A bikini model who went topless near a Brazilian beach faces up to a year in jail and is demanding to know why, when the country’s constitution guarantees gender equality.
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Caroline Werner, 37, has lashed out at Brazil’s ‘patriarchal, violent culture’ which belies its easy-going image and would not prosecute a man for the same offence.
The businesswoman, who owns her bikini brand, says she was roughed up by police and chained to the bars of her prison cell after she was seized by the Municipal Guard while walking her dog in the southern city of Balneário Camboriú.
‘Unfortunately, in my country even though the Constitution ensures gender equality, in practice this does not happen,’ Werner told Brazilian news outlet G1.
‘What should be normal for both genders ends up being denied to one of them in an arbitrary and repressive manner.’
A country that is renowned for scantily-clad performers at the Rio Carnival and draws tourists from across the world to its golden beaches has obscenity laws dating back to the 1940s which ban women from baring their chests in public.
Werner received a summons for ‘committing an obscene act’ after removing her shirt at a beach and tying it around her waist before she started walking her dogs in May this year.
Article 233 of the Penal Code describes the charge as ‘performing an obscene act in a public place, either open or exposed to the public.’
However, the law does not define an ‘obscene act.’
‘When crossing the street to leave the dogs, I was approached by the Municipal Guard in a completely arbitrary and disproportionate way,’ Werner said. ‘They arrived already putting my hands behind me and handcuffing me.’
The cops provided a blouse for Werner to cover her breasts, took her to a police station and left her handcuffed against metal bars in the ‘dark’ jail cell.
Werner alleged the police violated her due process rights by not allowing allow her to place a phone call to her family or a lawyer.
‘I spent more than an hour in that situation, unable to speak to anyone and, even though I had asked for I was denied my right to speak to my lawyer several times,’ she said.
Brazilian women have struggled for the right to breastfeed in public and in 2015 cities including Rio and Sao Paulo introduced fines for businesses that prohibited it
But Brazil’s draconian obscenity laws have attracted protests in recent years including in Rio where topless women have defied a ban that prevents them baring their chests even on the beaches.
‘A breast isn’t dangerous!’ Olga Salon, a 73-year-old Rio native told one reporter as she stripped off.
‘It’s a false-Puritanism and indicative of our macho culture that we have a law forbidding that a woman can go topless.’
Werner’s case echoes that of women involved in America’s ‘free the nipple’ movement who have been convicted of public nudity offences after going topless in public.
In 2020 the Supreme Court ruled that a prosecution of three women who were for removing their bathing suit tops on a New Hampshire beach did not violate their constitutional rights.
Heidi Lilley, Kia Sinclair and Ginger Pierro were arrested in 2016 after removing their tops at a beach in Laconia and refusing to put them on when beachgoers complained. Pierro was doing yoga, while the two others were sunbathing.
Werner’s case is being handled by the Santa Cantarina state prosecutor’s office, which offered has offered her a plea deal.
But she still faces a hefty fine and up to a year in jail if she refuses.
‘In many countries, it is a completely normal practice,’ she insisted, ‘A woman’s body is not objectified and hypersexualised.
‘What happened to me, the abuse of authority and judgment by society, demonstrate how the interpretation of the law itself reflects gender conduct dictated by patriarchal, violent culture, in relation to the control of female bodies.’
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