Topless in Rio

By Tim McGirk

On the relaxed summer beaches of Rio de Janeiro, nobody glances twice when a woman parades by in a microscopic bikini or wriggles out of her top to sunbathe. But last month pet-shop assistant Rosemeri da Costa, 34, was tanning herself topless on Recreio beach when a shadow fell across her towel. She looked up and saw a gang of policemen armed with truncheons standing over her. In a spasm of puritanism, the police had decided to enforce a 70-year-old law against immorality. They demanded that Da Costa slip back into her top. When she refused, the police dragged her away in handcuffs.

Many Brazilians were outraged. Why were lawmen wasting their time harassing topless women in a city with one of the highest murder rates in the world? Protesters stormed Rio's legendary beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema. Women covered their breasts with placards that read DOWN WITH SEXISM, UP WITH PLEASURE, while men strutted along the shore wearing women's bikini tops. After three days of ridicule, Rio's Mayor Luiz Paulo Conde relented and declared that the immorality law would no longer be enforced. "This is going to be the summer of the topless bather," Conde promised, despite grumbles from Brazil's powerful Roman Catholic Church. "The human body is sacred," argued Eugenio Cardinal Sales, Archbishop of Rio. "We cannot expose it for the purpose of sin."

Da Costa, meanwhile, has become Rio's latest celebrity. Going topless, she explained, was "a natural thing to do. It felt delicious." Before next month's carnival, one neighborhood will hold a special "Friends of the Breast" extravaganza to honor her well-bronzed assets.

--By Tim McGirk. With reporting by Andrew Downie/Rio de Janeiro

With reporting by Andrew Downie/Rio de Janeiro