The Disposable Carnival Woman

 

A couple of weeks before the Rio carnival takes place, Brazilian newspapers start disclosing the carnival trends.  Chief among this year’s trends was the arrival of a previously unknown female species referred to as fruit-women or mulher-fruita in Portuguese.  Carnival over, these women disappear as mysteriously as they had appeared.

Brazil is a tropical country endowed with both curvaceous women and big and juicy fruits.  Melancia, morango, maçã, abóbora, mamão are the respective Portuguese names for watermelon, strawberry, apple, squash, and papaya.   These names sound better in Portuguese!  Fruit women experts certainly are able to tell the difference between a morango and a melancia woman.  I can’t; for me they all are large butt women.  Actually, I should add large butt and big thighs.  Brazilian women always have taken pride in their generous “derriere” but the big thigh thing is a relatively new fad. 



“Fruit of the loom”

A sample of Fruit Woman. Photo courtesy of Globo, Feb 23, 2009.

To qualify, a potential fruit-woman has to spend hours working out and weightlifting.  Leg curls and leg presses are the tools of the trade to tone those quadriceps and butt muscles.  The result is quite striking.  One celebrated fruit woman of the 2009 crop displayed thighs so big that in comparison American football players look like pencil-leg boys!

These muscular body shapes cannot be achieved with hard work only.  It has been reported that anabolic steroid cocktails are part of the diet.

“Nip and tuck” comes in handy too.  Brazil is a leader in cosmetic plastic surgery and to make surgery affordable it can be paid in easy installments.  Body enhancement requires kilos of silicone implants in strategic locations like boobs and bum.   I am pretty sure that Brazil is the largest consumer of silicone per capita. The above pictured lady had 400 grams injected in each boob and another 500 in each buttock.  In newspapers, fruit-women are commonly described by their hip and breast measurements, as well as the number of cosmetic surgeries they went through and the loads of silicone in their body.  Trade-show cows don’t suffer so much indignity.  Obviously the fruit-women relish the short-lived publicity.

Although the fruit-women are very young, mostly in their early 20s, many may not last very long.  Like fruit, they have short shelf-lives.  It is quite ironic that in spite of the effort and expense, the 2009 crop has not managed to outshine the beloved queens of the carnival parade.   This year again, Luiza Brunet and Luma de Oliveira were all the talk of the Sambodrome.   Once more these 40 something former models have taken the carnival avenue by storm.  They have paraded for years and keep breaking the youth beauty paradigm, not to mention Suzana Viera, who at 63 is the samba queen grandma.



Suzana and Beethoven, the samba parade dog.  Photo Globo.

However, the true sweetheart of the 2009 samba parade was a stray dog hastily named Beethoven.  By parading uninvited every night during the whole carnival week, Beethoven proved to be a true Carioca dog.  His status consequently was upgraded from unwelcome stray to top dog:  He got proper credentials for the last night of carnival and also found a good home for the rest of its life!

“Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas” isn’t it so Beethoven?

Beatrice Labonne, March 21, 2009.

French Cowboys Don’t Wear Jeans

 

The French cowboy was officially born 100 years ago in the Camargue in the south of France in Provence.  In fact, he was reborn as a folk hero, American Wild West style in 1909. Cowboys have always lived in the marshes of the Camargue (the delta of the Rhône River). The region is the ancestral home of the diminutive black Camargue bull, the smallish white Camargue horse and the normal-size pink Camargue flamingo.  Camargue cowboys are known as gardians, and like their American counterparts they herd cattle.  Cattle ranches are called manades which is the French translation of manado, or herd, in the local Occitan language.   

The inventor of the folk hero gardian was the romantic eccentric “Marquis” Folco de Baroncelli of Provence.  Because he bred livestock and loved the Camargue’s way of life, he dedicated his life to revive, re-organize and promote its local traditions. On 16 September 1909 the marquis founded the Nacioun Gardiano¹ which in Occitan means the Gardian Nation.  The Camargue’s traditions are centered on the bulls and additionally on the horse and its rider.  The marquis had recently befriended William Frederic Cody aka Buffalo Bill during his 1889 European and French tour.  Consequently, some authors claimed that Baroncelli was so impressed by the Wild West folklore that he wanted to replicate it in the Camargue which offered the necessary attributes.  Other pundits believed that the marquis, who was a dyed-in-the wool Provençal and an Occitan speaker wanted to protect the local traditions against the centralizing and controlling forces of the Paris-based French République.  

