Recent Posts
Julia Lira
The Brazil Carnival this year is gearing up for a pretty shaky start, even before it has begun. In the lead up to the festival that starts on Friday, accusations of exploitation have dogged the event following the choice of a seven year old girl as the drum core queen for one of Rio’s best samba schools.
The Viradoura samba group is now fighting for the right to have Julia Lira lead them in the internationally renowned flamboyant parade.
The case is not just a public argument. It has gone to the Family Court. The State Council for the Defence of Children and Adolescents claims that the role of the drum core queen is a sexual one and Julia’s participation would “increase the treatment of children as sexual objects in Brazilian society”.
Not so, says Julia’s father, who also happens to be President of the Viradoura samba group that has chosen her as their lead. Marco Lira claims that Julia can hold her own, is a natural at samba and can easily dance her way through the 80 minute parade.
Earlier this week, Marco Lira justified the group’s decision saying “any man who looks at a seven-year-old child and feels any sort of excitement should go see a doctor”.
The drum corps queen is regarded as something of an honour in Brazil and the roles are highly contested ones that are usually decided on beauty and charisma. Often they are models and actresses but they also need to be pretty good at the samba.
Last year I wrote about the role of the drum queen here when the youngest was an eighteen year old. It was also last year that a few groups had chosen women in their 40s for the first time to lead their own clubs. This was seen as a break through for the Carnivale as well as the not so young women.
The drum queens are the stars of Carnivale and usually lead the parades in high heels, flamboyant head dress, some glitter and very little else, although unlike some of the other dancers do not parade topless.
Judge of the family court in Rio, Ivone Ferreira, is currently juggling the arguments. Should the decision go against her participation, it will be a big blow to one of Rio’s largest Samba schools.
According to reports, Ferreira has requested information about Julia’s costume and the time she will be performing, which no doubt will probably have to be rescheduled if she is permitted to go ahead. Julia is currently scheduled to start after midnight on February 14.
The Viradouro group is arguing that Julia’s costume is modest, although details of the costume have not been made public. Just as in previous years, the costumes of the performers are kept religiously under wraps until the event.
Both sides of the case probably have reasonably good claims but it raises questions about what is and what isn’t sexually explicit. We also may find ourselves asking “is Marco Lira just being a “stage dad”, pushing his beloved daughter as much as he can into the limelight?
After all, the sexuality of the flamboyant parade is really one of its biggest attractions and Marco Lira may just be a little “blind” to this when it comes down to a starring role for his daughter.
Sourced: www.thestar.com
Image credit: www.dailymail.co.uk
Some British scientists have come to the conclusion that internet surfers show more than the average signs of depression. They don’t know, however, whether this is because depressed people tend to go to the internet more than the average for comfort or that excessive internet surfing is actually the cause of the depresseion in the first place.
What they can commit to is that excessive internet use can lead to compulsive internet habits, replacing real-life social interaction with the interaction that can be sought through the internet.
To come to this conclusion, researchers in the UK surveyed 1,319 Britons aged between 16 and 51. The psychologists doing the survey were from Leeds University and came to the conclusion that 1.2 per cent of these were “addicted”.
Bloggers can rest assured however, that the “addicted ones” were often the ones who spent a lot of hours logging on to sexually gratifying websites and online gaming, although online chat sites and social networking did get a really strong mention.
There has been a lot of research done on the internet and mental illness. In December last year results of a survey done in China’s Guangdong Province that surveyed 1,618 adolescents came to the conclusion that ten per cent of students were moderately addicted to the internet and one percent were severely addicted.
This survey, however, focussed on teens on the internet and came to the conclusion that ones who were moderately addicted to the internet were 2.4 times more likely to be prone to self-injury.
None of these surveys is really very conclusive. Do we go to the internet for comfort or do we just happen to get comfort by surfing away on the internet and find this a bit of a time-filler?
Most bloggers, I think, really love writing about what they really love . They research anything that is written about the area they are most interested in. That is not necessarily a replacement for human contact. It is almost like a hobby – writing about something you are interested in. Is that something than can be put down to a mental illness?
I think not. While many people can get quite obsessive about their Facebook sites or other social networking sites they belong to, the internet is difficult to avoid and bloggers probably spend a lot more time on the internet than the average person.
Surfing the internet is done for a lot of reasons. To find good holiday packages or good deals in restaurants and probably just about everything. Researching the internet for information to compile our blogs is really no different. We are seeking out information too.
