*Becoming a Carnival queen in Brazil is damn near impossible if you’re not white, mixed or light-skinned with long hair, and dark-skinned actress Nayara Justino was painfully reminded of this after she was crowned queen of Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival in 2013, and later dethroned after she faced public backlash for being too dark to represent the country. Justino speaks about the hurtful racial controversy she endured in a new documentary from The Guardian.
“There are very few Black women who become carnival queens. White women with straight hair and a good body make more commercial sense,” she explains in a Guardian documentary.
Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival is known for being one of the most luring multi-cultural celebrations of the world. Each year Brazil’s biggest television network, Globo, selects a Globeleza carnival queen, who is voted on by the public and “hyper-sexualized to become the star of the entire carnival,” per Huff Post. Justino won the public over in 2013, only to later be replaced by a lighter woman.
“People came on my Facebook page, calling me ‘monkey’ and ‘darkie’ … it was the racism that hurt me most of all. And the racism wasn’t just from White people, it came from Black people too”, she reveals.
Nayara says the backlash from Brazilians is what motivated her to share her story in the documentary, with the hopes of inspiring “young black girls,” she told The Huffington Post.
Since the early 90’s, the title of Globeleza has usually been reserved for a mixed or fair maiden. The title catapults the winner to super-stardom. Justino reveals in the doc that it was her childhood dream to grow up and be crowned Carnival’s Globeleza.
Check out the rest of her story by watching the documentary below.
Twitter pic of Nayara Justino:
Thankful for all support received all over the world! We got stand up and fight united against all sadness thoughts! pic.twitter.com/qq3RuirDU4
— Nayara Justino (@nayarajustino) February 11, 2016
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