The Nudity of Summer

Once more, summer comes rolling around again, and with it, the scintillating universe of young, golden female flesh languidly lounging along sparkling pool-sides and sizzling beaches. Perhaps this is no surprise to you, being that each and every year does have its own December, and each December has its own days of sun and sweltering heat. But, it just so happens that in this God-given year of nineteen hundred eighty-four, there is an abundance of marvelous new views and angles of sensual square centimeters on display, in both hemispheres of the fair, sex as my friend Simeao would say. The swimsuits, my friend, have become so small, almost transparent, sheer, bordering on inexistence, discovered by Cabral, a Portuguese of high standing. Here, and in every part of this delectable country found by an admiral on his way to discover as indias. The indian women or women of India? And this, since 1500, and with nudity not always being punished…
The news comes to us from North and South, all up and down our exuberant coast. Never has there been as much live, outdoor, outright, open-air femininity exposed, quite natural and with style, as befits they whom, with fresh blushing youth, parade their beauty to delirium. Bets placed since the beginning of the month, salty or sweet, hot, as riveting to the eyes as the sun, turning the young men’s heads and leaving hearts smoldering. You wouldn’t even need to hear of similar news from the outside world because, right here at home, visions of loveliness enchant our eyes as far as can be seen. What a light-year leap from the one-piece turtleneck swimsuits and ribbons around the knees of our grandmothers!…How much more relaxed are the beauties who look well in and know how to walk in these latest tidbits. They say that the real color of summer is the color of skin, golden tones covering the entire body, in a daring exhibition and investment toward seduction, complete and bludgeoning, abiding and abetting. They say that the time of summer is like the time of no other season, sprinkled with liberty, full of holidays and vacations, X-mas time, traveling, free time galore. Summer, when the temperature goes up and the pressure climbs to maximum by the ticking of the clock and the expectation of the coming New Year and what it promises. Now, this scorching December, something new is up. There’s a renewed esthetic sense. Just pure, sleek elegance because fat can no longer be tolerated, nothing of cellulite or slights to the roving masculine eye. From Bahia to Rio de Janeiro, from a thousand beaches come new names for the pieces of cloth which will be used to cover the pubic areas which are quickly turning public:the mini-curtain, the roll-up, the bikini plug, the lightning…Lightning, because it’s just a thin streak…whoever wants to use them has to be able to look real natural in them, personalize them as much as possible. This gives it the cadence and the swing of Ipanema or Itapoa.
And do you really think that any of this is new? Pero Vaz de Gamma, when writing to the king, Dom Manuel de Cabral, shows the success of this primal fashion modeling when he wrote “that among all that came, there was only one woman, an indian girl, that always came to mass, and to whom they gave a sheet with which to cover herself in church. She would wrap it around her but always when she sat down, she wouldn’t remember to arrange the folds to keep herself covered. In this way, Sir, the innocence of these people is such that the innocence of Adam would not be any greater in comparison.”
In truth, the Admiral didn’t actually have anything new to discover at all…Not even if it were today, his ships arriving and making port at Copacabana or in Camboriu…or even here in the pools of Figueira…

Wanderlino Arruda