In reviving the rural traditions this pioneer regionalist may not have anticipated that he was creating a winning tourism business for the region. The gardians of Camargue are the guardian angels of the bull herds. The bulls are free range, wild and plucky.  The gardians don’t participate in rodeos like their Wild West counterparts; they don’t throw lassos either.  They ride all day long to catch calves for branding, take bulls from the pastures to the paddock abrivado in Occitan and to the arènes or rings where bulls and men defy one another.  Bulls are mainly bred to become kings of the arènes during the courses camarguaises. 

Courses camarguaises are the local version of bullfighting without the blood.  If blood is occasionally spilt it is that of the man who teases the bulls. This man is known as arasseteur.  With the help of a hook (rasset) he tries to remove colorful ribbons artfully pinned between the bull’s horns. Gardians, bulls and horses are also fixtures of the fêtes votives, the annual patron saint celebrations of the hundreds of villages in and around Camargue².
1 www.nacioun-gardiano.fr

2 www.the-languedoc-page.com/articles/languedoc-articles99.htm

Figure 1: Camargue Gardians enter the arenas with their charges in St Laurent d'Aigouse, August 2009

To put to the test his reviving efforts, the marquis sought the approval of experts.  In his view, no one could do this better than Buffalo Bill and his Sioux chiefs. When Buffalo Bill returned to France in 1905 he traveled to the south.  The party set up its big tent in Nimes, a town located north of the Camargue.  The marquis invited the Americans to bull sorting and branding in le Cailar, a village still renowned for its festive and genuine fêtes votives.  From there, men, horses and bulls traveled to the village of Gallargues a distance of 10 kms.  The Americans were so impressed by the show that they presented the marquis a pair of pearl-embroidered Indian moccasins.  The whole episode was reported in a famous Occitan newspaper.  The Nacioun Gardiano had successfully passed the test. 

One would have thought that Buffalo Bill traveled to Nimes to see for himself the city where denim, the fabric of blue jeans was born.  In 19^th century America, the rugged blue cotton twill fabric called serge de Nimes became denim for short.  Dry goods merchant Levi Straus imported loads of the textile through the port of Genoa (or Gênes in French), from which the word jeans is derived.  Levi Straus made his fortune by selling his riveted pants to both cowboys and gold diggers toiling in the American Old West. 

The Camargue of Baroncelli’s time was unaware of the blue jeans craze in gold rush California.  Ironically, blue jeans are anathema to the gardians’ outfit.  No genuine gardian will dare to wear them in public. The marquis insisted that the gardians follow a very strict dress code. They were required to wear cotton moleskin pants in grey, beige or black. However, the black soft brimmed hat was optional. 

     Figure 2: Camargue abrivado: Gardians escorting two black bulls in 2008!

When the marquis founded the Nacioun Gardiano he may not have anticipated that the trade would become increasingly feminine.  It is not an entirely surprising development as there are more girls than boys in French riding schools. Reflecting the French race mix, the guardian business attracts riders of African descent.    

Now the Nacioun Gardiano is celebrating its 100-year anniversary.  The marquis may not have foreseen that his brainchild would still entertain the local folks, as well as attract thousands of tourists to the Camargue.  The region’s folklore is unique in France as both tourists and locals cheer together the bulls, horses and men.  Horse and bull shows are vital to the local economy. It is a small price to pay to keep old traditions alive.  Buffalo Bill and his Sioux would have certainly approved. 

Beatrice Labonne

Calvisson, France

September 2009

The "Queendom" of chic bikinis

The INC girls with Lenny, the Carioca swimsuit goddess, January 2011. "Dress shabbily and they remember the dress;dress impeccably and they remember the woman." Coco Chanel.