The strange twist in this is that if I hadn't surfed the net, I wouldn't have found these survey results. Does that mean that many of the people who have read these studies because they found them while surfing the net actually have a problem?
Psychologists, particularly ones who are constantly researching, would have no option other than to spend a lot of time on the internet. At what point for them does it become an obsession?
Sourced: www.reuters.com
Image credit: www.cbsnews.com
Will Sarah Palin ever be able to live down her image? Not if a few publishers can help it.
Sensing that a Palin story was well worth a serious investment, publishers of a subsidiary of marketer IMG and Imagine That Publishing have joined forces to produce and publish a magazine devoted entirely to her.
The result - Sarah Palin: Faith, Family, Freedom, a 100-page glossy single-issue magazine.
While the cover’s bi-line, The Untold Story…….in her own words suggests that Palin is behind the magazine, publishers are adamant they have never met or spoken to her.
Instead they have captured some of the classic statements Palin made during her run for the vice-presidency and in the media and have filled the magazine with “never before seen” photos including one of her as a child with her siblings and a dead bear bleeding over a stump and one with moose antlers still attached to a fragment of body skull.
Among the family shots is one of a cute and chubby little girl with glasses and the publishers also say they used a lot of unpublished shots taken on her book tour last year.
Keen to tag on to the hype and popularity that has surrounded her book and her television appearances, the publishers went ahead with a large print run that they say is in the hundreds of thousands. According to them, the magazine which hit the newsstands and convenience stores in January is selling very well.
It certainly sounds like a hoot. There is even a section on The Wit and Wisdom of Sarah!
Publishers of In Touch Weekly weren’t so lucky with a Sarah Palin punt recently. According to The New York Post, the publishers dished out $US100,000 for a cover story on Palin and her daughter, Bristol, in January but the magazine sales were well below expectations, selling only 500,000. An issue two weeks earlier had sold double that figure. In Touch Weekly usually features stories on Hollywood celebrities and readers apparently weren’t all that interested in Palin, the politician.
This publishing adventure is bound to raise a few eyebrows, especially Palin’s. According to many media reports over the past year, she has been working hard at shaking off her poor public image.
Sourced: www.washingtonpost.com; www.nypost.com
Who is it exactly that comes up with tags for women? The one that’s being doing the rounds for a while now is the Cougar. Mostly defined as women who hunt men for brief affairs but like to be in charge. The Cougar was characterized perfectly by Kim Cattrall’s character, Samantha, in Sex and the City but the whole definition of the Cougar seems to have changed since then.
[ Click here to read more ]
Coconut water, which has fast become the drink of the glamour set In New York and Los Angeles, is poised to become even bigger after the announcement that Madonna has invested $1.5m in one of the leading producers of the drink, Vita Coco.
[ Click here to read more ]
Up in the Air is such a delight. It is a comedy but it is much more than that. Thanks to winning tickets on Jason King's Salty Popcorn site, I went off to see it the other day and what a great movie it was.
[ Click here to read more ]
Sixteen year old adventurer, Jessica Watson, is nearly half way home. Aboard Ella's Pink Lady, Watson has covered 11,000 nautical miles of the 23,000 nautical miles that will compete her solo circumnavigation.
[ Click here to read more ]
This is one of those really bizarre stories that you hear about. It happened the other day here in Sydney . A woman took a wrong turn while in a carpark (or something like that) and ended up hanging in her car in a brick wall for hours while rescue teams tried to free her.
[ Click here to read more ]
Australian television can be really good. Pity the media outlets don’t support the industry just a bit more than they do. So many shows that well stack up against their American counterparts seem to be discontinued and then put in at very late night viewing, usually in a non-ratings period or just as some kind of filler for in a really unpopular slot. Young Lions is one of these.
[ Click here to read more ]
Crime spurns so many industries doesn’t it? TV, film and books have made more money out of crime that the criminals themselves. You only have to look at the crime section in book shops to see just how popular crime stories are.
[ Click here to read more ]
|
|
|
Comments (2)
Add Comments
Read More
Comment by Janet Collins
on Dancing Queens
Acceptable Etiquette
The Social Critic
Janet Collins Blog
I am not sure if there is an understudy. I do know from my research into last year's post that the training for this is lengthy and rigorous. If she is banned from the parade it will have been all for nothing.
I am not sure that I want to see seven year olds perform in this. Julia really should be an adult before she is part of it - I think, anyway.
Thank you.