Xuxa & Spiller
Body
Bare all about it!
Brazilians’ fascination with the naked body of their
female idols has no end. And since these idols seem eager to oblige
there’s a constant strip tease show going on. Some child and teen TV
artists just wait the legal 18 to show all their wares on Playboy, on
TV, or some other less sophisticated stage. “Queen of the shorties”
Xuxa, 32, for example, had already undressed for the cameras on a
softporno movie before becoming world famous.
Just recently Playboy disrobed Adriana Galisteu, 22,
the last sweetheart of late Formula 1 hero Ayrton Senna and took her to
Greece for the 26-page pictorial. The issue sold more than 1 million
copies, a record. When alive, Senna persuaded the magazine’s editors
not to publish a similar series of nudes.
Now is the turn of blond TV sweetie Letícia Spiller,
22, to bare it all. After many nos to TV and male magazines she chose a
most cultured way of exhibitionism, appearing in the Clara Góes’s play Abelardo, Heloísa (Abélard, Héloďse),
a retelling of the classic medieval story until now better known for
the tragic love affair between their protagonists. Director Moacyr Góes
decided that some nudity wouldn’t hurt the show. And was he right.
The Teatro Gloria’s spectacle has been so popular
since it opened October 5, that Góes had to add shows on weekends and
he has asked police to get rid of scalpers who have been reselling
tickets of the show for outrageous prices. The director had promised to
omit the scene in which Héloďse undresses herself for Abélard if the
nudity became bigger than the play. It did. But who would dare suppress
the scene now and start a civil war in the country?
Crime
The lion’s share
Without too much to do in prison and while preparing for a much busier life outside, Carioca (from Rio) Sérgio Ratazana (Big Rat), Cerro Corá’s favela
(shanty town) drug lord, had a macabre idea to finish up his foes —
policemen and rival gangsters — without a trace. He ordered his
henchmen to raise two lions whose diet should include human flesh in
preparation to eat his enemies.
Sansăo and Dalila were bought and were being raised
accordingly, when police got wind of the scheme. Apparently worried
that he would become a victim of their own weapon a Ratazana’s acolyte
called the cops and gave them the service. The police found the
five-month, well-fed and still cuddly beasts before the lawmen
themselves could be had for lunch.
Sin
A very rough-cut
Citing the Gospel of St. Matthew, “if thy right eye is an occasion of sin to thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee”, Paulista
(from Săo Paulo) Édson Passos, 36, severed his own penis in a bizarre
reenacting of the John Bobbitt’s episode in which the American
ex-marine was castrated by his jealous wife Lorena. For almost two
decades Passos has been on a spiritual journey trying to master his
carnal desires. Among other sects and religions, he frequented Umbanda,
the Baptist Church, and lately was at the Igreja Universal do Reino de
Deus (see our cover story).
All of this and all the prayers, however, weren’t
enough to take his mind off sinful thoughts. He confessed, “I couldn’t
resist touching women on crowded trains and wasn’t able to be faithful
to my wife. I was even thinking about sexually molesting a
five-year-old niece.”
His self-mutilation act was well thought through.
Passos, an auto mechanic, built in his workshop a three-feet-tall and
one-feet-wide guillotine with a very sharp blade connected to a
20-pound weight. After cutting his glans out, on a Sunday morning,
Passos ran to his neighbor who took him to Hospital do Mandaqui’s
emergency room. Only at 9 PM the doctors started an implant operation,
which took five hours. It was doubtful the surgery would be successful.
But even without the glans, Passos, after a plastic surgery, may have a
normal sexual life, according to his doctors. At home, his wife and
children can’t understand what got into the mechanic. A psychological
test didn’t detect any grave psychological disorder and Passos doesn’t
regret his action for a minute. “I have proved that I love God more
than the devil,” he said. “Now I know He will spare me the temptations.”
Penis shy
For Brazilian machőes these were bad
news. The average national penis is only 14.1 cm (5.5”), it was
revealed during the recent 3rd Latin American Congress on Sexual
Impotence which was held in Săo Paulo. If there was any consolation was
the fact that this is the worldwide average too. Three studies have
been made in Brazil since 1990 to measure the male organ, which shows a
little obsession there with the subject. Mineiro (from
Minas Gerais) urologist Luiz Otávio Torres, responsible for the latest
penis research, commented, “In Brazil there’s this reverence for the
8-inch penises seen on porno movies, but they are very rare.”
No sex, we are Brazilian
For years, tourist appeals to visit Brazil have
practically disappeared from the media all over the world. Embratur,
the state agency in charge of promoting the country, has been bankrupt.
But now the government has destined $12 million to promote the
Brazilian image overseas. Embratur has already been put on notice,
however, that the money cannot be used, as in the past, to show female
buttocks and breasts. Instead the new campaign will have lots of trees,
animals and nature in general. Off with sextourists, in with
ecotourists.
For a free body market
Prostitutes from all of Brazil are converging this
month to Salvador, Bahia, for their national conference. One of their
main goals is to get off the books the law that considers a crime the
maintenance of whorehouses and pimpery. Those offenses carry sentences
from two to five years in prison. The ladies of the night want to pay
social benefits and get all the privileges like any other worker. The
National Network of Sex Professionals is angry at the recent Beijing’s
4th International Conference on Women for their condemnation of
prostitution. Their leader, ex-prostitute and sociologist Gabriela da
Silva Leite, 44, says that she had classes with sociologist F. H.
Cardoso at USP (Universidade de Săo Paulo). Fernando Henrique Cardoso
is Brazil’s president.
Vintage water
Some towns have all the luck. While most of them have
pipes to bring gas and water to houses, Bento Gonçalves in Rio Grande
do Sul has wine in those tubes. The just installed wineducts in that
city was made by Vinícola Aurora, Brazil’s biggest wine exporter.
Almost ten-mile long, the $3-million underground ducts link four units
of the company, saving 3,500 truck trips a year.
A little help
The Johns Hopkins University, in an effort to curb
the spread of AIDS in Brazil, has made a curious donation to the
Projeto Praça Onze from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).
To avoid the breakage of condoms, something more common with anal
intercourse, the school has sent 10.000 flasks of American intimate
lubricant to Carioca (from Rio) gays.
Hungry marines
The Brazilian navy is giving monthly five-day
licenses to the majority of its personnel. The objective is to reduce
by 16% expenses with food. It seems that in the latest six years an
increasing number of navy men have been spending more time than needed
at their bases. They hang around apparently to eat the infamous
military food. At home the situation is even worse.
Streetless Tom
For the second time in a row Rio’s Justice decided
against the change of a street name to that of late world-renowned
maestro Tom Jobim. First it was Avenida Vieira Souto, in Ipanema, which
had to go back to its original name, after some weeks as Antônio Carlos
Jobim. Now the Visconde de Pirajá street regained its moniker and mayor
César Maia continues looking for a place to honor the “Girl from
Ipanema”‘s composer.
Street talk
Prisons and streets have always been a fertile soil
for slang. Street children in Brazil have their own colorful
vocabulary. In Brasília, the capital, Vilma Luís, who lives under a
bridge, says, “The first thing we do in the morning is to smell
thinner. Then I spend my day viajando (spaced out). Her and her colleagues have a special dialect with words like:
Badaga - Glue
Badagueiro - Glue sniffer
Bodinho - (literally little goat) Yuppie
Dar o gogó - Take someone by the throat
Dar o confere - Frisk someone when stealing
Ir para Londres - (go to London) To have sex
Mela - Cocaine paste which is smoked in a little pipe
Meter - To steal
Metranca - Weapon
Mincha - Iron bar used for entering locked cars
Mocó - A place to sleep
