Look, Ma, Looma!

"When she giftwraps herself in these tiny dresses—the red one
with a high slit this year was a hit—we wonder why we fight for ideas,
rights, citizenship, social justice, freedom, health, transportation,
security, those little dumb things."

Rodolfo Espinoza

What would be Carnaval in Brazil without a few scandals and controversies? This year, the controversy parade started a couple of weeks before the big "escolas" (samba clubs) went to the avenue with their topless and/or bottomless female attractions. Luma de Oliveira, aging-but-still-fit former model caused more than frisson and drooling oglings, while rehearsing with the Unidos da Viradouro escola de samba, for which she is the "godmother".

Wrapped in a red microdress that left very little to the imagination she ended up leaving nothing at all to fantasy when the following morning papers showed her most hidden intimacy in the front page. In the picture she seems to be wearing nothing under her dress. It happens that Luma, 36, as she explained later, went to the rehearsal wearing comfortable skin-color cotton panties under the skimpy dress and the sweat brought about by the highly energetic samba made her underwear completely transparent.

Did Luma do the trick on purpose? Far from it, according to the belle. She complained that the photographer who snapped the candid picture acted in bad faith and as proof of her determination she slapped the photojournalist with a 200,000-real ($80,000) suit for defamation and injury to her reputation.

Rio's photojournalists' association, the Associação Profissional dos Repórteres Fotográficos e Cinematográficos do Rio de Janeiro, came in defense of news agency Agência Estado's photographer Wilton Júnior asking its members for a boycott of Luma during her Carnaval show. They reminded the former model that she owed her fame to the exposure she had had over the years in the press.

Luma de Oliveira loves exposure and provocation. In 1987 she broke in the Carnaval parade showing up topless. In 1998, for the consternation of the feminists, she paraded on the front line of the escola de samba wearing a dog collar sporting the name of her husband, industrialist Eike Batista.

Last year, Luma posed for the Brazilian Playboy and she was served naked in 22 pages. The day the magazine was released with a bash and plenty of fanfare, the model got more print mileage showing up at the happening in panties that revealed her husband's initials.

Also last year, during the Viradouro parade she brought about ahs and ohs from the crowd when she kneeled on the asphalt together with the percussion section of the escola. Soon after, the flu that took over Rio was named after her. Why Luma flu? Because it made everybody kneel down.

Commenting on the model's antics, renowned columnist Tutty Vasquez wrote: "I don't know! When she giftwraps herself in these tiny dresses—the red one with a high slit this year was a hit—we wonder why we fight for ideas, rights, citizenship, social justice, freedom, health, transportation, security, those little dumb things. When Luma de Oliveira starts to samba, the world gets filled with joy and laziness, in a postmodern version of what Caetano Veloso called one day "the sun in the newsstands."

"This personal drooling state doesn't differ a lot from the intellectual affliction of half a dozen of intelligent men whom I talked to in the last few hours. They all were completely dumbfounded. It would be tragic if it weren't seasonal. It lasts until Carnaval, then Luma disappears, the sky gets overcast in the newsstands and we once again can be solidary with the fight of our brave women companions for the species's emancipation. This struggle we won't abandon."

In 1994, another picture involving Carnaval and a pantyless woman went to the front pages and the cover of Veja and Isto É, the two most important Brazilian weekly magazines. Then model Lilian Ramos, who didn't have anything between her intimacy and her T shirt (she wasn't wearing anything else), made photographers very happy after having been invited by bachelor President Itamar Franco to see the parade on the stand by his side.

Every time she raised her arms—a necessary gesture when you are `jumping' Carnaval—her southern anatomy was all exposed. Ramos fame didn't last until the next Carnaval even though she became later a celebrity of sorts on an Italian racy TV program. Franco became governor of Minas Gerais and still carries on his coat of arms the distinction of very macho man.

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