Faculty of Design

Graphic Design

Laura De Micheli

Brazilian Woman Encyclopedia

This thesis research focuses on the narratives surrounding the Brazilian feminine body, and how these narratives shape the ways Brazilian women experience life within society.This project is born from personal experiences, both within the male and female gaze, where the body is often placed into highly categorized and consumable forms. Bodies become sites of desire or comparison, often without much curiosity or willingness to understand what exists beyond.Ethnopornography: Sexuality, Colonialism, and Archival Knowledge by Pete Sigal, Zeb Tortorici, and Neil L. Whitehead, it becomes possible to understand the difference between the erotic and the pornographic as a way to analyze how the Brazilian feminine body is represented.The body is not seen in a neutral way, but is often framed through systems that prioritize visibility, desirability, and control, reducing it to something that can be consumed without much depth or context. Because of this, representation becomes tied to larger systems of power, where meaning is created around the body rather than emerging from it. These dynamics are constantly shifting, shaping how bodies are seen, understood, and valued over time.This framework helps understand how dominant narratives around Brazilian women have been constructed and reinforced through the beauty industry, media, and global visual culture. These representations often reduce complex identities into simplified and desirable images, limiting how Brazilian women are seen and understood.As a response to objectification that the Brazilian Feminine Body goes through, the encyclopedia is then created aiming to showcase the immense talent with the country. Presenting Arts & Culture, Knowledge & Science, Feminism & Social Movements, and Politics.

“This prototype of encyclopedia englobes a small selection of incredibly talented, intelligent and landmarking women, those who constitute a space much bigger than the bodily. The representation of women in every aspect that shapes such a rich culture, that moves the country, revolutionizes the world and honours past, present and future of what constitutes Brazilian womanhood.Stemming from the anthropological term “ethnopornography” by Anne McClintock in Imperial Leather (1995), colonized people (especially women) are sexualized and exoticized, having their bodies become something to consume visually, minimizing a culture into something fetishized and marketable. Over centuries many nationalities have been assigned a narrative that places women in stereotyped spaces, avoiding “consumers” to look beyond, to look inside, to yearn for more out of the feminine.This thesis does not wish to neglect in any way confidence, beauty, empowerment, but yet to add more facets to the stories that shape the question of what is a Brazilian Woman.Looking beyond a Brazilian Butt Lift, a Brazilian thong, or even a Brazilian Wax, what else is there to be celebrated, commemorated and recognized? The beauty industry and media has had its space to tell a story in its own way, now it is time we tell ours.”