Choice of 7-year-old as samba queen causes uproar in Brazil

[Liberal_in_LA]

Choice of 7-year-old as samba queen causes uproar in Brazil

A decision by one of Rio's top samba schools to let a seven-year-old girl lead its 2010 carnival procession has caused uproar on the eve of what Brazilians call the greatest party on Earth.

The honour of being one of the carnival queens, the nimble-footed women who lead the deafening samba troupes along Rio's Sambadrome, is normally reserved for immaculately tanned and half-naked soap opera stars keen to keep their faces – and bottoms – in the Brazilian media.

This year, however, one of Rio's best-known samba schools, Viradouro, has opted for a more unusual queen: Julia Lira, who is set to lead the drum section of her father's samba school, becoming Rio's youngest samba queen.

Children's rights activists have reacted angrily to the news that Viradouro, which was last carnival champion in 1997 and is one of 12 schools that will dispute this year's crown, plans to use a girl as its carnival queen, a role normally reserved for TV sex symbols or models. With just days to go before carnival officially begins, a local judge is considering whether to ban the child's appearance in the annual festivities.

Carlos Nicodemos, director of the Rio de Janeiro state council for the defence of children and adolescents, said: "We are not against kids participating in carnival; it's part of Brazilian culture. What we can't allow is putting a seven-year-old girl in a role that traditionally has a very sexual focus."

Márcia Regina Alves, a Rio prosecutor, said Lira could not be permitted to wear bikinis or any other traditional samba queen clothes. "The mother and father must be present on the day of the procession," she said. "The child cannot be exposed until the early hours of the morning."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/07/samba-queen-seven-divides-brazil

For comparison info...this is a typical samba queen: