The Girls of Rio

It's No Coincidence that Rio de Janeiro has been dubbed the queen of the world's seaports by many a male traveler. With the lush tropical verdure of its mountain peaks, public parks and nearby rain forests, its ambivalent ambiance of Old World and New, its contrapuntal tempo of Latin languor and metropolitan bustle, those who follow the sun--and its well-tanned daughters--find Rio the most sybaritic of settings to satisfy their wanderlust. Some come just to revel in the infectious abandon of its annual pre-Lenten carnaval. Many seek it out as a mecca of South American art, education and culture. And many come in the hope of carving out careers and living the good life as fulltime residents of a city whose past 20 years of explosive economic growth has been unequaled by any other port in Latin America. But the main reason most males still go flying down to Rio is its cosmopolitan potpourri of infinitely varied, uncommonly attractive, disarmingly charming, pleasantly plentiful, emphatically eligible senhoritas.

Contrary to the dark-haired, olive-skinned, sloe-eyed, hot-blooded Latin stereotype, the girls of Rio are blondes, brunettes and redheads ranging in skin tone from cream to coffee to chocolate to ebony, and they flock to Rio from every corner of the globe and from all over Brazil--a nation larger in size and even more heterogeneous culturally than the continental United States. From the pampas in the south come girls of Spanish, German and Polish ancestry--daughters of European immigrants who flocked to Brazil before and after World War Two and subsequently provided the nation with bumper crops of fruit and cattle, and a generation of some of its most fetching females. Whatever her origins, the girl from the south has only to establish Rio residency to become a full-fledged carioca. You'll find her adorning any number of the city's sandy strands during the popular pre-noon sunning hours, or you can arrange an encounter with one of these pampas pretties while out for a quiet afternoon canter on the popular equestrian byways of Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon.

The coffeegrowing and heavily industrialized environs of São Paulo supply Rio with its quota of lovely Latins from landed Portuguese and Italian families. These olive-skinned and opulently endowed Mediterranean misses come to town in search not of their identities but simply of a good-paying job, plus a little excitement and some fun-filled hours on the beach. Even the demure daughters of São Paulo's contingent of Japanese families, when in Rio, do as the cariocas do and soon adopt the happy-go-lucky ways of their Rio cousins.

From the steamy Amazon region and its myriad tribal villages come the proud distaff descendants of the Inca and Amerind Indians, their copper-toned beauty mellowed by centuries of intermarriage with the Portuguese. And farther to the east, the sun-bleached state of Bahia furnishes carioca femininity with a continuous influx of mulatto and Negro girls who come to Rio to improve their lot. Their skins vary in tone from light mocha to jet black, and they walk with an unself-conscious awareness that all eyes are upon them.

Boasting a tradition of ethnic equality that has not been marred by a single interracial incident during its entire 433-year history as a nation, Brazil takes great pride in the fact that its first generations of native sons and daughters were the products of marriages between Portuguese settlers and Indian maidens from the coastal tribes living near what is now Rio. Most Brazilians brag about having Negro ancestors as well, and those who can't will often invent a mulatto grandmother just to feel more in tune with the crowd. White visitors to Rio who choose to take a colored female companion out dining, dancing or just strolling down the mosaic-tiled sidewalks of the Avenida (text concluded on page 144) Girls of Rio(continued from page 116) Atlântica will soon discover that, unlike other major cities of every continent, Rio is completely color-blind.

Despite this racially relaxed environment, however, life in Rio--and for that matter, in all of Brazil--is still marked by the inequities of a traditionally class-conscious society which tends to pigeonhole its citizens statuswise according to income and profession rather than race or religion. The uneducated girl in Rio, be she black or white, is often somebody's maid or laundress, with little or no hope of reaching a higher rung on the economic ladder. But the middle-class girl whose father can afford to send her through high school has a wider range of livelihoods to choose from: cashier, shop clerk, secretary, airline hostess, even teacher.

For the granfina (socialite) or the daughter of an affluent businessman, of course, the question of a career--or even of employment--simply never arises. She spends most of her waking hours basking on private beaches, attending fashion shows and sipping rum punch on the family yacht or at ringside in one of the city's chic supper clubs. She's generally been to Europe--at least once--and speaks English and French with reasonable proficiency in addition to her native Portuguese. Ostensibly emancipated, she actually lives under a much stricter code than her less fortunate Rio sisters. If she's allowed to date unchaperoned on Saturday nights, her escort will be a Brazilian boy whose parents are as well-heeled as hers. You'll find her at her inaccessible loveliest on these weekly outings, sipping aperitifs and nibbling daintily on a rare cut of Brazilian beef at Rio's posh Top Club. Later, she and her well-bred swain will join other smart-set couples for a fast round of sambas and cha-chas at decorous Sacha's, and--curfew permitting--round out the night with some less refined fruging at the crowded Zum-Zum, Rio's smartest discothèque. Unless you're a member of the jet set, you'll need more than a smooth line and a pocketful of cruzeiros to work your way into this attractive aristocrat's closely guarded affections. You needn't bother planning any beachheads until Poppa officially offers you the weekend hospitality of his well-staffed villa--or until he announces that he's leaving for Australia and won't be back before you're safely headed for home.

