Former Globeleza beauty Aline Prado covers the February edition of Playboy Brasil magazine

Note from BW of Brazil: With the Carnaval commercial vignettes featuring the new Globeleza girl now in full rotation on Globo TV, the inevitable question is, where is the Aline Prado, the woman who held the post for the past eight years? Well it appears that Aline didn’t waste any time to assure that she isn’t soon forgotten.  In a photo layout that hits magazine stands starting today, Aline becomes the latest in a small circle of black women who have appeared on the cover of the Brazilian edition of Playboy magazine.

Now whether one believes that a black woman being featured on the cover of a magazine that some see as sexist and exploitative, it’s still noteworthy to mention that in nearly 40 years of its existence and around 450 issues, Aline is still only the eighth black woman to appear on the magazine’s cover (1). Aline apparently fits Playboy’s criteria for putting an Afro-Brazilian woman on the cover: she has to be really famous. And after 8 years of parading during in Carnaval and on the nation’s most powerful TV network, usually only with paint and sprinkles of glitter on her body, one could say that everyone recognizes even if they don’t know her name. 

To her credit, there are plenty of photos of Aline online and even one who objects to sensual or nude photos must admit, Prado’s photos never come across as overtly sexual or trashy (2). And that’s saying something in a country that is known for pushing the envelope of sexuality in its media. 

Former Globeleza beauty Aline Prado covers the February issue of Playboy Brasil

After 8 years of appearing only covered in glitter for vignettes of Globo TV’s Carnival, Aline Prado returns and in a way that you know well! As revealed in the Retratos da Vida (Portraits of Life, a column featured in Extra), the former Globeleza beauty, who left the post in 2013, will grace the cover and pages of  the February edition of Playboy Brasil as shown in the first appetizer released exclusively on the Extra website.

“I’m not ashamed of nudity. For me it’s something more than natural,” says the 27 year old gata (literally “cat”, meaning “hot woman”), who took off all of her clothes in the barracks of the Vai-Vai samba school in São Paulo and also in the streets of the Bixiga neighborhood of central Sao Paulo. “I was just a little anxious, but at when the time came it was easy. I had already thought of posing nude other times. But I thought now was the time since I just quit a cycle.”

In September of 2012, the magazine had already expressed interest in having Prado appear between its pages. In a piece entitled, “women that appeared in Playboy but didn’t remove all of their clothes,” Aline refused saying “It’s something to think about, but not right now.”

The photos were under the responsibility of the American Autumn Sonnichsen, who has lived in Brazil for seven years, with styling by Fabricio Miranda and Walério Araújo.

Out of her post as the Globo network’s symbol of Carnaval, the mulata, a journalism graduate, battles for an opportunity as an actress, but without leaving Carnival out of her life. This year, she’s coming out a little more covered up, she leaves it clear, as a muse for Grande Rio.

“I intensified the workout a bit before doing the photographs already thinking about the parade. But you know how it is, right? A woman is never satisfied with her body,” exaggerates the beauty. Single and in total control of her own life, Aline makes it clear that no man would make her give up her dreams. “If the guy is jealous of my work, he doesn’t date me.”

Source: Extra, Playboy Brasil, Joven Pan Online

Note

1. Of course, in traditional Brazilian fashion, there is never complete consensus on what one considers black. By BW of Brazil standards, Aline would be the eighth black Brazilian woman featured on the cover. In the interview with Aline in this month’s issue, the magazine congratulates her for entering a select circle as the sixth black woman to make the cover; there has been one black American woman featured on the cover of Playboy‘s Brazil edition as well.  You be the judge; the other covers are here and keep in mind that one issue featured a selection of two covers for Jaqueline Faria.

2. Of course, keep in mind that Aline is featured completely nude in her February 2014 Playboy spread. Thus again, what is tasteful/trashy, sensuous/sexual is in the eye of the beholder.