2023-08-16 00:25:31
Maria da Graça Xuxa Meneghel, 60, better known as Xuxa, at her home in Rio de Janeiro this month (Maria Magdalena Arrellaga/The New York Times)
He was once the biggest star on Brazilian television. Many are now wondering if a thin, blonde, white woman was the right idol for such a diverse country.
Millions of Brazilians grew up watching it on television. Her shows filled the largest stadiums in Latin America. She had hit movies and songs, her own dolls and her own amusement park.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Maria da Graça Xuxa Meneghel, universally known as Xuxa, was the biggest star on Brazilian television. Generations of children spent their mornings watching her play, sing and dance for hours on her hugely popular variety show.
“I came to be the doll, the babysitter, the friend of these children,” said Xuxa, 60, in an extensive interview. “A Barbie from that time.”
“She came with a pink car,” he added. “I came with a pink spaceship.”
Like the famous doll, Xuxa is also slim, blonde, blue-eyed, and white. On her children’s show, she often wore short skirts and thigh-high boots when she stepped out of a spaceship adorned with figures of giant red lips. And just like Barbie, she became an idol for her fans, who grew up wanting to be like Xuxa and her all-white cast of teenage ballerinas, the “Paquitas.”
Xuxa in a television program on the Globo network in the 1980s. She says that she now regrets the canons of beauty that she represented (EFE/Caetano Barreira)
But now Brazil is in the midst of some sort of reckoning with its flesh and blood Barbie. And in the middle of that is Xuxa. This is due in part to a new documentary series that has become a national sensation and has once again raised questions about diversity, beauty standards and sexualization on her show.
Many, including Xuxa herself, wonder if the very specific ideal she represented was always a force for good in Brazil, a largely black country where a national debate is brewing over what is considered beautiful and who has been erased from it. popular culture.
“I didn’t see it badly. Today we know that it is wrong, ”Xuxa said of the beauty standard that she represented for Brazilian youth.
During Xuxa’s reign, which coincided with Brazil’s economic expansion, plastic surgery rates skyrocketed to the highest in the world, and many people underwent surgery while still in their teens. But Brazil and its cultural gatekeepers are now embracing new definitions of beauty that celebrate natural curls, curvaceous bodies, and darker skin tones.
The lack of black faces in Xuxa shows “inflicted deep wounds on many women in Brazil,” said Luiza Brasil, who has written a book on racism in Brazilian culture, fashion and beauty.
Xuxa on television in the 1980s. She became the biggest star on Brazilian television
In the Xuxa series, she largely blamed her program’s problems on her former boss and the culture of the time. But in her interview with The New York Times, Xuxa took on more responsibility and lamented the mark she may have left on young viewers who didn’t look like her. “Holy mother, what a trauma I put on some children’s heads,” she said.
“It was not me who decided it,” he added. “But I endorsed it. I put my signature on it.”
When 23-year-old Xuxa got her own national children’s show in 1986, which aired six mornings a week, it was an instant hit. Her show brought together some 200 children on a colorful and delirious stage that featured musical performances, contests and human-sized mascots, such as a mosquito called Dengue.
Television “was a magic box,” Xuxa said. “I was part of that magic.”
As the star of the first television network in Brazil, she became one of the best-known faces in the country, nicknamed “the queen of the shorties.”
“It was a lot of people seeing the same thing,” said Clarice Greco, a professor at Paulista University who studies Brazilian pop culture. “Xuxa became a franchise”.
It spread to music and film, selling more than 26 million records and nearly 30 million movie tickets, breaking box office records in Brazil. And children clamored to buy Xuxa comics, costumes, and dolls, which bore a striking resemblance to another plastic blonde.
“Everyone was mesmerized by her,” said Ana Paula Guimarães, who prevailed over thousands of girls to become Paquita.
