My family and I recently visited South America to say hello to some of my wife's relatives, who live in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. From a South African's perspective, Argentina is all noise and fury but not much substance - fiery tango and bad infrastructure. Uruguay is - well, it's Montevideo and Punta del Este. The former is eminently forgettable and the latter is the Plettenberg Bay of South America. Brazil, however, is in another league - clearly the economic powerhouse of the continent.
Take their inner city. In Sao Paolo, where robbers, hawkers and pickpockets once roamed the streets around the main train station, a clever set of tax incentives has transformed it into a place where families now enjoy coffees at pavement cafés, visit the new art gallery or enjoy a world class experience at the Portuguese language museum. They're getting a lot more right than we are, but their democracy is a bit older than ours, so we'll reserve judgement till later. Mostly, it's amazing, but when they get it wrong, it's terrifying.
I could quote many examples, but Brazil's most enduring phenomenon, the Brazilian Bikini, is the perfect metaphor.
For South Africans not accustomed to this tiny excuse for beachwear, it can be unsettling to see women as scantily clad as they are on a Brazilian beach. South Africa has a more conservative view of the bikini – on most of our beaches they still tend to cover almost all of the bum and breasts (except for the odd topless bather in Cape Town). As far as body image goes, our women still appear to view the breasts as their primary asset when in beachwear.
In Brazil, my wife and I immediately noticed that the focus moves further south, with virtually everyone, right up to grandma, wearing bottoms that show a generous acreage of buttock. Although all the private bits are covered, it’s more of a gesture rather than actual concealment. It's obeying the rules, but not obeying them.
It's a contradiction that reflects a larger blurring with a lot of things in Brazil. Take race, for example. Unlike South Africa, where everyone is terribly hung up on whether you are white, coloured, Indian or black, in Brazil everything is far less definable. It's a true rainbow nation with so many varying shades of coffee that no amount of classification could ever work, so people just forget about it, ignore your colour and get on with life. What a massive relief!
But back to the Brazilian bikini - on pert bodies it is truly a wonder to behold. The bright tiny wisps of cloth happily wave hello as they bounce firmly by.
So much for your typical postcard image of the Copacabana. Now for reality: on latina matrons of a certain age, the Brazilian bikini is a deeply disturbing sight. It’s probably the only time on a beach that I ever found myself thinking wistfully of those whalebone swimsuits my mom used to wear in the sixties. No matter how far you’ve let yourself go, at least they preserved a measure of dignity.
In Brazil, the grannies wear Brazilians. Oh, the horror. The top part struggles with the engineering, a lightweight façade making a spectacular failure at heavy-lifting - a pair of neon teaspoons trying to scoop up two recalcitrant wodges of molasses. The bottom part, however, is where it really becomes the stuff of nightmares. From the rear, the pitiful strip of cloth is engulfed between two gelatinous, dimpled tsunamis, drowning rather than waving.
Take their inner city. In Sao Paolo, where robbers, hawkers and pickpockets once roamed the streets around the main train station, a clever set of tax incentives has transformed it into a place where families now enjoy coffees at pavement cafés, visit the new art gallery or enjoy a world class experience at the Portuguese language museum. They're getting a lot more right than we are, but their democracy is a bit older than ours, so we'll reserve judgement till later. Mostly, it's amazing, but when they get it wrong, it's terrifying.
I could quote many examples, but Brazil's most enduring phenomenon, the Brazilian Bikini, is the perfect metaphor.
For South Africans not accustomed to this tiny excuse for beachwear, it can be unsettling to see women as scantily clad as they are on a Brazilian beach. South Africa has a more conservative view of the bikini – on most of our beaches they still tend to cover almost all of the bum and breasts (except for the odd topless bather in Cape Town). As far as body image goes, our women still appear to view the breasts as their primary asset when in beachwear.
In Brazil, my wife and I immediately noticed that the focus moves further south, with virtually everyone, right up to grandma, wearing bottoms that show a generous acreage of buttock. Although all the private bits are covered, it’s more of a gesture rather than actual concealment. It's obeying the rules, but not obeying them.
It's a contradiction that reflects a larger blurring with a lot of things in Brazil. Take race, for example. Unlike South Africa, where everyone is terribly hung up on whether you are white, coloured, Indian or black, in Brazil everything is far less definable. It's a true rainbow nation with so many varying shades of coffee that no amount of classification could ever work, so people just forget about it, ignore your colour and get on with life. What a massive relief!
But back to the Brazilian bikini - on pert bodies it is truly a wonder to behold. The bright tiny wisps of cloth happily wave hello as they bounce firmly by.
So much for your typical postcard image of the Copacabana. Now for reality: on latina matrons of a certain age, the Brazilian bikini is a deeply disturbing sight. It’s probably the only time on a beach that I ever found myself thinking wistfully of those whalebone swimsuits my mom used to wear in the sixties. No matter how far you’ve let yourself go, at least they preserved a measure of dignity.
In Brazil, the grannies wear Brazilians. Oh, the horror. The top part struggles with the engineering, a lightweight façade making a spectacular failure at heavy-lifting - a pair of neon teaspoons trying to scoop up two recalcitrant wodges of molasses. The bottom part, however, is where it really becomes the stuff of nightmares. From the rear, the pitiful strip of cloth is engulfed between two gelatinous, dimpled tsunamis, drowning rather than waving.
