{"id":58459,"date":"2019-07-11T17:46:26","date_gmt":"2019-07-11T17:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=58459"},"modified":"2021-01-21T16:11:14","modified_gmt":"2021-01-21T16:11:14","slug":"sensual-not-beautiful-the-mulata-as-erotic-spectacle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=58459","title":{"rendered":"Sensual Not Beautiful: The Mulata as Erotic Spectacle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sensual Not Beautiful: The Mulata as Erotic Spectacle<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America<\/a>
\nSpring 2017 (Black is Beautiful)<\/a><\/p>\n

Jasmine Mitchell<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor of American Studies and Media Studies
\nState University of New York, Old Westbury<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"iconic<\/a>
\nThe iconic mulata<\/a> female body is portrayed in Brazil<\/a> as glistening brown. Photo courtesy of Jasmine Mitchell<\/a>.<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

While white actresses and models still dominate beauty and fashion magazines in Brazil<\/a>, on my last few visits to Brazil, I’ve noticed that actresses of African descent such as Camila Pitanga<\/a> and Ta\u00eds Ara\u00fajo<\/a> have also graced the covers. Since 2009, both actresses have also starred in telenovelas<\/a>. Miss Brazil<\/a> 2016 is the first black winner since Deise Nunes\u2019s<\/a> crowning in 1986. The 2016 competition had the largest number of black candidates in its history. The dominant conceptualizations of beauty in Brazil are shifting. Erika Moura<\/a>, the Mulata Globeleza<\/a> of 2017, did not appear as a bodypainted nude Rio de Janeiro<\/a> samba dancer<\/a>, but instead performed in various costumes and dance styles representing a breadth of Brazilian regional cultures.<\/p>\n

It’s certainly not been this way for very long. In 2001, on my first trip to Brazil, I yearned to find a refuge, a place where my background as a mixed-race black woman from the United States<\/a> was neither exotic nor fetishized. Relying on Brazil\u2019s reputed celebration of racial mixing<\/a>, I believed that it would become my racial paradise in which brown was beautiful and I would find a resistance to the exclusivity of white U.S. beauty norms.<\/p>\n

Instead, I became familiar with a Brazilian saying, “Branca para casar, mulata para fornicar, negra para trabalhar<\/a><\/em> (white women for marriage, mulata<\/a> women for sex, black women for work).\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2001, on my first trip to Brazil, I yearned to find a refuge, a place where my background as a mixed-race black woman from the United States was neither exotic nor fetishized. Relying on Brazil\u2019s reputed celebration of racial mixing, I believed that it would become my racial paradise in which brown was beautiful and I would find a resistance to the exclusivity of white U.S. beauty norms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,83,21,8413,8,25],"tags":[982,31266,29982,29993,29992],"class_list":["post-58459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-brazil","category-latincarib","category-communications","category-media-archive","category-women","tag-beauty-pageants","tag-camila-pitanga","tag-jasmine-mitchell","tag-revista","tag-revista-harvard-review-of-latin-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58459"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60496,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58459\/revisions\/60496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}