Rio de Janeiro is regarded as a picture of hedonism; a postcard of Ipanema beach illustrates this perception.  For decades, Ipanema has been the trendsetter in beach-wear, and the home of the skimpy bikini.  One doesn’t visit Rio without dropping in at a bikini store near the beach.  This store is probably named “Lenny”.  Lenny is a house name in Rio.  It is the first name of Ms. Lenny Niemeyer who founded the brand.  In Brazil, celebrities such as soccer players or presidents, are one-moniker persons (e.g. Lula, Dilma, and Pelé).  Ms. Niemeyer is known as Lenny. 

Lenny was not trained a beachwear and swimsuit designer but as a lanscape designer.  She is related to the famous centenarian architect Oscar Niemeyer.  Legend has it that she became a bikini designer because she could not find any suitable bikinis on the market.  She started her brand in 1993; her Carioca beach wear and fashion business has now crossed the Atlantic and is known for quality, style and wear-ability.  Her business is an achievement, as well as a design succes.  Doing business in Brazil is not for the faint of heart! Brazil may be making a buzz in the economic section of magazines, but it is not an easy country in which to do business.  It ranks 127 out of 183 economies on the 2011 World Bank Doing Business list.  Lenny’s business success is only more outstanding.

 As the proud owner of couple of Lenny’s bikinis, I had always wanted to meet her and hear her story as a successful woman entrepreneur.  Many of my friends in the International club of Rio (INC) wanted to meet with her as well.  An appointment was set through Ms. Luiza, her marketing person.  Sixteen women from different nationalities went to Lenny’s factory in Botafogo, a suburb of Rio. 

We met in her spacious, light and friendly office.  Sketches were laying on a table and wall to wall garment racks made the place unassuming but business-like.  Lenny was wearing a trapeze-cut white shirt over skinny jeans.  She greeted us warmly with a kiss, a time-honored Brazilian tradition.  We felt very welcome; soft drinks and pães de queijo (a kind of cheese buns) were served.  We chatted for over an hour.

She candidly shared with us her experience as a business woman and the many challenges she faced, how her business grew one step at a time, her patience and resourcefulness to confront the odds to stick to her business model and finally how she organizes her workers (around 150) and manages her purchases.  She explained her frustration in maintaining quality control of her products and she lamented that she had to import accessories from China instead of buying them locally.  This matter was not lost on us since we had recently visited the Sebrae craft center in downtown Rio.  Sebrae is a business organization which helps craftsmen use their own crafts to build a reliable business.  Based on Lenny’s misgivings, Sebrae has its job cut out for it.

Many of us have Lenny bikinis or beachwear in our closets.  To buy a bikini is a fearful experience for any woman, unless they are 18 or have the body of Gisele Bundchen. The first challenge is to face the light of the dressing room which makes one look fatter and flabbier than one thinks.  Swimsuits never seem to have been cut for one's bodies.  If the top fits, the bottom doesn’t.  Women face a special hurdle in choosing a bikini in Brazil.  Here bikinis, as well as one-piece suits, are smaller than elsewhere, they are cut lower too.  Above all, the bottom part of the bikini is made of two minute triangles of fabric, with the back even smaller than the front.  Lenny doesn't sell these dental floss-type bikinis, moreover a woman can place special order bikinis with the bottom and top in different sizes to fit bosomy or flat-chested bodies.  Lenny’s bikinis are flattering because they are well-cut, in stretched fabric with pleasing prints.  

We visited her factory.  The print selection process was particularly interesting; Lenny purchases the printed fabric which she can modify to her choice with a computer program.  The visit ended in the show room where we enjoyed viewing her latest collection of beachwear and chic street wear, a new addition to her line of business.  Our visit over, we went to thank Lenny for her gracious hospitality.  She gave us a nice cologne with her new collection catalogue.  We were touched by her generosity and straightforwardness, qualities often lacking in successful people.  Lenny, the carioca swimwear queen had found the time to chat with us.  Surely many of us will become loyal Lenny customers.

Before organizing the visit I had searched the web for up-to-date information on Lenny and her business.  I came across the King Monty blog which irreverently claims that Lenny is the “queen of bums” for us she is the queen of chic bums.  It makes a hell of a lot of difference.

Beatrice Labonne, 6 February 2011.