Brazilian bikini business booms as women get fat

Brazilian bikinis

Brazil is known for its warm climate, carnival and beautiful, shapely, tan women in teeny bikinis. Supermodel Gisele Bundchen comes from Brazil. However, things seem to be changing for bigger in this sunny country as women are getting fat and larger bikinis are hard to find.

Brazil is a part of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) group of nations
whose economies are growing faster than Western countries, including the United States. Brazil’s is economy is booming partly because of its abundance of natural resources which also include newly discovered large oil reserves. Brazil is a big exporter of minerals, agricultural and food products to growing economies such as China.

Bigger Brazilian women

This growing prosperity has lifted a large number of Brazilians out of poverty but it has brought undesirable side affects. As more people are being lifted out of poverty, they are able to afford more, they are eating more and, often, fattening food and working less hard. The result has been a fattening population.

Because of increasing prosperity, people are doing less manual labor and are able to afford eating more. Traditional diet of rice, beans and vegetables are being replaced by fashionable American style unhealthy chips, processed food, processed meat and sugary soft drinks. The result has been a fattening population, similar to what has been happening in China.

In Brazil currently about 50% of the adult population is overweight. This contasts with about 20% overweight in 1985 and about 10% that was malnourished and underweight in 1970. At this stage, about half of the country seems to be out of shape.

The result has been obvious as more and more women got fat "gordinhas" and they could not find bikinis to fit them. Many high-end bikini makers, still in denial, refuse to make unappealing large bikinis. However, some businesses have accepted the fact that Brazilian booties are definitely getting bigger, if not better. A few bikini manufacturers have wisely started making big and bigger “Plus Size” bikinis, in addition to traditional tiny floss bikinis. The results have been astounding success. The sales of plus-size bikinis have been a lot higher than traditional bikinis.

The business lesson is pretty simple: forget what looks good, give them what they want and keep people happy. Even the Brazilian government has accepted the trend of fattening population. Now, Sao Paulo’s metro system provides extra-wide bucket seats for overweight passengers and the city has just started its Miss Plus Size beauty contest, the first one in Brazil.  

Sure, things are looking Big in Brazil’s future.

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