Three of a Kind

By birth order, the oldest of the triplets is Marilise, pronounced Mah-ree-leeze-ee but without too much emphasis on the final syllable. Whisper it as if you were barely getting a life-sustaining breath into The Girl from Ipanema. The middle sister is Lilian. Say more than Lih-lee-ah, less than Lih-lee-ahn. Then comes Renata. Heh-nah-tuh. The Brazilians are slouches at an initial "r." Hence, the city the sisters live in, assuming you're ready to go native, is Hee-oo, not what you've always called it, Ree-oh. Now forget which is which and who's on the left and who's on the right. This isn't trick photography. But makeup and photo artistry can't help but minimize the differences among the sisters, though the differences are real. Besides, the triplets themselves are not above a prank. Three distinct pictures of them appeared in one Brazilian magazine above responses to the question "Do you like guys shy or extroverted?" Lilian said extroverted; Marilise, shy; Renata voted with Lilian. "Actually," reveals Renata, "all three pictures are of Lilian." And so the triplets play trickster once again. Marilise, Lilian and Renata Porto were born, at ten-minute intervals, on March 1, 1974, in the south Brazilian town of Tucunduva in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The triplets have been famous for about three years as models for Onix jeans, Neutrox shampoo and Azaleia sandals. But they have also appeared four times in one year in Playboy Brazil. That is why if you mention triplets anywhere in Brazil, from Iguaçu on the border with Argentina and Paraguay to the faraway Amazon, the response will be either "Ah, the gauchas" (the female counterparts to gauchos) or "Oh, the playboy triplets." When they worked at a trade show recently in São Paulo, they signed 9000 (text concluded on page 176)Three of a Kind(continued from page 86) autographs. And while a handful of pop-music superstars, a couple of Brazilian TV personalities and Pelé, the retired soccer great, are more famous than the trio from Rio, this is about where the triplets fit in: Roughly speaking, they're the 16th, 17th and 18th most famous people in the world's fifth most populous country. That doesn't mean that people know each of them by name. They're just known. Universally. As the triplets.

When I visited them in the high-rise apartment they had just bought on Rio's westernmost beach frontier, my intention was to acknowledge them as individuals. And in real life, without makeup, they were easy to tell apart, as they would have been even if Marilise hadn't been wearing a college sweatshirt and Lilian a T-shirt and Renata a striped stretch top. I asked them how they thought they differed in appearance, and Marilise said, "Lilian's nose is more turned up." Marilise also claimed a face that was fuller at the bottom. Renata said, "I'm the one with the regular features."

The entire family agrees that, when it comes to personality, Marilise is the retiring one, the one who least wanted to be a model. While the two others say they like fame, Marilise says, "I like it sometimes." Renata is generally agreed to be the one most likely to stand up for what she wants. Lilian is said to be the most feeling. With an age difference of 20 minutes between Marilise and Renata, obviously no one of them has any more significant life experience than the others. Yet Marilise, as the oldest, appears to enjoy a certain special deference, and Renata somehow gets treated as the kid sister.

The district of Barra da Tijuca, where they live now, is the Rio de Janeiro equivalent of Long Island or the San Fernando Valley. The sisters' front door opens into a whistle-stop dining area, and off to the ocean side, with a centerpiece view of the beach framed between other high rises, there is a living room with two love seats, a coffee table and a side chair. There are three small bedrooms, one for each of the triplets, and there are shoes to stumble on all over the place, but there isn't a lot of bedroom furniture other than the mattresses on the floors. In a glass resting on the bathroom sink, there are three toothbrushes--one orange, one blue, one gold.

Of the three, Lilian is currently the only one with a boyfriend. The two other sisters have had boyfriends in the past, but not this week, not even this month. They all see modeling as being good for maybe ten more years. As for marriage, they think that it's OK but somewhere off in the future. Lilian actually makes a face when marriage is mentioned. Marilise says, "I think it's better to live together."

If you happen to find yourself in Rio, there are several reasons why you will not be likely to stumble over the Porto sisters. Except when they're working, the sisters do not go out often. They are easily recognized and cause a measure of commotion when they're out in public. That's why they stay home so much, where they watch television (they embrace it with no shame), listen to music on the stereo system and test the outer limits of sleep. Renata claims a record of 14 consecutive hours and neither of her sisters thinks that is a particularly remarkable accomplishment.

When they go to the beach together, they always choose one that's semi-deserted--not Copacabana or Ipanema, where the flesh is wall-to-wall. When they go out elsewhere, they tend to go out individually, not together. Why give pursuers any unnecessary help? They don't wear makeup in public (they do wear dark sunglasses) and they avoid the eye-catching swimwear that makes so many of their fellow Brazilians look naked from the waist down. Do you still aspire to a glimpse of them? Try the meat department at the vast Paes Mendonca supermarket on the Avenida das Américas. It may be the closest thing they have to a hangout. We're talking gauchas, remember. Where they come from, it's cattle country. They're not about to switch to a diet of cucumbers and celery.

Square with yourself, though. Would you even know what to do with triplets? Would you? All right, take your two best buddies.

"Lilian makes a face when marriage is mentioned. Marilise says, 'It's better to live together.'"