Bunda

Abstract

This research aims to understand the process that led to the consecration of the butt as a cultural product at a time when the mass culture in Brazil was expanding and the military-corporate dictatorship consolidated the political regime of heterosexuality. The transformations in the visibility status of the city of Rio de Janeiro, which followed the strengthening of mass tourism, allowed that the female body incarnated in a carioca incorporated new models of Brazilianness. In this context, the butt emerged as a possible sign as well as an agent of history, since it mediated an economy of gender, race, class, and sexuality that circulated through consumption. This visual economy favored new biopolitical models that negotiated the evolution of national “nature” through the perfect body. In this sense, this article seeks to map out regulatory models and to expose the structures of power and knowledge that sought to produce regimes of truth about the national body. Supported by elements of mass culture (goods, images, services, etc.) this work investigates the ways through which the butt was co-opted by power as a part of Brazilian visual culture, supporting the global commercialization of Brazilian bioesthetics.