UPDATED June 17th, 2017
There are a million and one beauty pageants in Latin America to celebrate Latina beauty. At the tail end of the contest spectrum, there’s the Miss Bum Bum Brazil Pageant, where over 500 candidates from all over Brazil compete, but where only one, the 25-year-old Rosana Ferreira, grabbed the prize for having the best booty of 2011.
While many of us view this sort of thing as pure exploitation, on par with adult entertainment industry aesthetics, could this actually be empowering to Latinas who need to feel good about their full backsides—especially when comparing their curvier bum bums to the bony ones seen on fashion runways, and then feeling badly about it?
Yes, our feminist flags went up with news of this pageant, butt (not a typo) let’s face it, Brazil is known for a lot more than their unstoppable soccer players and potent Caipirinhas: It’s famous for its butt-olatry. Hell, they’re so in love with the full, round derrieres of their people, Brazilians went ahead and invented the dental floss tanga, albeit a wedge nightmare for most.
