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Published: March 22nd 2006
Hello Everyone-
Well it is getting close to Carnival time! Although this holiday is somehow tied to religion, it is a time with lots of colorful music, heavy drinking, exotic dancing, indulgent eating, or to sum it up, complete debauchery! We have our outfits all ready to go, the guys will be Captain America for half and Thunder Cats for the other half, while the ladies will be dressing up occasionally as Cleopatra - with very shiny (and little) gold outfits. It officially starts on Saturday the 25th of February this year, but the parties have been going ever since the start of the New Year. They do a lot of practicing to ensure that they are good and ready to party when Carnival arrives. As for us, we have not experienced too many of the pre-parties, although one week ago we went to a neighborhood block party - music was blaring on every corner, you could barely walk through the crowd, and vendors lined the street with beverages and good eats (mostly fresh grilled shish-kabobs - so the tantalizing scent of barbeque permeated the air). The real fun, however, began a few days ago on the Sunday before Carnival
- The Day of Virgins.
The Day of the Virgins or Dia das Virgens, not a common holiday in all of Brazil mostly just Olinda where we will be experiencing most of our Carnival days, is celebrated on the Sunday before Carnival with a lot of dancing and drinking, but the real joy of this day is that guys dress up a women and play “Transvestite for a Day”. One of the family members is a History teacher so we have been fortunate to have him to ask questions like “why?” so here is a brief explanation to why this day exists in our neck of the woods. History Lesson: One day, not too terribly long ago, a group of local guys were playing soccer on the beach (always have to tie soccer to Brazilian stories) and they decided for Carnival that year that they were going to dress as women. They grabbed some paper, don’t know why paper, but they made some outfits and they were a big hit at the festivities. The years that followed men around this area decided they too wanted to get in touch with their feminine side and they started to get more
and more creative, borrowing their mom/sister’s clothes and makeup, and even coming up with themes. It was getting so popular the people of Pernambuco decided that they would create a day, Dias das Virgens, where guys can dress up as women and parade around for the day. End of History lesson.
Being foreign, our friends here thought that it was a good idea for us to experience this day, well not only experience it, but be a part of it! Oh brother…I didn’t know that when we decided to come to Brazil that I was signing up for something like this, but if we were going to experience Brazil, we better experience to the fullest. So I was ready to except the fact that I was going to dress up as a woman, it’s only wearing different clothes right? Well yes, it is wearing different clothes, but Samuel and Ana, being somewhat of extremists were going to make sure that we did it right!
Two weeks before this day, Ana hired a seamstress to spend the next two weekends at the house to work on our outfits. We needed to have a theme, because just being a women
these days isn’t creative enough, and Samuel wanted to base it around the World Cup (Soccer) that will commence in about 4 month time in Germany. (Just like Carnival, the World Cup is something else that they prepare to celebrate well in advance. Maybe one person in a hundred knows that the Winter Olympics are going on right now, but everyone knows that the World Cup is on its way.) So after some hard thinking they decided that we would go as - As Musas do “Hexa” - or in English The Muses of the “Sixth”, meaning if Brazil wins the World Cup this year it will be the sixth win adding another star to their uniforms. Let me take a moment to say sorry to my friends in Germany that are reading this, may the best team win. As you can tell by the pictures our outfits sported the colors of Brazil, green and yellow, and we had the banner that draped over us with As Musas do “Hexa” in sequins. Heather was the magic behind the sequins, so props to her.
The outfits were made and everything looked like it was in order, but then they decided
that the outfits weren’t enough, we needed to accessorize. We purchased yellow and green bracelets, yellow and green finger nail polish, a tiara with the Brazilian flag in sequins, green and yellow sparkle makeup for our faces, and anything else yellow and green you can think of. We went to the market the day before to try and find some yellow or green slippers, but unfortunately they didn’t have those colors in stock, or in my size at that! Saturday night we had a little barbeque along with a fingernail painting party for us guys (ok the girls did them for us, we were a bit uncoordinated) and went to bed early because we knew that Sunday was going to be a long day, we Muses needed our beauty sleep.
We woke up on Saturday at 7:30 am to ensure proper time for primping. I was the first one up so I went around banging on doors yelling Bom Dia (good morning) and everyone slowly crept out of their rooms. I jumped in the shower and after I got out everyone was at the table for some breakfast. As soon as I sat down Samuel was staring at me
and said (translated to English), “No, no, no Ben, you can’t keep your beard, you are a woman today.” First thought on my part…hell no, I painted my nails, I am going to be wearing makeup, I will be dressed as a woman, but the beard stays. It has been close to 5 years since I have been clean shaven. So I didn’t respond right away, I continued to eat and ponder the idea, and after a few more times of Samuel and everyone else saying - no, no, Ben - I decided that I would shave…damn peer pressure. But like I said earlier we better experience this to the fullest!
After staring in the mirror for 10 minutes trying to recognize the beardless guy, I went out and joined everyone for makeup and dress. There were 6 of us that were dressing as women, me, Rafael, Felipe, Samuel and two of Samuel’s friends, Michel and Junior (and of course, the real women just dressed as women too). Michel and Junior were not able to make the fingernail painting get together the day before so Heather went to work getting them all prettied up while Ana started to work
on our makeup. We started with yellow and green sparkles around our eyes and sparkle lipstick, but then Samuel found some green and yellow blush and decided that he was going go to town in the makeup department. A few minutes later he emerged from the bathroom with half his face green with the other half, yes you guessed it, yellow! As for myself, I was happy with the sparkly eyelids and lips and so where the rest of the guys… or I guess we’re girls for today!
We all filed outside and headed up the street to grab a few taxis and all the passersby had a good giggle over us. Thirty minutes later we were in Olinda and ready to have some fun. I didn’t know what to expect when we arrived there, but I was hoping to see some more men dressed up as women. This wasn’t the case right away because we had to walk about 2 km to the center of the festivities, but eventually we were greeted by many other “trannies”. I was a big hit, I guess the men here like their women a little “thick” but we were all greeted by
many onlookers with loud whistles and cheers. There was lots of music being played in the streets and there were semi trucks driving through the streets where the bed was nothing but speakers and had a band on top playing music, great times!
The brother Rafael and Felipe as well as Samuel decided to liven up the party a little bit and start flirting with guys that would walk by. I soon started to join them and when ever there was a guy holding a girls hand, I would run over and grab his other hand and tell the girl to get lost. Usually you would get punched for something like this, but today it was totally acceptable. It was a hot day in Olinda, around 38º Celsius, 100º Fahrenheit, but we stayed until the late afternoon and made it back to home around 6pm a little more red then when we started the day.
As soon as we made it in the house, all the guys had to macho it up really quick so we all showered, put on our muscle shirts, and removed the fingernail polish. Ok, just kidding about the muscle shirts, but we did
transform ourselves back to men. We had a quick bite to eat then Heather and I headed to our room, popped a DVD into the laptop and went to sleep. It was a great day and better yet a great memory without any unfortunate events or car troubles…woohoo!
Thank you for your continued comments, we love hearing from you all so keep them coming. Up next we have Carnival and that will keep us busy up to March, then on the 4th we are heading to Sao Paulo to spend the rest of our time in Brazil down there. We will try our hardest to get new blog posted after Carnival with many many photos! Take care everyone.
Love Ben and Heather
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mindy
non-member comment
i didn't get it
i don't get it, why were you guys haning out with all those hot chicks dressed in green in yellow. ben, you better watch your back, she looked like she was getting mighty chummy with the chubby one...:)