Beauty in Flight: Rio

By Whorezine, Author: Miss Anthropologist

Hollywood stars, devout Catholics, wariors, porn goddesses, European tourists, tricksters, mothers and supermodels of the world... If only the queens here in Rio would stop proliferating so many images, not to mention lies, Miss Anthropologist would have had this little item for Whorezine sent in a long timeago.

But such are the travails of a professional fag, I mean, Anthropologist. Voyeur, wanna-be, and sister were not the ways I identified myself when I asked our kinder government to send my butt down to Rio. Godess knows I couldn't be too careful with the usually safe phrase "participant observation"

Since I've been here while, on U.S. tax dollars- does that place me on par with the Vice Squad?- I think I owe all of you an accounting of "drag queens meet the myth of the exotic erotic Brazil." To those old clones and straight sex tourists who jsut need to preserve their fantasy of "anything goes below the equator," I suggest you stop reading NOW.

Rio De Janeiro. In the Hollywood version, Rio represents the tropical site of seduction and sexual freedom. Check out Micahel Caine in "Blame It on Rio," in which aging straight man on holiday sleeps with hsi best friends daughter. When the gaze fixes on Brazilians, the generic image is the samba-ing Carnival Mulata. The siren for sex tourism, she suggests that if the races can mix, al sexual fantasies can come true. Oba Oba, the traveling show available in a casion resort near you. With jsut a few body part modifications, this same exotic imagery circulates in the U.S. gay media, from "ethnic" porn to the annual Carnaval article in the rags. And for more refined minds, this fanatsy can be consumed in academic versions as well.

"I can't talk with you any longer. I'm sory, but I'm rushing to the airport. I'm going to Europe to film some porn," Michelle Earthquake coos to the street kids selling some home-made candy at the stop light. Long blond hair with bangs, Michelle's energy seems to surpass the limits of her body. Her thighs and breasts, completed with silicons and hormones, definitely threaten to burst out of her lycra mini at any moment.

Miss Anthroplogist earnestly tries to explain to the queens that she's a university student, living off a grant to do her dissertation reasearch with them. Such important stuff either makes no sense or is just too boring for anyone to believe or repeat. The queens refer to me as the American journalist, fashion photographer, and U.S. television. If the queens want to make me into a smal part of their production of glamour, who am I to resist?

Bless the U.S. government for always being concerned. Even before leaving San Francisco, I recieved a little AIDS fact (sic) sheet from the grant office. You know, the generic "ADIS is a global problem" kind of thank, followed by some helpful hints on risk education. No anal sex, no promiscuity, and AVOID PROSTITUTES.

A few queens work as hairdressers, many lip-synch at shows, and a few live as housewives, but most do sex work for a living. The streets at night offer a potential adventure, desire and violence. The police are a constant threat- beating queens, robbing them and demanding sex for free.

"Real men don't exist anymore," drag sex wrokers constantly lament. At leastoutwardly, the tricks seem to be "real men"- mostly married, invariably straightacting and always richer, but the queen, mistresses of illusion themselves,readily dismiss this appearance as mere facade. One veteran of the streets insists to me, "If I have to fuck another one of those fags, I am going to chopmine of."

The hyper-feminine images the queens so publicly display did not come easily. Parents commonly throw their flamey sons out of the house by early adolescence. With few job options, the queens must turn themselves into warriors to complete their bodies and circulate their glamour. And from depilitations to extra high heels, they suffer the pain that beauty entails.

Stories about the trick's desire "to get fucked like women," repeated endlessly, become as tiresome to hear as the act must be for the queens to perform. And while few would actually admit to personally having problems attracting tricks, the queens acknowledge that the global depression has reduced the other girls' tricks

But, dear reader, all is not bleak. Several swear that the main prime-time television hunks up drag queens downtown. One even claims that this way famous mega-star fucked her girlfriend, but another says she knows better: the steroid packed star is "woman, woman, woman."

The night can be cruel for those who must constantly act liek men in bed when they've worked so hard to look like women in the street, but at least a few have bent the correlation between male/female and fucked/getting fucked. My girlfriend Brunet tells me how she loves sex with real men. When it's over and he's putting on his underwear and pants, she remembers how he moaned like a woman as she fucked him. That's the moment, she says, when she feels even mroe like a woman. I jokingly accuse her of being "louca", but she patiently corrects me: "No, I'm normal."

The production of glamour entails constant flight. Rio serves as a stopping point for many fleeing the homophobia of rural towns and the urban periphery, but many continue on. Despite Europe's increasing intolerance of foreigners, Brazilian queens have been infiltrating since the late 70's, first in Paris, then more recently throughout Italy.

Those who succesfuly evade immigration police return with all the symbols of Europe: money to buy apartments for themsleves and a house for their moms, brand new cars, steel tipped heels, sophisticated clothes and French perfume. Over ten years ago, queens brought back from Paris the technology of injecting industrial silicone, which along with hormones, has reshaped their bodies and the bodies of those who remained in Brazil.

The "European mafia" have proliferated a whole new series of iamges that disrupt the routine "news" stories about queens as marginals, hair thieves, prostitutes and vectors of AIDS transmission.

A few of the more famous appera in magazines and on television talking about their "shows" in Europe. Like socialites, they express hope that something be done for Brazil's street children. One tells me that she fears being kidnapped; another describes herself as a tourist shocked by the misery and poverty of this underdeveloped country.

Even those without without the Europeans' resources circulate images of wealth and beauty: lip-synching national and international singers on stages in drag bars, winter street fairs in the urban periphery, and, most coveted of all, on two television variety shows broadcast on weekend afternoons.

On one show, the host introduces the contestants as: "men of the masculine sex". Lip-synching and dancing, the queens display their hyper-feminine bodies barely covered by rhinestones, sequins, feathers and/or fur. In return for nation-wide exposure and considerable cash prizes, the contestants must endure a brief, bizarre interview by the millionaire host, network owner, and would-be presidential candidate, Silvio Santos.

My fave was the host asking one queen whether she was married (to a woman) and then trying to assure her that plenty of young women would find "him" attractive. In between the host's surreal efforts at creating the performer as male and straight, the contestants did get the following out on national television: "no, Silvio, I'm not married right now, but maybe with this broadcast I'll find someone. You never know."

Off of formal stages and regardless of first-hand knowledge of Europe, queens appropiate and redeploy media images and the superiority of the foreign. Barbara, whom others say looks like Donna Summer, intersperses "mon cherie's" in a conversation that includes a lament on the lack of national pride.

And while national and international superstars provide the most glamourous models, the queens know how to employ the "marginal" images of themselves broadcast in the daily news. Projecting a deep voice to make it perfectly clear that you are a drag queen doesn't aid your beauty, but it might frighten potential fag-bashers.

One last piece of advice: "You shouldn't have said that you were deported. That's not good for an interview. Say that you came back for Carnaval."

Whorezine was the brainchild of Vic St. Blaise and started at the front of the 'zine revolution in the 1990s, offering both men and women in the business fun insights and useful information from around the globe.