“My Pleasure, I am Carol Bandida!” A Negotiation of Brazilian Funk and Feminism on
Social Media
by
Suenia Aline de Azevedo
A thesis accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
in Communication and Media Studies
Thesis Committee:
Dr. Gabriela Martínez, Chair
Dr. Dayna Chatman, Member
Dr. Christopher Chávez, Member
University of Oregon
Spring 2024
© 2024 Suenia Aline de Azevedo
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THESIS ABSTRACT
Suenia Aline de Azevedo
Master of Arts in Communication and Media Studies
Title: “My Pleasure, I am Carol Bandida!” A Negotiation of Brazilian Funk and 
Feminism on Social Media
This thesis comprehended the negotiation between feminism and music on social media,
focusing on the discourse of the Brazilian feminist funk genre on TikTok. Through the
qualitative method of textual analysis, 60 videos of TikTok’s profile of Brazilian feminist
funk singer MC Carol were analyzed. The investigation was conducted from a
post-structuralist perspective in order to answer the MC Carol's use of TikTok to promote her
music within feminist discourse, her negotiation of feminism on social media, and the
perception of the feminist discourse of the Brazilian funk singer MC Carol by her audience.
The results showed that the bandida performance is acknowledged as the MC Carol’s
feminist discourse on TikTok, her audience perceives the singer’s feminism as of a real
woman, and visual communication and emphasis on songs’ lyrics are the main element of
promotion of feminist discourse in MC Carol’s music on TikTok. The present research
demonstrates a contribution in expanding the context of the resistance of Afro-Brazilian
feminist funk singers on social media in the academic field.
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DEDICATION
I dedicate this thesis to my mother, Aldeci de Azevedo, my father, Severino de Azevedo, my
sister, Celina de Azevedo, and my partner, Jackson Harrison. Thank you for all the support
throughout this chapter of my life.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................... 08
II. LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................................ 11
Black Brazilian Feminism and its Intersectionalities of Gender, Race, and
Classe......................................................................................................................... 11
Black Feminism................................................................................................... 11
Black Brazilian Feminism…............................................................................... 12
Black Women and Their Association to Race and Class in Brazil...................... 14
Brazilian Music, Pretas and Pardas Feminism and Resistance ................................ 16
Samba as a Pretas and Pardas Women’s Resistance .......................................... 17
Bossa Nova as a Pretas and Pardas Women’s Resistance................................... 18
Brazilian Funk and Feminism…................................................................................ 19
Feminist Brazilian Funk….................................................................................. 20
Feminist Brazilian Funk Artists and Their Relationship to Sexuality and
Femininity .......................................................................................................... 21
Brazilian Feminist Waves......................................................................................... 22
Fourth Wave of Feminism in Brazil.................................................................... 25
Performance of Identity on Social Media................................................................. 26
Pretas and Pardas Women's Performance of Identity on TikTok........................ 28
The Current Study.................................................................................................... 29
III. METHOD ................................................................................................................. 29
IV. FINDINGS ................................................................................................................ 31
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V. DISCUSSION ................................................................................................................ 41
The Bandida Performance Acknowledged as MC Carol’s Feminist Discourse........... 41
The Feminism of a Real Woman for The Audience .................................................... 45
Visual Communication and Emphasis on Songs’ Lyrics as the Main Element of
Promotion of Feminist Discourse in MC Carol’s Music on TikTok ............................ 47
IV. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................ 49
REFERENCES CITED........................................................................................................ 52
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page
1. MC Carol Embracing The Bandida Performance Through an Authoritarian Posture.... 32
2. MC Carol’s Sexual Performance of a Bandida’s Character........................................... 33
3. MC Carol’s Positive Reaffirmation of Racial Identity Through Valorization of Her
Hair................................................................................................................................ 35
4. MC Carol’s Critique of Standardization of White Beauty in the Song “Levanta,
Mina” Promotional Video............................................................................................. 37
5. MC Carol’s Performance of Black Goddess in the Song PUT@RIA! Promotional
Video............................................................................................................................. 39
6. MC Carol’s Eroticized Performance in the Song “Ki Suco and Xereca” Promotional
Video........................................................................................................................... 40
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Introduction
“I'm a woman, I'm Black, and my hair is nappy. I'm not going to wash the dishes. I am
an independent woman. I do not accept oppression. Lower your voice, lower your hand” (MC
Carol & Karol Conká, 2016). These lyrics are from the classic feminist Brazilian song, 100%
Feminista, sung by MC Carol, a Black Brazilian feminist funk singer. This thesis research
focuses on the singer MC Carol, whose career began at 15 years old. MC Carol used to sing
at Brazilian funk parties the oppressions of her story being a Black, overweight, and
authoritarian woman from an impoverished background in Rio de Janeiro, a Brazilian city.
The feminist art of MC Carol as a Brazilian funk singer comes from a lifelong resistance to
racism, poverty, sexism, and fatphobia that accompanied the singer from an early age
(Aguiar, 2022).
The feminist strand of Brazilian funk is composed of Black and mixed-race women
from lower-income backgrounds, as MC Carol reflects the structural gender inequality
present in Brazilian society (Moreira, 2022). Through the Brazilian feminist funk, the singers
have an opportunity to be legitimized culturally and heard socially with a chance to be
“voiced by someone who sings from the position of those who find themselves being socially,
economically, politically, and sexually highly repressed” (Ribeiro, 2022, pp. 139-140). The
mainstream Brazilian funk scenario represents women as submissive, needing to do domestic
work, and ready to be penetrated. Reacting to that framework, female singers started to sing
about their sexual liberation to challenge the sexist representation offered by traditional funk
(Carvajal, 2014).
The third-wave feminism in Brazil inspired the feminist strand of the Brazilian funk.
Among cultural expressions inspired by the sexual freedom addressed by the third wave of
feminism, music was an essential product in which women sang about their oppression.
Rather than aiming only for gender equality and freedom from patriarchal issues as the first
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and second waves, women fought for sexual freedom, recognizing the power of their bodies
(Lyra, 2016). Women’s acceptance of their sexualized bodies enabled them to embrace their
political and personal contradictions (Matos & Simões, 2017). Thus, Brazilian feminist funk
is focused on women’s sexual agency.
However, the feminism represented in music is not similar to the one debated in
academia since the artists often do not have an academic background. Feminism in Brazilian
funk started only in 2010 to be recognized as part of the feminist movement. As Black and
mixed-race women from lower-income backgrounds who work to redefine their margins
through their songs, Brazilian funk singers assimilate the concept of feminism from their
daily struggles (Carvajal, 2014). For example, MC Carol tells her audience in her song 100%
Feminista about situations that happened in her childhood that led her to become a feminist:
“Woman with bruised eyes, beaten every day. I was about five years old, but I had already
understood what a woman gets beaten for if she doesn't make food. Oppressed, voiceless,
obedient woman. When I grow up, I'll be different” (MC Carol & Karol Conká, 2016).
According to Cardoso & Adelman (2016), not only in Brazil but also in other
countries, there is not enough academic debate regarding intersectional feminism, leading to
not being hegemonic. On the other hand, liberal feminism, which claims equality of rights for
men and women as well (Van Zoonen, 1994), is the most studied academically and disclosed
feminism in media. Currently, Black Brazilian women are mobilizing more politically than
before. Thus, it is necessary to comprehend Black feminism from a transnational perspective
and understand Black Brazilian feminism as a debate regarding not only gender but also from
racial and class perspectives (Perry, 2016; Alvarez & Caldwell, 2016).
The public image of Black Brazilian women is still stigmatized, generally, as lacking
the political repertoire to be involved in social movements. This is mainly correlated to the
social and economic roles of those who are from impoverished backgrounds (Perry, 2016).
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However, that perception has changed in the last 15 years with the internet since Black
Brazilian women use cyberspace to be more visible and maintain their Afro-Brazilian culture
and religion (Perry, 2016; Barros, 2020).
Despite the reaffirmed importance of the internet in disclosing Black feminism in
Brazil, there is not enough literature to understand the negotiation of the feminist discourse of
Brazilian funk singers on the internet as Black women from impoverished backgrounds in
social media. Besides that, it is also important to comprehend if the feminism of Brazilian
funk singers represented in social media is similar to the one compared to the lyrics.
The Brazilian funk singers use specific contexts regarding their lives to reach their
resistance and, hence, their survival. Based on that idea, other forms of knowledge should be
considered as data for academic research (Brayboy, 2005). As a mixed-race Brazilian woman
from a lower-income background, I aim further to understand the feminist debate beyond the
academic perspective and take into account the feminist perspective of women of similar
socioeconomic backgrounds to mine. Thus, I am doing this by studying MC Carol’s feminist
discourse regarding her music, which has had an impact on my life and that of other women,
also on social media.
Black Brazilian feminism on the internet is one of the main strategies of Black
women’s activism to strengthen their protagonism as women fighting against racism in
addition to sexism (Barros, 2020). The online debate regarding feminism enables the chance
to teach, learn, encourage, and strengthen dialogues also about racial subjects. Moreover,
empowers “movements of empathy and collective support in virtual spaces, enabling sharing
of experiences and discussions of realities” (Boakari & Souza, 2019, p. 234).
As a still under-explored research topic in academia, this thesis will probe the
performance of Brazilian feminist funk on social media. In order to answer the research
questions raised, this thesis has the purpose of bridging the academic gap of comprehending
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the negotiation of feminist discourse on social media by the Black Brazilian funk singer MC
Carol, along with the perception of her feminist discourse by her audience and the use of the
social media platform TikTok to promote MC Carol’s music within feminist discourse. A
textual analysis of her videos on TikTok was executed to fulfill that goal, investigating visual
and verbal discourses of her feminism on that social media.
Literature Review
Black Brazilian Feminism and its Intersectionalities of Gender, Race, and Class
In order to comprehend the dynamic of Brazilian funk singers' feminism, it is
necessary to understand further the origins of Black Brazilian feminism and the oppressions
to which Black Brazilian women are subjugated, along with the relation of social markers of
gender, race, and class in Brazil. For that, it is necessary first to comprehend the
conceptualization of intersectionality as a system of oppression “that cannot be reduced to
one type and that oppressions work together producing injustice” (Collins, 2022, p. 24).
Black Feminism
Regarding the racial and gendered oppression of Black women in society, their lived
experiences are a source of knowledge to understand the societal dynamic in which they are
subjugated. However, those experiences are not homogeneous. Each Black woman has a
unique experience. As Collins (2022) says: “Differences among individual Black women
produce different patterns of experiential knowledge that shape individual reactions to the
core themes” (Collins, 2022, p. 35). Those multiple standpoints produce knowledge. Thus, it
represents a paradigm shift in conceptualizing knowledge while considering other forms of
knowledge as legitimate (Hekman, 1997). The same experiences are shared by women who
face intersectional oppression of gender, race, and class around the world since the resistance
of women against colonialism and racism is frequently dominated by patriarchy (Alinia,
2015).
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In order to resist the societal oppression, Black women developed a triple
consciousness. That concept is understood primarily under the double consciousness theory
from Du Bois (2008), which occurs for Black people, in the process of self-formation,
picturing themselves through a Whiteness gaze and a Blackness gaze. For triple
consciousness, Welang (2018) explains that the existence of racial experiences is defined by
the role of patriarchy, which plays a third factor in triple consciousness. Black masculinity, in
the patriarchal dynamic, is responsible for reinforcing the marginalization of Black women
while prioritizing White women’s voices in feminist spaces. Thus, minorities need to align
the self with their racial group and defend themselves against dominant groups as an act of
consciousness and resistance (Wood et al.,1996).
Black Brazilian Feminism
Black Brazilian feminism is determined by a Black African cosmovision since racism
is the starting point of feminist discussions of Black women (Rodrigues & Prado, 2013;
Cardoso & Adelman, 2016). That shared African origin is explained by Alvarez & Caldwell
(2016) through the concept of “Amefricanity,” defined by the Brazilian anthropologist Lelia
Gonzalez as the diaspora of Black and Indigenous people to the Americas as a signal of their
resistance to their colonization. Currently, the resistance of Black Brazilian feminists is the
work on their autonomy, building a feminist movement aiming to examine Brazilian history
from the Black Brazilian women's point of view (Cardoso & Adelman, 2016).
Brazil has the second-largest population of African descendants worldwide.
Moreover, the Black female population in the country corresponds to 25% of the total of over
200 million habitants, according to Alvarez & Caldwell (2016). Black Brazilian women who
are marginalized and inhabit racial and class oppressions use this intersection to base their
feminist movement conceptually. Thus, racism and class inequality are the main axes to
comprehend multiple discrimination that affect Black women in Brazil (Cardoso & Adelman,
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2016; Perry, 2016). Those intersectionalities started to be taken into account by the end of the
second wave of the Brazilian feminist movement through the assimilation of popular-class
women’s and Black women’s issues, increasing the diversity of the feminist movement
(Bastian Duarte, 2012; Bairros et al., 2016).
Black Brazilian feminism is more aligned politically with the anti-racist movement
than the feminist movement, supporting other gendered perspectives inside Black political
groups in the country (Alvarez & Caldwell, 2016). According to Pinto-Bailey (2021), the
Black Brazilian feminist movement is not homogeneous, being diverse, such as other Black
feminisms. Based on solid historical experiences of Black women who are against the
traditional order, Black Brazilian feminism is centered on older generations' cultural and
political activist forms. Aiming to fight against historically stereotyped ideas regarding
themselves, the teachings of Black Brazilian feminists, according to their lived experiences,
are focused on resisting situations of submission to men and violence and the idea of female
fragility, which enables Black women to self-defense (Cardoso & Adelman, 2016).
That Afro-Brazilian cosmovision influences the perceptions of femininity by Black
women. Aiming an Afro-Brazilian worldwide perspective, the women category is
disconnected from White and Western Judeo-Christian perceptions, emerging from Black
figures of femininity (Cardoso & Adelman, 2016; Pinto-Bailey, 2021). For example, the
named Ialodês are female figures in leadership positions in African culture. As orixás, which
are deities represented by nature from the Iorubá tradition and elements of the Candomblé
religion in Brazil, Iemanjá is associated as the goddess of the sea, being a maternal figure and
source of political power for Black women (Perry, 2016; Cardoso, 2016). Another example is
Oxum, the deity of the rivers, an orixá representing fertility, female sensuality, and sexual
life. Those Afro-Brazilian portrayals challenge the Eurocentric perspective that focuses on
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White women and highlights the strength of Afro-Brazilian female characteristics,
empowering Black Brazilian women while valuing their own culture (Pinto-Bailey, 2021).
Black Women and Their Association to Race and Class in Brazil
Race in the Brazilian context is a social criterion for further understanding the
relationship between gender and socioeconomic class. In multiracial societies such as Brazil,
race has a symbolic role in which the individuals are distributed in class structure according
to their approximation to racial and classist domination patterns (Souza, 2021). To further
comprehend the Afro-cosmovision of the Black Brazilian population, it is necessary to
explain Brazilian African heritage. According to Hordge-Freeman (2013), the transatlantic
slave trade had an essential part in the Brazilian racial composition since the country received
the highest number of enslaved people. In addition, Brazil, being the last country worldwide
to abolish slavery, was also a contributing factor to that multiracial characteristic.
The range of races in Brazil was comprehended as positive by the beginning of the
20th Century, with the idea of racial democracy supported by Gilberto Freyre (1938). In his
most famous book, Casa Grande e Senzala, either by choice or by force, it was through the
contact between Europeans and Native Brazilians that the first layers of miscegenation
started. Thus, Brazilian society was born. To Freyre, race and skin tone are no different in
Brazil since, through miscegenation, there is harmony between races and no specific racial
characteristics (Skidmore, 1983; Hordge-Freeman, 2013). That romanticization of
miscegenation as a racial democracy presented by Freyre (1938) as a nationalist idea lasted
until the late 1970s, supported by the Brazilian military dictatorship colonels (Skidmore,
1983).
The miscegenation resulted in a range of ethnic-racial categories. Regarding
self-declaration, according to Trindade (2020), in 1976, the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of
Geography and Statistics) revealed that the Brazilian population had varied racial
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identification through the results of the institute’s research. One hundred thirty-five categories
were self-declared according to the skin tone of the participants. Because of such a range of
ethnic-racial categories, IBGE decided to disregard them and employs five categories:
“Amarelo (Yellow or Asian descent), Branco (White), Indígena (Indigenous - ethnicity),
Pardo (Brown, mixed-race or miscegenated) and Preto (Black)” (Trindade, 2020, p.3).
IBGE’s racial categories are considered the official racial profile system (de Souza,
2019). However, Brazilian scholars comprehend as Negros1 the Pretos and Pardos
populations in Brazil that are classified according to IBGE (Santos et al., 2020; de Siqueira
Gomes, 2021). Thus, not only Black people are related to Negros. In addition, Pardos are also
included in the term (de Siqueira Gomes, 2021). As a result of the 2022 census, 56,1% of the
Brazilian population is Preta and Parda, of which 9,1% is Preta and 47% is Parda (Cabral,
2022).
Comprehending the Brazilian social class panorama, according to research developed
by Critério Brasil in 2022, the country is divided into socioeconomic classes A, B1, B2, C1,
C2, and DE. Classes DE represent 27,9% of the population with a median income of
R$900,60 ($182,64 considering 1 United States dollar= R$4,93). Class C1 and C2 represent
21% and 26,4%, respectively. The monthly median income for class C1 corresponds to
R$3276,76 ($664,52), and for class C2, R$1965,87 ($398,68). Class B1 and B2 are,
correspondingly, 16,7% and 5,1% of the Brazilian population with R$10361,48 ($2101,29)
and R$5755,23 ($1167,15) of median income, respectively. Lastly, class A is 2,9% with a
median income of R$21826,74 ($4426.43) (Brasil, 2022).
There is an association between the Pretas and Pardas women in Brazil and their
socioeconomic class. According to Critério Brasil, the CDE classes are more concentrated in
a feminine profile for gendered representations. The AB classes correspond to a masculine
1 The word Negro in Brazil is not used under a racist conotation, defining Black and mixed-race populations.
For academic purpose, pretos and pardos define Negro population in the study.
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profile, with a difference of almost 10% between the female and male variables. For racial
representations, White people represent a large proportion of AB classes. Pretos and Pardos
population, which are Black and mixed-racialized people, represents almost 75% of CDE
classes (Brasil, 2022). Thus, Pretas and Pardas women in Brazil are, in their majority,
present in CDE classes, the lowest tiers of socioeconomic classes.
Brazilian Music, Pretas and Pardas Feminism, and Resistance
According to Stuart Hall (2015), cultural identity is explained by shared history,
cultural codes, and historical experiences, recognizing those as one people. For example,
Black culture in the American continents has become multiple cultural expressions. Within
the Black diaspora, music was a cultural element that was part of the expression of the Black
population. The musical performance disclosed the Black culture across embodied, oral, and
religious elements (Azevedo, 2018). Moreover, the orality characteristic of diasporic music is
related to the body (Gilroy, 2001). That is also reiterated by Azevedo (2018), in which in the
Black universe, body and music are dependents, thus “reworking “Africa” in its rhythmic
dimension, sacred oral word, religious devotions to ancestors, and visual and communicative
art” (p. 47).
Dubois (2008) explains the orality of Black culture from the musical perspective
under the slavery era example in which sorrow songs were veiled messages of enslaved
people to the world as faith and a breath of hope. Such proposition is reinforced by Lu &
Steele (2019), comprehending the Black people's oral culture to argue against enslavement
and make critiques of American slave society through music and storytelling in which “song
was cultivated as a particularly adept mode of resistance, as it made skillful and
transformative use of the dominant group’s language” (Lu & Steele, 2019, p.3).
The orality of Black female musicians, illustrated by Collins (2022) in her book Black
feminist thought, contributes to the intellectual tradition of their activism through their songs.
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Rhythms like blues, for example, because most Black women in the 1920s were illiterate, had
their public voice in the music, with lyrics bringing the perspective of working-class Black
women through Black oral tradition. “Thus, while it appears that the Black women blues
singers of the 1920s sang freely of sexually explicit themes, they did so in a complicated
context of race, class, and gender politics” (Collins, 2022, p.141).
Samba as a Pretas and Pardas Women’s Resistance
Similar to blues, samba is a rhythm constructed originally from orality. According to
Azevedo (2018), in the first decades of the 20th Century, samba was considered a
marginalized rhythm due to the roots of African traditions, erasing Pretos and Pardos artists
and focusing on White musicians. However, in the 1930s, radio stations started to be
sponsored by the Brazilian government under Getúlio Vargas's presidency and celebrate the
miscegenation ideal, which rearranged the samba as a national symbol (Enriquez, 2022). The
samba lyrics express the desires and realities of the impoverished population (Da Cunha,
2018).
Women were always present in the process of constructing samba as composers,
dancers, and performers. Their public roles in contributing to the creation of the rhythm were
inserted in the social roles of the 20th Century context. Hidden under the roles of aunties,
Pretas and Pardas women had significant public importance in the kitchen as cooks at that
time (Dürks Cassol, 2022). However, Emerson (2002) explained that in popular culture,
Pretas and Pardas women aim to express their independence, agency, and self-reliance while
negotiating their social existence. Only in the 1970s female samba composers were known
publicly, such as Dona Ivone Lara and Leci Brandão, two Pretas women artists who were
pioneers of the rhythm (Moreira, 2014). Thus, challenging the already established social role
of women in household services, female singers of samba “proposed another model of being
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and existing in this world, a model based on feminism and the fight for human rights through
samba as a cultural process” (Dürks Cassol, 2022, p. 6).
The samba enabled Pretas and Pardas women to be knowledge producers through
their lived experiences. As an example, Dona Ivone Lara, a famous samba singer, was the
first woman to write a samba-enredo in Rio de Janeiro, a music that is the theme of a
Carnival group, positioning Pretas and Pardas women in the samba environment. With a
narrative of female emancipation, Dona Ivone Lara was a feminist without having the notion
of the movement's definition (Burns, 2020). Thus, it could be comprehended that samba
enabled Pretas and Pardas women to be recognized as subjects with their values appreciated.
“Samba as a feminist cultural process, thus, emerges as a new medium, a new tool of
democracy capable of propitiating the dialogue of law with reality” (Dürks Cassol, 2022, p.
10).
Bossa Nova as a Pretas and Pardas Women’s Resistance
The Brazilian music scene in the 20th century was shaped by political tensions of race
and class (Enriquez, 2022). Following the emerging urban middle class in the 1950s, bossa
nova arose with the purpose of being an elitist rhythm to offer a new direction for the musical
scene at that time (Moreno, 1982). The genre aimed to contain the animosity of samba and
bring elegance with jazz elements to the Afro-Brazilian roots of samba and to cultural modes
of singing, dressing, talking, and looking (Moreno, 1982; Cesar, 2022).
Similar to samba, the marginalization of Pretas and Pardas artists also occurred
within bossa nova. Pretas and Pardas female artists who contributed to the genre, like Alaíde
Costa and Elza Soares were marginalized from the bossa nova's history (Enriquez, 2022).
The artists started their careers interpreting bossa nova’s songs. However, Alaíde Costa and
Elza Soares were gradually separated from the movement and positioned to samba, since
their music had a too dancing melody (Cesar, 2022). Among other reasons why the singers
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were relegated to the bossa nova’s periphery was the fact that Elza Soares had a hoarse voice,
which made her too Black for the bossa nova’s movement, and Alaíde Costa a too intimate
voice to be a Black woman in a White musical movement (Cesar, 2022).
Brazilian Funk and Feminism
According to Viana (2010), the origin of the funk music movement comes from the
United States, with inspiration from soul music as a result of the mixture of rhythm, blues,
and gospel music. The word funk had, at first, a sexual connotation, through the slang
“funky” corresponding to the smell of body during sexual intercourse. However, around
1968, that slang lost that sexual connotation and incorporated a proud meaning for Black
people (Viana, 2010).
In the 1980s, funk emerged in Brazil as protest music in order to resonate with the
voices of Pretos and Pardos and impoverished people, criticizing their daily lives in Rio de
Janeiro (De Souza, 2020). Singing about poverty and drug trafficking in Rio de Janeiro, the
Brazilian funk artists also approach themes such as sex and relationships explicitly (Moreira,
2017). Born in marginalized areas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian funk has a significant presence
in the city's festivities and has become one of the most popular rhythms in Brazil (Carvajal,
2014). Before the rise of funk, the carnival, samba, and soccer composed the unified image of
the country (Yúdice & Vianna, 2014).
Brazilian funk songs are made through recordings in a studio, in a collaboration
between a DJ and the singer, called MC. Like a sung speech, the singer's voice is positioned
on an Afro-Brazilian rhythmic foundation (Del Picchia, 2021). Brazilian funk is a fast-paced
rhythm inspired by Miami Bass with heavy beats and short verses. It was inaugurated with
the Funk Brasil collection as a cultural movement, released by DJ Marlboro in 1989
(Bragança, 2020). As a rhythm started by Pretos and Pardos, lower-income people, Brazilian
funk is a subversion against the racial and gendered status quo established in society (Ferreira
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& Giorgi, 2022). In 2001, new Brazilian funk groups named bondes were formed with the
people who grew up listening to the rhythm, corroborating them to keep using sexual
connotations in their lyrics. At that same time, a feminist strand arose with women on
command of the rhythm (Viana, 2010).
Feminist Brazilian Funk
In the early years of the 2000s, the violence sung by the artists in the Brazilian funk
songs through the subgenre of funk consciente, Portuguese translation for conscious, had
ceded space to a response from Pretas and Pardas female singers in “a discursive gender
battle, in which men found themselves being seized by all sorts of female ironies and desires”
(Ribeiro, 2022, p. 142). Female voices had active participation in the Brazilian funk
movement. Until then, women used to be in roles as dancers for male singers. While using
Brazilian funk as a political act, the singers sing about themselves as Pretas and Pardas
women in the relationship between the body and society, focusing on their lives in the
favelas, translated to English as Brazilian slums. Their voices carry their historical and
identity context constructed in a veiled world (Ferreira & Giorgi, 2022).
Tati Quebra-Barraco, for example, is a Preta woman and one of the responsible
female funk singers to inaugurate proibidão funk, an erotic subgenre of Brazilian funk. In this
subgenre, female singers started to speak widely about their sexuality (McNally, 2017;
Bragança, 2020). In response to the oppression lived by feminist Brazilian funk artists, the
singers answer it by singing lyrics against racism, gendered violence, and classism while also
celebrating women’s sexual independence (Carvajal, 2014; Ribeiro, 2022). Other significant
singers compose the main names of the Brazilian feminist funk, such as Deize Tigrona,
Valesca Popozuda, and MC Carol.
Brazilian feminist funk artists’ perception of feminism comes from their daily
struggle through their sexual agency to manipulate men and have sexual freedom through
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various sexual partners (Carvajal, 2014). Their female vulnerability is transformed into
empowerment, as an equal opposition to the aggressive male strength (Ferreira & Giorgi,
2022). Moreover, the typical female Brazilian funk audience from a lower-income
background usually has the first contact with feminism through the rhythm (Carvajal, 2014;
Lyra, 2016).
Feminist Brazilian Funk Artists and Their Relationship to Sexuality and Femininity
Performance is an explicit aspect of Brazilian funk (Lyra, 2016). The excess of
meanings that happens through the Brazilian feminist funk singers’ performances distorts the
identity binarism, enabling the marginalized bodies to transgress stable identities. Brazilian
female singers enact their performances on stage as an act of courage, representing
themselves as revolutionary and libertarian women. They swear in their music, refusing male
submission and being able to be violent if they are a victim of patriarchal violence (Garcia &
Sousa, 2017; Moreira, 2017). That performance has various versions of femininity “such as
wives who cheat on their husbands, mistresses who make fun of faithful wives, women
searching for casual sex, and independent women” (Moreira, 2017, p. 180). The singers reject
the norms related to hetero-femininity, controlling women’s bodies through patriarchal
cultural norms. Constantly resisting them, the Brazilian feminist funk singers negotiate what
is morally acceptable or vulgar and reiterate their position in society as women of color from
impoverished backgrounds (Moreira, 2017).
It took a decade since the rise of feminism in Brazilian funk, from the 2000s to the
2010s, for Brazilian feminist scholars to comprehend that the female singers in Brazilian funk
perform intersectional feminism related to their sexual agency. Their feminism is not similar
to academia or related to social movements but to a musical genre that is highly marginalized
(Ribeiro, 2022). The scholars' analyses are based on dichotomies such as
oppression/liberation and active/passive. Due to that binary investigation, researchers do not
21
explore the contradiction outside of that normative binarism in which the female singers are
and do not comprehend that they are lower-class and non-White women (Moreira, 2017). On
the other hand, it took the same time for the singers to comprehend themselves as feminists
since they are Pretas and Pardas women highly repressed in class, racial, and gendered
perspectives in Brazil (Ribeiro, 2022).
