Via the_future_modernes: Fashionably Colonized: Hybrid Vigor, Brazilian Models, and Global Ideas of Beauty

The smartly-written article takes an interesting turn – while the models associated with Brazil are overwhelmingly white, the country is beginning to embrace nonwhite women who fit their standards of beauty. And yet…

Despite those shifts, more than half of Brazil’s models continue to be found here among the tiny farms of Rio Grande do Sul, a state that has only one-twentieth of the nation’s population and was colonized predominantly by Germans and Italians.

Brazilians are equally perplexed:

The pattern creates a disconnect between what many Brazilians consider beautiful and the beauty they export overseas. While darker-skinned actresses like Juliana Paes and Camila Pitanga are considered among Brazil’s sexiest, it is Ms. Bündchen and her fellow southerners who win fame abroad.

“I was always perplexed that Brazil was never able to export a Naomi Campbell, and it is definitely not because of a lack of pretty women,” said Erika Palomino, a fashion consultant in São Paulo. “It is embarrassing.”

Read the comments.

You know, I could care less about the image "Brazil exports" or "what is presented to the Global beauty market (USA or Europe)," because articles like this are always about what we give to the first world, which of course is white because our ideal is your white supremacy! But this comment by moth:

I read an interview with Giselle (the white Brazilian supermodel) in Vogue in which she described trying to volunteer with an organization for Portugeese speakers in Boston (where she now lives.) In the article she talks about how she wanted to “save” the young impoverished girls she worked with, but she felt she was unable to because the girls were black and Latina and they saw her as white whereas she felt that there was no such thing as race or racial tension in Brazil because “everyone is mixed.” To me, it was a perfect example of Brazilian racial ignorance.

Giselle? There isn't such a thing as "racial tension because everyone is mixed"? Honey, you are the prove of that, aren't you.

Dear fucking God, now racism in Latin America passed from disgustingly blatant to "non-existent" because some white blue-eyed model living in Boston thinks so. Urg, urg, urg, urg.

Also, if you scroll down the comments, you will see how this woman's fail gets worse.

ETA: Also? The NYT article is full of shit. Just to leave things clear, "what many Brazilians consider beautiful." I'm kinda skeptical in that aspect. (Well, yeah, the women put as examples of "Brazil beauty" are very light-skinned, so it may be right after all.)

People, first of all, I need to go on hiatus badly. Let's just say I have a Biochemistry final the 22th and I have been slacking like there is no tomorrow. I shouldn't look at mi computer until then. Like not even pass in front of it. But since I know you are laughing now (if you aren't, why aren't you?), I will just say that if you see me here, kick me. Please.

Thank you, Reborn, for delaying my hiatus with your emotional manipulation!

( Reborn 293 actual chapter. My heart will go on )

I think a two weeks hiatus will be good for me if I can get aways from this (meaning Reborn's) fadom. Yes, because apparently I don't have enough with LJ's fandom, I also spend my free time roaming in fanboys-dominated forums. Why? Because you should know by now I'm a masochist. I just do the weirdest shit to myself.