MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Miss Bumbum beauty contest sparks controversy in Brazil from behind

Érika Canela, winner of the sixth edition of the “Miss Bumbum” contest, is already the muse of the Corinthians football club

The Brazilian pepople's cult of the female rear came back to life once again in the 2016 edition of the “Miss Bumbum” beauty contest, in which candidates from the 27 states disputed the title to the “best behind,” raising again controversy around the issue of “object woman.”

 This year's “Miss Bumbum” winner was Érika Canela from the state of Bahia and who has already been elected as the “muse” of the Corinthians football club and queen of one of the Samba schools. Behind Canela were Danny Morais (Santa Catarina), niece of voluptuous model Sabrina Boing Boing, famous for her exuberant breasts and multiple surgeries, and funky singer MC Sexy (Rio de Janeiro).

Other contestants were mother and daughter Bruna Ferraz (Roraima) and Eduarda Moraes (Rondonia). More than ten million voters chose the fifteen finalists on the internet. The contest allows the participants to have plastic surgery anywhere on their body except on their buttocks and even several of the applicants have had to produce X-ray evidence that their rear lines are natural.

In the “Miss Bumbum-best age” category, the winner was Dona Geralda, 63 years old and a former participant in the Brazilian edition of the “Big Brother” TV show.

During the awards ceremony, the finalists recreated the religious scene of the “Last Supper” of Jesus with his apostles in sensual poses handing out bread, water and wine.

The creator of the contest, Cacau Oliver, defended the scene with the argument that religion and woman are matters of interest to Brazilians. “We are not offending the church, this is just a staging,” he said, and added that the show helps Brazil project itself onto the world as more than a football and samba country, with beaches in which women of all races in tiny bikinis show off all their attributes.

“We are the women themselves who have allowed that. Let it be a sexist culture of the 'woman-object', ”said student and activist Karen Vásquez. For Karen the Brazilian woman indirectly tolerates this type of “label” for which the country is known elsewhere. “We are not against freedom and the woman expresses herself as she wants, even naked, but when that freedom becomes a prison of publicity there, the sense of things changes and the 'behind' of Brazilians remain slaves of that advertising god,” she said.