Beyond “Braganza Mothers”: the stereotyping of Brazilian women in Portuguese journalism

Abstract

Using the “Braganza Mothers” case as point of departure, known in 2003 through a sensational media representation, with the presence of stereotypes about Brazilian women (Correia, 2014), this article seeks to demonstrate, from a critical analysis of four texts unrelated to the theme of prostitution, that the stereotyping of the journalistic discourse about Brazilian women is not only identified in texts referring to the prostitution of immigrants. The ubiquity of this mediatic exaltation of exoticism, combined with a sensuality that would be innate not only to Brazilian women, but even to Brazil, is also evident. To understand the reasons for this phenomenon, we contextualize the origins of the social representations of Brazilian women, highlighting the weight in those
constructions of the Luso‑tropicalism, a theory developed by Gilberto Freyre in the mid twentieth century.