About
40 black models, most of them women, staged a topless protest in Rio de
Janeiro against the low presence of Afro-Brazilians on fashion
catwalks.
“What strikes you, your racism or me?” one of the
female demonstrators wrote on her chest during the protest late
Wednesday timed to coincide with Rio Fashion Week.
The
demonstration also coincided with the signing of a deal between the
Fashion Week organizers and the Rio ombudsman’s office setting a 10
percent quota for black models in fashion shows, the G1 news website
reported.
“This agreement crowns a joint initiative that can open
a space that does not yet exist,” said Moises Alcuna, a spokesman for
Educafro, a civil rights group championing the labor and educational
rights of blacks and indigenous people.
More than half of
Brazil’s 200 million people are of African descent, the world’s second
largest black population after that of Nigeria.
But Afro-Brazilians complain of widespread racial inequality.
“If
we are buying clothes, why can’t we parade in the (fashion) shows,”
asked a 15-year-old model taking part in the protest. “Does that mean
that only white women can sell and the rest of us can only buy?”
“Claiming
to showcase Brazilian fashion without the real Brazilians amounts to
showing Brazilian fashion (only) with white models,” said Jose Flores, a
25-year-old former model who now works in advertising.
After 13
years of debate, President Dilma Rousseff last year signed a
controversial law that reserves half of seats in federal universities to
public school students, with priority given to Afro-Brazilians and
indigenous people.
In June 2009, the Sao Paulo Fashion Week
(SPFW)– Latin America’s premier fashion event — for the first time
imposed quotas requiring at least 10 percent of the models to be black
or indigenous.
Previously, only a handful of black models
featured among the 350 or so that sashayed down the catwalk — usually
less than three percent.
But in 2010, the 10 percent quota was removed, after a conservative prosecutor deemed it unconstitutional. |
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