious reasons...
And I tell you...i met wonderful, open minded, grls as well as conservative, no-sex-before-marriage either...thats life...in brazil, timbuktu and oklahoma
and regarding the wish to be beaultiful...this s true in all societies, since we lived in caves! so what?? by the way, cellulitis already arrived in brazil, ok? no problem for me!!!!
marcio
I think I'm the male version of Anonymous "October 13, 2009 9:45 AM". Well, almost. I am too American to be called Brazilian, but not quite Brazilian enough to not be called American. In any case, I have lived in Brazil for more than half my life, and my experiences match hers.
Is the content of this post bullshit? No.
Is it true of all, or even most, women in Brazil? Ok, no, but that might not matter if you hang out with the people that an American is most likely to hang out with in Brazil.
What this post really says (if you don't take its generalizations and proposed stereotypes too literally, and look to the trends they point towards) is the following: The mainstream culture among upper class people in Brazil's urban centers has a view of how you should look (what shape you're in, how you dress, how you groom yourself) that is more homogeneous and less forgiving than the corresponding mainstream culture among upper-middle-class people in American urban centers.
Yes, all cities in the world are home to all kinds of people. But if you look at the distributions of certain personality traits, the curves can look very different, and it's interesting to talk about those differences.
Brazil basically has two populations, kinda like a split personality, or kinda like a group of animals isolated on an island for long enough that they have mutated enough to become almost unable to reproduce with the rest of the species. One population is the urban upper & upper-middle class (which in terms of income is comparable to upper-middle-class Americans) and the other is everyone else. Each of those two groups is relatively homogeneous culturally, and they are quite socially separated: So if you hang out with people from one, you usually don't hang out with people from the other.
So while the people described in this post are not every Brazilian woman, they are well representative of a certain chunk of Brazilian women.
Sure, this kind of woman exists everywhere in the world. But mainstream Brazilian culture imposes all kinds of pressures on women to be like this, to the point where an upper-class woman who is not like this tends to stick out. (Smart guys know that THOSE are the ones you look for. But finding one in the social contexts that are accessible to an upper/middle-upper-class Brazilian male is harder than finding one... say, at a sorority, or at USC. They're there but you have to look real hard).
In the US, you can be many kinds of people. You can be an engineering dork (like me) who wears clothes that are comfortable first and foremost, who grooms himself just carefully enough to not repel the desired gender, and who talks in public about Linux and Burt Rutan and Richard Feynman and Geordi La Forge with an expectation that people know what you mean. You can be goth, you can be a biker, you can be a hippie, you can be a preppy/yuppie, you can do cosplay, and so on, and each of these choices has its own social circles where people accept each other. And mainstream society tends to not frown too heavily on people who pick such non-mainstream lifestyles. If you're an upper/upper-middle-class Brazilian, though, there is the ONE way. You dress a certain way (or in one of 3 or 4 certain ways, each applicable to a certain kind of social situation), you talk about certain topics (for men it's soccer, business/finance, cars, popular music/TV/movies, travels, what the government is doing badly, and maybe technology but strictly from a user's point of view), you groom yourself extremely well, you stay in shape. It really is very homogeneous, with little room for variation. Anyone who deviates from those expectations/standards in public alienates everyone else and will be thought of as weird. If you don't behave like everyone else, then you want something different out of life, and thus you're unpredictable and hard to relate to, and people won't want to form relationships with you. Kinda like being a nerd in 7th grade, but in the adult world. And upper-class society in Brazil is one big clique; Either you're in or you're out.
That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but less so than the text in the blog post. And in any case, the difference between Brazilian upper-middle-class society and American upper-middle-class society is the one explained here (in Brazil you have to stay in shape, groom yourself well, dress the right way, and not deviate); the DEGREE of the extent of that difference can be debated but the trends are these. You can debate the magnitude but not the direction of these differences.
I'll say one more thing to add to the stereotype: Brazilian women feel entitled to a lot of things. If you think Americans have too much of a sense of entitlement and expect too much out of life (nice cars, a big house, nice clothes, interesting trips regularly, fancy gadgets), just wait until you meet an upper/upper-middle-class Brazilian woman. They expect all that, AND expect things out of their romantic relationships that are analogously unreasonable. In 14 years living there I have met only a handful of women who don't have these crazy expectations, and I'm still in touch with most of them, since only the truly remarkable people manage to pull themselves out of the Matrix like that. Also, most Brazilian women are much bigger drama queens than most American women. To be honest, after having had romantic relationships with a few reasonable and smart and nerdy American women, I think that more than 95% of women in the upper/upper-middle class of Brazil's cities are just not very appealing to me romantically anymore. And the other 5% have a kind of personality that is not well represented in mainstream culture down there, so it's hard to find such reasonable-mindedness being displayed publicly.
HA! You went to Mackenzie University? It's a cellar of clueless patricinhas! Paris Hilton wannabes, the majority of your classmates would be. Of course your opinion of brazilian girls are biased, if you spent time between rich girls with empty minds and for your information they're majority in private managed universities, the rich kids that know very well that they don't have to fight for their future or get a job for daddy provides them with all their needs. I'm kinda sorry you spent 6 years living in a shell. Please don't analyze an entire country for your very limited and privileged experience. Mackenzie University isn't an example of the average brazilian population. Should I consider Alicia Silverstone's character in Clueless as a fit portrait of american girls? Are all american girls blond and dumb as in Legally Blonde?
Maggie, I'm kind of sad because somehow your article meant to portrait the great series of articles on Brazil on Wendi Muse's posts and instead made it sound like a cliché repeated and people are reacting to what they see here without even going to the link.
