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50 2 Women in and out of Place Engendering Brazil’s Racial Democracy Branca para se casar A white woman to marry Mulata para fornicar A mulata woman to fornicate Preta para cozinhar A black woman to cook —Gilberto Freyre, Casa Grande & Senzala This nineteenth-century Brazilian adage encapsulates dominant configurations of race, color, gender, and sexuality.1 It also demonstrates the gendered dimensions of a Brazilian pigmentocracy in which “social hierarchy is primarily based on skin color” (Jackson , ). In three short lines, this popular saying describes and ascribes the social identities of white, mulata, and black women. Each phrase maps out the coordinates of socially constructed norms of femininity and their relationships to color and race. Women of each color category are placed in social roles that cannot be altered, exchanged, or escaped. While white women are assigned to the realm of legitimate and honorable sexuality in their roles as wives and acceptable marriage partners, mulata women are associated with illegitimate and dishonorable sexual practices. No mention of the sexuality of black women is made, however. Instead, they are associated with domestic service and labor. While white men are not explicitly described in the preceding adage, their relationship to each category of women is implied. Since the social identities described are largely relational, white men fulfill roles as the husbands of white women, the lovers of mulata women, and the employers of black women. This suggests that Brazilian constructions of female gender identity are closely tied to women’s potential relationships to white men and racial patriarchy.2 The notion that only white women can be suitable marriage partners indicates the ways in which commonsense understandings of race and color have influenced dominant constructions of gender in Brazil. Largely due WOMEN IN A ND OU T OF PL ACE 51 to their privileged relationship to patriarchy and racial hegemony, white women have become the reference point for idealized constructions of womanhood and female gender identity. The idealization of white women as the standard of femininity and female beauty is glaringly obvious in the Brazilian media, including films, television shows, and magazines.3 Moreover, the pervasiveness of Nordic images of blonde-haired women in the fashion and entertainment industry stands in sharp contrast to Brazil’s national selfimage as a mestiço racial democracy and underscores the gendered implications of Brazilian constructions of race and national identity. The connection between whiteness and womanhood also points to the existence of hierarchical constructions of female gender identity. While dominant configurations of femininity and womanhood are associated with whiteness, subaltern forms of femininity and womanhood are associated with an absence of whiteness. As a consequence, it can be argued that black women have to “whiten” in order to approximate dominant constructions of female gender identity (Corrêa ). Color- and race-based hierarchization within Brazilian constructions of female gender identity also centers on distinctions between Afro-Brazilian women of different colors. In many ways, color functions as the primary means of differentiating between Afro-Brazilian women and determining their place within Brazilian society today—much like the distinctions that were made between lighter-skinned and darker-skinned black women during the colonial era (Lauderdale Graham ). In contemporary Brazil phenotype is often used as the basis for occupational and other status-based distinctions (Castro ; Giacomini , ). Skin color serves as the primary determinant of whether Afro-Brazilian women’s social identities are classified in terms of sensuality or associated with physical labor. Since dominant constructions of female gender identity are closely tied to hegemonic views that blackness should be avoided and diluted, Afro-Brazilian women of mixed racial ancestry or with more European physical features are typically considered to be more attractive. In contrast, women of visible African ancestry are typically constructed as nonsexualized , and at times asexual, laborers. As Suely, a twenty-five-year-old college student, observed, “I think that there is not an image of the mulher negra . . . as a woman. You have the image; the negra is a domestic. . . . So, the negra with a standard of beauty similar to the white can be viewed in sexual terms. She might be a domestic, but she is a pretty domestic, gostosa (appealing) . . . with physical features similar to whites . . . a more narrow nose . . . always lighter. . . . This type of woman is viewed as a sexual object, but she enters the scene . . . the negra, of color . . . she does not even enter into the picture here, the sexual [picture].” Suely’s comments highlight...

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