Sexual Racism in Brazil: Aesthetic Preference, Beauty Models and Stereotypes

We analysed three dimensions of sexual racism in Brazil in three studies. In study 1 , the aesthetic preferences of 499 Brazilians were examined. This was an exploratory study, using an online questionnaire. The results indicated that more brown-skin celebrities were mentioned for male beauty and more white celebrities for female beauty. The black-skin celebrities were more referred as examples of ugliness than of beauty. The relation between aesthetic preference for whites and blacks and racism was analysed in study 2 . It was an exploratory, using an online questionnaire. The results of 121 participants indicated that the more that aesthetic preference for whites was not considered racist, the greater was the personal racism. In the third study, stereotypes were investigated an objectification mechanism. The participants were 98 university students who were asked to attribute stereotypical traits to black and white women. It was an experimental study, adopting a latency software to collect data. The results showed that more attention was invested in the perception of whites than blacks and greater stereotyping was expressed regarding blacks. The results of the three studies confirmed our general hypothesis of the existence of sexual racism in Brazil.