Brazil, land of the thong bikini, embraces its heaviest version

In this coastal metropolis in Northeast Brazil, schools are buying bigger desks, hospitals are buying bigger beds and MRI machines, and the historic theater downtown now offers wider seats.

Recife is one of the fattest cities in Brazil. And it’s fast becoming one of the most welcoming places in the world for people with obesity.

This is because Recife is part of a growing movement in Brazil that, according to experts, has quickly made the country the world leader in terms of enshrining protections for overweight people.

In the last 20 years, the Brazilian obesity rate has doubled, reaching more than one in four adults today. In response, activists have struggled to make life less difficult for Brazilians who weigh a lot. And the success of their efforts stands out globally for transforming not just attitudes but laws.

Today, measures in place across the country grant obese people preferred seats on subways, priority in places like banks and, in some cases, protection from discrimination.

Here in Recife, a city of 1.6 million, a law passed last year requires schools to purchase larger desks and educate teachers about weight-based discrimination so they can include the subject in their classes. Another law created an annual overweight people’s rights day.

“There is much more that we can do at the national level, and God willing, one day we will be able to go internationally”, commented the activist from Recife, Karla Rezende, who began to press for the new laws when she realized that the normal seat belts on airplanes did not fit him. “There are fat people everywhere, and everyone suffers.”

She paused and then clarified: the cultural expectations that exist in Brazil can make life especially difficult for overweight Brazilians. “It’s the perfect body requirement,” she explained. “From the curves in measure.”

Like many other countries, Brazil has recently begun to grapple with racism, sexism and homophobia. But in a country where the body is often at the center of attention — think plastic surgery, flossing on the beach and a Carnival that has more feathers than cloth — there is also a national discussion emerging about how the country treats people with disabilities. overweight.

Fatphobia, a term that indicates discrimination on the basis of being overweight, is a term that is on everyone’s lips in the country. It is at the center of heated discussions on one of the most watched TV shows in Brazil, the reality show Big Brother Brasil, and is the main topic discussed on Instagram and TikTok accounts that have millions of followers.

The biggest Brazilian pop star, Anitta, draws attention for including obese women in her music videos and sometimes not photoshopping her cellulite. And, after the death of country singer Marília Mendonça last year in a plane crash, some journalists and commentators were heavily criticized for mentioning her weight.

Brazil is in some ways following a trend seen in the United States and Europe, where larger models are gaining presence on the catwalks. But in terms of public policies, the movement in Brazil has quickly surpassed many other countries, according to experts. The debate in the country went from the media to city councils, state legislatures and Congress.

In 2015, amendments to a federal law enacted 15 years earlier were adopted to extend the protections given to people with physical disabilities to overweight people, giving them the right to preferential seats on public transport and priority in certain places such as benches. .

The São Paulo subway now has wider seats for obese people, and in Rio de Janeiro there are some at Maracanã. Three Brazilian states recently dedicated September 10 to promoting the rights of obese people. And, in December, one of them, Rondônia, also passed a law that guarantees obese people “access everywhere”, “dignified treatment” and protection against fatphobia.

“We’re seeing collective efforts by public policymakers in Brazil to tackle this problem in a way that we’re not really seeing elsewhere,” commented Rebecca Puhl, a professor at the University of Connecticut who follows these types of laws. “In the US and, frankly, around the rest of the world, the public policy landscape is empty.”

According to Puhl, since 1967, when Michigan passed a law protecting people from weight discrimination, there have been few major or related public policies in the US. Massachusetts is considering passing similar legislation, although it has not been able to carry out the proposal previously. A similar law was passed in 2016 in Iceland’s capital, Reykjavík. And in 2014 the European Court of Justice ruled that severe obesity can legally render people disabled, potentially protecting them from discrimination. But obesity alone is not worthy of protection.

Fatphobia began to be cited in Brazilian court rulings in 2014, and cases have steadily increased since then, according to a review of available judgments by the Brazilian activist organization Gorda na Lei. In October, a judge imposed a fine of US$1,000 (about R$5,100) to a comedian for making jokes about the weight of an obese Brazilian dancer. “The defendant exuded unequivocal fatphobia,” the judge said in his ruling. Freedom of expression is allowed, he added, “but it is the duty of the state to protect minorities.”

Even so, inspection often leaves something to be desired in the country. Rayane Souza, co-founder of Gorda na Lei, said many forms of public transport remain inaccessible despite the 2015 law. She pointed to an incident that occurred recently in Guarapari, where an obese woman was trapped in a bus turnstile. Firefighters freed her while the other passengers laughed, according to the G1 news portal. “I cry at night just remembering what people said,” Rosângela Pereira told G1 days later.

In 2020, almost 29% of Brazilians over 20 years old were obese, and in 2000 there were about 15% in this situation. According to the Institute of Health Measurement and Evaluation at the University of Washington, it is one of the biggest increases seen in any country during this period. Among the world’s 10 most populous countries, only Mexico, the United States and Russia had higher obesity rates, ranging from 31% to 37%, according to the data.

Claudia Cozer Kalil, an endocrinologist at one of Brazil’s largest hospitals in São Paulo, attributed the rising obesity in part to salary increases that led to poor diets based on fast food and processed foods. According to her, the increase in obesity has been accompanied by related health problems such as diabetes, hypertension and sleep apnea. She thinks the government should do more to combat the problem, including improving food product labels. In Brazil, nutrition labels often do not include sugar, for example.

Even so, she is in favor of the laws. “The truth is that the population is heavier,” she said. “We need to adapt to that.”

The Brazilian debate on fatphobia also revolves around the unrealistic image of the Brazilian body in the national and international media. For activists, the psychological impact of this image is illustrated by the efforts of Brazilian women to swell lips, breasts, buttocks and muscles and to reduce their fat with liposuction, all at a much higher rate than in most other countries.

Brazil was the world leader in plastic surgeries in 2019. In 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, 6.1 plastic surgeries were performed per thousand people, against 4.5 per thousand people in the United States, the world leader in total plastic surgeries that year , according to figures from a global association of plastic surgeons. A risky surgery that involves transferring fat from the abdomen to the buttocks came to be called the “Brazilian butt lift”.

In a beauty contest for plus size men and women held in Recife in November, the theme was to face fatphobia and challenge stereotypes of the perfect body. During an emotional moment, the participants stood on stage as actors shouted insults at them.

Many Brazilians agree that Brazilian society, in general, gives more importance than other Western countries to the shapely female body. And a walk along the beaches or parks in Brazil reinforces that there are many overweight men and women who feel very comfortable with their bodies and do not hesitate to wear a bikini or swim trunks.

But, according to activists, these people do not represent all Brazilians. Souza said that despite living close to the beach, she didn’t wear a bikini for 11 years after being called a whale. “Nowadays, when a woman wears a bikini, it has a lot more to do with her own self-acceptance than social acceptance,” she commented.

Carol Stadtler, founder of Belezas do Corpo, another activist group in Recife, said that gaining social acceptance is a part of the movement. But possibly more important than that, for her, is getting them to physically fit into society.

“It’s not just about being pretty or ugly or having the body of a Brazilian woman,” she said, speaking after the contest, where, she said, the chairs in the venue left painful marks on her legs. “It’s also the fact that we don’t fit in the chairs.”

Translation by Clara Allain.