Middle-class Rio lasses--and fortunately for the wayfaring American male, this glamorous group comprises most of the city's eligible girls--are much freer to do, and to date, as they please. They go out on the town with nightly regularity; have no inhibitions about habituating either the most bohemian of bistros or the most opulent of Copacabana boites; and socialize readily with strangers who display the same courtesy and conviviality ordinarily shown members of the fairer sex. Those who have jobs follow much the same routine as working girls everywhere, and can often be found taking a long lunch break to bargain-hunt along Rua Gonçalves Dias, a narrow downtown street the length of which is lined with outdoor shops displaying the latest fashions in everything from ball gowns to the briefest of bikinis. Here, the enterprising man of means might invest a few thousand cruzeiros (2000 to the dollar) in some token of his esteem for one of these winsome white-collar cariocas, and thus pave the way for a closer alliance in the evenings ahead. For girls with fathers who frown on the newfangled notion of women working, the weekday is a pleasant ritual of morning visits to Rio's Copacabana, Leblon and Ipanema beaches, followed usually by afternoon classes at the University of Brazil or a leisurely window-shopping tour with a crowd of fellow female beachniks--ending with a snack at one of Rio's many sidewalk barbecue stands. A visit to any of these alfresco eateries should provide you with a golden opportunity to cement future Latin-American relations with one of its pretty patrons.

Once an evening's rendezvous has been secured, plan a postprandial stroll down one of Rio's main drags with your new-found friend. The well-traveled Avenida Presidente Vargas is a favorite promenade for such occasions, since its side streets conceal a wide range of watering places where one can retreat for a cup of black carioca coffee before deciding whether to make the all-night bossanova scene at the Kilt Club or sit out the wee hours at fashionable Au Bon Gourmet, where the floorshow starts at midnight and detonates till dawn.

For the benefit of male visitors who fail somehow to find a suitable soulmate for the evening. Rio furnishes a wide assortment of professional companions with unofficial headquarters at many of the better bars surrounding the regal Copacabana Palace Hotel. One need only descend from his expensive seaside hotel digs to the palm-lined Avenida Atlântica below to be accosted by a flock of local filles de joie offering him any number of private pleasures for a price. Only those who have lost their taste for the thrill of the chase would consider sampling their wares, however, for every thoroughfare in town is thronged with approachable cariocas who proudly maintain their amateur standing.

Any time of the year is a perfect time to visit Rio and its distaff denizens. But if your schedule permits, don't fail to arrive in time for that wildly frenetic and free-swinging week-long holiday which precedes Lent each year and turns Rio into a throbbing metropolis of music, merriment and madcap mayhem: carnaval! Preparations for this wildest and most wonderful of national festivals begin as early as the day after Christmas, when the evenings begin to echo to the sound of drumbeats and laughter from the nearby hills, where clusters of shanty-town shacks serve as rehearsal rooms for hundreds of samba "schools," the instructors and instructresses of which will soon don the gaudiest of spangled costumes they can design and fill the beaches and boulevards of Rio to overflowing for four frantic, dance-filled, sleepless nights.

The carnival itself explodes at sundown on the Saturday before Ash Wednesday. Out of the swank Copacabana and Flamengo Beach apartment houses come the rich, bedecked in outfits costing hundreds of dollars, laughing and embracing everyone they meet. Thus lowering the social barriers that separate Rio's nearly 4,000,000 citizens, carnaval provides the male traveler with his first real chance to exchange more than a glance with many a highbrow carioca. And although the poor do most of their reveling in the streets while the wealthier tend to favor private suburban parties or a 72-hour round of fancy-dress balls, every class rubs shoulders at some time or other during the festivities and nobody goes away mad.

Despite the spectrum of ethnic and economic differences that divide the girls of Rio the rest of the year, the city's polyglot distaff population still shares a common feminine appeal: an elemental allure that stems from their supreme self-assurance as womanly women who harbor no desire to compete with men, who glory in the knowledge of who and what they are.

If they're not natives, their reasons for coming to Rio are as diverse as their backgrounds. For some, the city represents the promise of adventure, a career or a formal education. For others, it's an escape from backwoods poverty or from small-town confinements and conventions. In the final analysis, however, most of these converted cariocas flock to Rio in search of the same thing that attracts the visiting American male: romance. Neither he nor they are disappointed.

As his jet leaves Rio behind and whisks the saddened but satisfied traveler back to the responsibilities of his workaday world, he'll look back on his visit with the marvelous misses of the Cidade Maravilhosa as among the happiest hours he has spent in his quest for the quintessence of feminine companionship.