The transgressive performance that Pretas and Pardas women have related their
sexuality to third-wave feminism, in which the Pretas and Pardas feminist funk singers
picture the expression of their sexuality as resistance and a central feminist practice. They
want to be subject and object, asking for equality and not erasing their sexuality (Lyra, 2016;
Moreira, 2017). Their lyrics present verbs in the imperative mode, such as take, eat, or sit,
relating to the sexual organs and demonstrating the dominance women exert over their men.
Moreover, their choreographies explore the body, with their vaginas guiding their
performance and being the materialization of female power (Ferreira & Giorgi, 2022;
Ribeiro, 2022).
Furthermore, their performance of sexuality also has shrieks and shouts that “are
vocalizations that unite struggle and desire in women’s Brazilian funk music. Stridency
enacts obscene words, and obscenity energizes the voice” (Ribeiro, 2022, p.141). The
singers’ bodies are an instrument of combat, refusing the representation of their bodies as
objects of man’s pleasure (Garcia & Sousa, 2017). Those expressions of power express their
claim of having the domain of their bodies and pride about life with a background as
marginalized racial, gendered, and class women (Ribeiro, 2022).
Brazilian Feminist Waves
Brazil has one of the most vital feminist movements in Latin America (Matos &
Simões, 2017). The changes that have been happening in the Brazilian feminist movement in
the last four decades are connected to the development of social, economic, and political
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changes in the country (Matos & Simões, 2017). At the beginning of the 19th century, around
the 1820s, Brazil took the first steps in the feminist movement with the first wave. The
manifestations at that time questioned the rigid culture in which women lived. Literate
women, such as Nísia Floresta, claimed the right for other women to be literate and read and
write when this was reserved for men (Duarte, 2019).
In the 1870s, aiming to be recognized as citizens, women activists began to edit
feminist journals to claim radical changes, such as the emancipation of women through
abolishing male guardianship over wives. Josefina Álvares de Azevedo was one of the first
feminists to claim women’s rights to higher education, divorce, paid work, and voting
(Duarte, 2019). Bertha Lutz, another significant political figure, was the leading political
rights activist and leader of the Brazilian suffrage movement. In 1932, women conquered the
right to vote, being included in the new electoral law (Pinto, 2003; Matos & Simões, 2017).
The first wave started to lose power in the 1960s when Brazil had a military coup initiating
the Brazilian military dictatorship (de Almeida Teles, 2018).
During the first years of the military dictatorship, from 1964 to 1985, the women’s
movement was still not cohesive due to political repression (de Almeida Teles, 2018). While
right-wing women such as military leaders' wives, mothers, and sisters supported and
legitimized the Brazilian military dictatorship, female activists contested the political order of
the military coup under Marxist influence, differing the Brazilian movement from the global
north (Sarti, 2004; Matos & Simões, 2017).
Feminists such as Romy Medeiros and Branca Moreira Alves were committed to
feminist activism, holding private meetings to share feminist ideas brought from the United
States while exiled (Pinto, 2003). Although the women’s movement started in the middle
class, they began to articulate with popular-class women and neighborhood organizations
about their immediate survival needs (Sarti, 2004; Lyra, 2016; Alvarez, 2018). The feminist
23
activists linked the movement's ideals to the needs of women from the popular classes. With a
more plural movement, working women and rural workers in the 1970s had their interests
considered, joining unions and demanding better working conditions, equal wages, and
daycare centers (Munro, 2013). Topics regarding economy, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and
environment were addressed, which influenced the configuration of the Brazilian family since
middle-class women started to occupy the labor market, corroborating the increase in
separations and divorces (Lyra, 2016).
Amidst the Brazilian military dictatorship that happened from 1964 to 1985, Brazilian
artists used music as a form of resistance against oppression. Elis Regina, Gal Costa, Nara
Leão, and Elza Soares were female artists who used their voices to combat military
oppression. According to Gianordoli-Nascimento et al. (2013), the Brazilian cultural
production at that time gathered distinct groups that questioned the regime and echoed voices
against the military system that were silenced through the intensification of repression
mechanisms. Elis Regina, besides her discourses as a singer challenging the repression
through her music, also financed the first edition, in 1976, of “Nós Mulheres,” an essential
feminist newspaper for the disclosure of feminist ideas. Moreover, in that first edition, the
newspaper published the testimony of a Black woman from Rio de Janeiro denouncing her
experience of racism in Brazilian society (de Almeida Teles, 2018).