Xuxa performing at the Rio de Janeiro Carnival in 2004. Many, including Xuxa, wonder if the very specific ideal she represented was a force for good in a country with a majority black population (REUTERS/Sergio Moraes SM/GN)
After conquering Brazil, Xuxa learned Spanish and began recording programs in Buenos Aires and Barcelona. In the early 1990s, tens of millions of children watched her shows in Portuguese and Spanish. A French newspaper listed her as one of the most influential women in the world, along with Margaret Thatcher. She and she were romantically linked to celebrities such as Pelé and John F. Kennedy Jr.
In 1993, Xuxa tried out a show in English to capture the American market, but said that her language problems and busy schedule caused the show to fail.
While much of her audience was black and Latino, Xuxa was descended from Italian, Polish and German immigrants, and resembled the princesses and dolls that flooded popular culture in the 1980s.
“And there I came: white, blonde, tall, long legs,” she said. “I think, therefore, that maybe that’s why I was very, very successful at that time.”
Not all were fans. Some complained that Xuxa was too sexualized to be a role model for children. Before turning to children’s television, she had posed for Playboy. And black academics and activists were already questioning the lack of diversity in her show once it became a hit, including in a 1990 New York Times article.
In recent years, Xuxa’s worst moments have been analyzed on the internet, such as when she said that her viewers preferred blonde Paquitas, she wore an indigenous headdress, and told a girl that she lost a contest on her show because “she ate too many potatoes.” fries”.
Xuxa said she regretted such comments, but added that the biggest problem was the standards of the time. “In the ’80s, you couldn’t find a soap opera where the employee wasn’t black,” she said.
“It’s not the fault of the Xuxa show,” he added. “It is the fault of everything that was transmitted to us as normal.”
Xuxa said she was also subjected to cruel ideals of beauty. “Since I was little, they saw me as a piece of meat,” she said. They told her to lose weight from her, forced her to undergo plastic surgery and forbade her to cut her hair. “A doll has to have long hair,” she recalls being told.
When she became a mother, she cut her hair in protest. “I don’t want to be a doll anymore,” she said, sporting the platinum pixie cut she’s kept for years.
Xuxa never saw herself as a feminist, but she became a symbol of female empowerment nonetheless. On her show, run by a woman, she told girls they could achieve anything. And she built a multi-million dollar empire while she raised a daughter as a single parent. “I never thought about getting married, I never looked for my Ken,” she said.
For Xuxa, the Barbie parallels don’t end there. “They are two winners, they are two victorious women in a time when only men could do everything,” she said. “I think that’s more than just being a feminist.”
When Xuxa rose to fame, she became an activist by accident.
He loved animals, so he spoke about animal rights on his show. He learned sign language to be able to communicate with deaf viewers. And she, dressed in costumes that evoked drag culture, she became an idol of the LGBTQ community.
Now, after decades in the spotlight, she said she has a better understanding of the influence it has and is trying to push progress in representation, the fight against racism and beauty standards.
“I was defending causes without necessarily knowing that it was a cause,” he said. “Now I really want to do it.”
Xuxa in her home in Rio de Janeiro (Maria Magdalena Arrellaga/The New York Times)
Last week, at a televised charity event, Xuxa took to a brightly lit stage with her two blonde successors on Brazilian children’s television. The three women sang songs that millions of Brazilians had been taught growing up. Behind them, about a dozen black dancers milled and jumped to the beat.
The performance appeared to be a display of racial inclusion. But online, backlash was swift, with many interpreting the gathering as a celebration of whitewashing, or Brazilian pop culture.
“These women are still held up as an ideal,” said Brasil, who is black. “And we are still there, in a place outside of what is this white, blond, almost childish beauty that has hurt and tormented us for so long.”
In recent years, Brazilian television has taken steps towards greater diversity. Leading roles in Brazil’s top three telenovelas are now filled by black performers, and more news and political shows are helmed by black hosts.
Xuxa said that the debate about the impact of her media figure has taught her a lot about herself and society. “We only learn to do things right when we see that we are on the wrong track,” she said. “So I think I had to go through all of this to get here.”
© The New York Times 2023
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