{"id":63811,"date":"2015-10-28T10:43:42","date_gmt":"2015-10-28T15:43:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=63811"},"modified":"2015-10-28T10:43:42","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T15:43:42","slug":"brazil-beauty-parade-celebrates-indigenous-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/10\/28\/brazil-beauty-parade-celebrates-indigenous-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazil \u2018Beauty Parade\u2019 celebrates indigenous women"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"(Photo<\/a>
(Photo from I World Indigenous Games 2015<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

PALMAS \u2013 Adelma Simoes Madeira adjusted her feathered headdress and took a deep breath before stepping out onto the red carpet. After all, this foray into the spotlight wasn\u2019t just about her. Madeira was representing her people.<\/p>\n

A 16-year-old from the Terena people of central Brazil, with wide-set eyes and an even wider smile, Madeira was one of more than 60 women and girls taking part in the \u201cparade of indigenous beauty\u201d at the World Indigenous Games in Brazil.<\/p>\n

Rail-thin or heavy, swathed in scarfs and ankle-length skirts or wearing only a thong bikini bottom and body paint, they incarnated the canons of beauty of first peoples from across Brazil and as far afield as Panama and French Guiana.<\/p>\n

Some had serious swagger in their step, cocking their hips at the end of the catwalk and shooting a come-hither stare that would have made Gisele Bundchen proud. Others looked completely chagrined, almost flinching as the cameras flashed and iPhones snapped around them.<\/p>\n

The Indigenous Games\u2019 organizers stressed it wasn\u2019t a beauty contest \u2013 no queen was crowned, no runners-up selected. It was rather a celebration of facial features, body types and adornments not often given their due, they said.<\/p>\n

The fact that the event took place at all marked something of a watershed, said organizer Tainara da Silva, also of the Terena people from Brazil\u2019s Mato Grosso do Sul state. A few years ago, such an event would have been unthinkable, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore, the elders didn\u2019t want to show their womenfolk in public,\u201d said Silva, an agronomist who started organizing beauty contests on her home reservation a few years ago. \u201cBut that\u2019s changing. They now see that this is a way of valorizing our culture and traditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although many Brazilians see theirs as a multicultural nation par excellence, the fruit of the mixing of blacks, whites and natives, indigenous people are largely absent from the country\u2019s popular culture.<\/p>\n

Blacks have made gains in recent years and now hold starring roles in the once white-dominated \u201ctelenovelas,\u201d the prime-time soap operas that command the ratings in Brazil, but indigenous characters are still nearly non-existent. The same holds for major ad campaigns: not an indigenous person in sight.<\/p>\n

This indigenous invisibility was what pushed Silva to champion the beauty exhibitions.<\/p>\n

\u201cModeling agencies are totally uninterested in hiring an indigenous woman, but they have no problem in getting a white girl and dressing her up in traditional indigenous clothes,\u201d Silva said. \u201cThat really bugged me, and I thought, \u2018We need to show them that we are beautiful, too.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Silva also sees the events as an opportunity to educate the Brazilian public about the diversity of the country\u2019s more than 300 indigenous groups, which are scattered across the width and breadth of this continent-sized nation \u2013 although their numbers have dwindled since pre-Columbian times and they now make up less than 0.5 percent of the population.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost times, people say, \u2018Look, there\u2019s an Indian,\u2019 without even realizing how many indigenous groups there are,\u201d Silva said. \u201cI want to show the richness of our people, how each of us is different and special.\u201d<\/p>\n

The participants, too, seem to regard walking the catwalk as an almost messianic mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt very proud, my parents felt very proud and my whole community felt very proud,\u201d said Madeira, the raven-haired beauty representing the Terena at the weekend parade.<\/p>\n

None of the participants in the events Silva has organized has gone on to score a modeling contract. But she hopes it’s just a matter of time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was a child, my dream was to become a model,\u201d she said. \u201cSince I wasn\u2019t able to make that dream reality, I would love to see it happen for one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The World Indigenous Games run through Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PALMAS \u2013 Adelma Simoes Madeira adjusted her feathered headdress and took a deep breath before stepping out onto the red …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":63812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-63811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fashion-and-beauty","tag-original","mauthors-jenny-barchfield","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}