It's always hot here, so just get naked.

The American perception of Brazilian’s modesty is completely accurate, these people like to be naked or close to it. They do, however, really like to dress up their dogs in little outfits and sweaters. Animal attire is often less revealing than that of their owners. I haven’t seen a one-piece bathing suit in this country, and bikini bottoms that cover butt cheeks are rare. All men wear speedos, some while riding bikes or jogging or walking around town. No body part is really left to the imagination here, a day at the beach leaves me feeling as though I’ve seen more body parts that a naughty film director. This would not actually be that bad, everybody likes to see skin, but it gets interesting when EVERYBODY wears these items, fat or skinny, short or tall, young or old. I asked a local about the concept of wearing little to no clothing when you don’t really have the body for it. He told me “A larger body is what it is, what can you do about it?” My response: “Wear more clothing.” The general rules of American decency tend to be:

1)If I can’t tell you are wearing a bathing suit because it is swallowed up in your skin, you should get a larger bathing suit with more material.

2)If you are a female over the age of 50, I should not be able to see your belly button unless I can also see ripped abdominal muscles underneath it.

3)Men have it easier because they can really rock a good body into their late age, but speedos are generally not acceptable at any age unless you are a competitive swimmer or water polo player.


That being said, I think the trade off of seeing more body than we care to see in order to see more than we normally would of some seriously great bodies has worked well for the city. Since that’s the case, let it all hang out people, even if it is dimpled and jiggly. Keep on chugging grandma, you work that thong and triangle bikini top while you jog along the beach, just be careful to not trip on those things that used to be fixed to your upper body.

Vote or...Vote

In honor of all the Californians hitting the polls today to vote in the primaries, I thought I would share some observations about Brazil's voting systems. Warning, you probably won't really enjoy this post unless you are a political junkie.

Observation #1: This country has only been voting for twenty years. They will elect their 5th president in October. Before that it was dictators and changes in administration came mainly by way of coup d'état.

Observation #2: EVERY person votes. That's right, 100% voter participation and 100% voter turn-out. If you don't vote, you do not have access to any government services. At first this sounded insane to me, but think about a politician that must appeal to the entire population in order to win. This means that the poor guy in the favelas matter just as much as the rich guy down at Ipanema beach because you know they will both vote.

Observation #3: Brazil's entire voting system is electronic. No hanging chads here. This fascinates me because, well, they've been doing this for only twenty years and they are also a third world country. We don't even do this in the United States and yet we are the most industrialized democracy in the world.

With that, don't forget to vote today. No complaining to me about this government that we live and work for if you don't vote. Show me your sticker if you want to talk politics.

Screwing with minds

Here in Rio you can’t buy a Diet Coke. They don’t exist. Diet Pepsi? Nada. What’s that you say? Would I like a coke light? Oh, suuuuuure, call it something different just to mess with me, yes, I appreciate that. They pull this crap in Europe too. Also, way to mess with my head by using the metric system, I have no idea how far 500 meters is, but if you tell me it’s a third of a mile then I’m down to jog, walk, crawl, shoot I will even roll that far. The kilo too, it kills me. This one is particularly tricky because they make you weigh your food at restaurants here, so not only do I have to compare my lack or portion control to those around me but I also have to do the math to see how many pounds of food I’m consuming and really depress myself.

This gets me to thinking how self-centered Americans are. I see this as Rio messing with me when in fact America has long been screwing with the rest of the world. Get with it America, start calling it Pepsi light and let’s adopt the metric system. Who the heck decided that naming the same exact objects or lengths or masses something different than every other country in the world would be a good idea? Sure, I get that we are individualists, we set the trends of the world, America leads and the rest of the world follows, I dig all that good stuff, but this is just unnecessarily difficult.