I'm brazilian, I'm carioca and I really enjoyed her views on race, gender and cultural differences between USA and Brazil. I think Wendi is intelligent, writes well and doesn't deserves all the hating and misunderstanding she's getting here in the comments. I really wish people would be less blindsided and biased and go read what she writes and the comments on the posts too. And she totally defenses the point that her experience at Brazil isn't meant to be taken as an universal truth.
I think the misconception here comes from the piece you chose to pinpoint on the article, her highlighted answer to the "are they hot" in her article debacles and answers it so much better...
Citing the complete paragraphs:
"This is the most common question I receive from American men when I explain that I have been living in Brazil. These men come from all walks of life, are of various racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds, and of varying levels of education, exposure to other countries, etc. Long story short, this question seems to be on the minds of many men. It is, for better or for worse, a universal curiosity.
But in my response, I quickly put things in perspective.
“Well, for one, Ugly travels. I see just as many unattractive people in Brazil as I do in the States, and equally as many beautiful people on both sides as well. But I can safely say that the majority of women in Brazil work really hard to be beautiful, more so than the majority of American women.”
I just hope the horde of brazilians angry at "see what that ignorant american girl is doing and how she is perpetuating the stereotype" could really take less time at bashing and more at reading instead of jumping and criticizing as defense. Clicking the link would be easy enough, but criticizing without reading is faster. Well, trolls will be trolls.
By the way, I'm a native carioca, grew and lived in Rio since I was born, I don't care for my nails and can't recall the last time I underwent manicure or pedicure, I don't doll up, I hate Carnaval, I don't use bikini, I don't go to beach, I don't know how to dance samba, often I forget to wear lipstick, I dye my hair at home, don't give a shit for looks AND consider myself as typical a girl from Rio as one could be. And if I'm hot or not is a matter that concerns only myself and my partner of choice.
Thanks for sharing Racialicious, I passed some great hours reading the articles and think it's a great site!
hi, this is wendi muse, the author. and i agree with the last commenter lamika, you must read the entire series to understand what i am getting at. there are 3 parts...check out the articles before you make generalizations saying i am an ignorant american who simply "gets it all wrong," thanks! :-)
i lived in a suburb in the state of sao paulo, frequently visited friends and my girlfriend in sao paulo (cidade), and also lived in minas gerais (close to belo horizonte). in addition, i have been to rio and salvador (in the north) and have a good idea of fashion and "Estetica" in various parts of the country. so my statements are a culmination of observations, but also historical background and stats that go beyond just anecdotes from vacation time or something.
when people would ask me the "Are they hot?" question, i found it offensive...i didn't excuse their ignorance, and often went into explaining hy that stereotype is based on an over-exotofication of brazilian women, a sexist, racist, and classist one at that, if you look at the big picture.
so again, this paragraph does not accurately portray the depth of the series and the time and thought i put into both what i wrote and my responses to those who commented on racialicious during the time it was written.
~Wendi
p.s. there is a brazilian commenter above who also makes note of the media culture there. in latin america period, the pressure on women to look a certain way is far more intense than in the etstaes. sure, it's bad here and you're supposed to be thin, white, wealthy, etc, but i think there, speaking for brazil and many countries in latin america, there is the address pressure because of sexism and classism that play a huge role in the beauty norms, more so than here because class is often such a prevalent, visible issue...
oh and one more thing...the concept of being "bem arrumada" has a lot to do with clothing, but far more to do with personal maintenance (i.e. waxing, smooth skin, manicured nails and pedicured toes). i make to mention this during the class section as one thing i noticed in brazil is that clothes tend to be on the expensive side (unless you're buying at markets or stores on the street) when compared to quality clothes in the states (As a result of high import taxation to protect the brazilian domestic textile industries/clothing companies)
In Brazil, beautiful isn't synonymous of high heels or nails done. I can tell, I'm Brazilian ;)
It's been said but I'll say it again. Brazil is huge,contains all sorts of people, descending from several cultures around the world. Please, don't spread this image of us... we're much more than that!
As a Brazilian girl, I must say that it´s so sad that your friend thinks that she can judge a country by a small experience she had. Brazil´s a multicultural country, with a lot of different people, with different tastes. In a city like São Paulo there´re all kinds of places to go, all kinds of people and not just this "high maintanance" type. As in any country, there are a lot of girls like this here, but if we could say there is a common type, I can assure you, americans girls much, much more high maintanence. We don´t wear as much make up, we go out at night in sandals (like Havaianas), we don´t care so much about brands. In Rio, things are even more informal, because the beach is right there, and the clothes are casual.
I really wish that people don´t get the wrong image of Brazilian girls from your post.
I have to say that even though we LIKE TO use make up and high heels we don't HAVE TO. I don't use it everyday and I still look good (or hot as you prefer). We're beautifull because is part of our genetics and we like to take care of our appearance because is part of our culture.
Ana Paula- NATAL/BRASIL
this is wendi again...i have spent weeks defending myself based on this article, mainly because the excerpt here, if that's the only thing you read, is in my opinion prejudicial to the entire body of work in which i specifically state that it's not meant as a generalization of brazilian women...instead, a commentary on the pressure for brazilian women to look a certain way and what the social root and consequences are. it's not a comparison on whether or not brazilian or american women are more high maintenance, nor do i even say that (if you read the introduction, you will see that i make comments about the high rate of plastic surgery in the US, the myth being that brazil has higher numbers).
anwyay, again, i suggest that people read all 3 parts AND the intro before judging me or assuming that i think all brazilian women are alike.