The re-democratization climate in Brazil in the mid-1980s corroborated a
decentralization of feminism. “Women have become women with specific social and cultural
contexts” (Sarti, 2004, p. 44). In the 1990s, they became more plural (Matos & Simões,
2017). Feminist activists recognized their differences regarding race, ethnicity, sexuality, and
class, focusing on their rights based on their axes, highlighting them as a not singular
category of women (Lyra, 2016). However, the decentralization happened mostly due to the
involvement of feminists in the elections alongside social and political institutions (Matos &
24
Simões, 2017). At that time, women’s rights, either middle-class or popular class, were a
topic in electoral discourses.
Furthermore, feminist activists began to demand safe methods of birth control and
incorporate the discourse of experiencing sexual pleasure intensely (Gonçalves & Pinto,
2011). Women’s health and violence against women were also considered a social problem by
the government and institutionalized with the creation of specialized police stations to assist
women and feminist collectives, social assistance NGOs focused on providing for women
from more popular classes (Pinto, 2003).
Fourth Wave of Feminism in Brazil
The fourth wave of feminism emerged in 2012 and is related to social media
becoming a feminist space for debate with the mobilization of digital media as an
intersectional collective, enabling the inclusion of diverse cultural and sexual backgrounds
(Phillips & Cree, 2014; Perez & Ricoldi, 2023). Even with academic discussions that the
internet is not a enough resource to represent a new era of feminism, digital spaces promote a
global engagement of the movement with other activists throughout the world and through
collaborating with celebrities, for example, making the feminist movement more accessible.
Whether verbal or non-verbal, those discourses challenge the patriarchal and societal systems
that oppress women worldwide and aim for social justice (Munro, 2013; Turley & Fisher,
2018). Stanton et al. (2017) elaborate that engagement in social media is positive for forming
a self-presentation, social activism, and a positive racial identity. Under the influence of the
third wave of feminism, sexism and misogyny are challenged as long as they appear in the
media by cyberactivists (Munro, 2013).
In Brazil, according to Martinez (2021), in the 2000s, feminism started to become
more regional, and the narrowing corroborated years later to the creation of groups in social
media. The progressive scene that was happening enabled enough space for multiple identity
25
groups, which diversified the meaning of being a woman. Those multiple groups correspond
to intersectionalities regarding the movement, such as race, gender, class, and sexuality. Thus,
those social markers remain since the third wave as one of the main characteristics of the
fourth wave of feminism in Brazil, using social media to mobilize regarding feminism.
Pretas and Pardas Brazilian women use media as a political interference to resist the
stigmatizations that harm their social value and affirmation of racial identity due to their
multiple social marks of gender, race, and class that corroborate their multiple oppression in
society (Carneiro, 2019). It is through the internet that Pretas and Pardas Brazilian women
have the chance to debate issues that are not priorities to other feminisms, which include the
impact of daily violence on the Pretas and Pardas population, religious intolerance, and
esteem for African-based religion, romantic relationships of Pretas and Pardas women and
representation of Pretos and Pardos people in media (Martinez, 2019).
Pretas and Pardas are Brazilian feminists who create content on social media
platforms fighting against racism. This content discloses dialogic Black feminism
transnationally, having a considerable local impact on the public. (Pinto-Bailey, 2021). Black
female content creators are a form of pleasure for the public, challenging racism and
misogyny through their performance (Steele, 2021). Thus, from the standpoint perspective,
the Black female creators on TikTok resist the objectification and marginalization in media,
creating a new representation of themselves to challenge the oppressions in which they live
due to their intersectionalities.
Performance of Identity on Social Media
Identity is conceptualized by Hall (1989) from the perspective that considers the
complexity of the individual since culture is not fixed and is in constant transformation.
According to Hall (1989), as not a natural or a fixed concept, identity is a construction that is
always in process. Thus, identity is multiply constructed across discourses that, sometimes,
26
antagonists. People are always partly constructed by the practices and discourses that make
them, such that people cannot find within themselves as individuals or subjects or identities
the point of origin from which discourse, history, or practice originates.
Erving Goffman (2002) defines performance as the activities that occur in the
presence of an individual during an amount of time with an influence on the observers. That
basic definition can be comprehended with more complexity, according to Schechner (2017),
as if performances have the purpose of reshaping the bodies, marking identities, and telling
stories. Similarly, Diana Taylor (2002) notes that performance is able to communicate social
knowledge, memory, and a sense of identity through repetitive behavior. That performance
could be, on one level, characterized as practices and events such as funerals, dances, or
theaters. On the other level, performance could be, from an academic lens, resistance, ethnic
identity, sexual identity, and gender, which are performed continuously in the public sphere
(Taylor, 2002).
Goffman (2002) analyzes how an individual performs through interpersonal
interaction. Those individuals are comprehended as actors and, using a comparison with
dramaturgy, on a front stage, the individual acts according to what is idealized and the social
norms, molded and modified to fit into what is understood and expected in society. In
explaining Goffman, the authors Bullingham & Vasconcelos (2013) point out that the
individual’s behavior is not the same on backstage since the performance is unnecessary.
When it is on the front stage, the intended impressions are communicated. On the backstage,
what is not intended to be transmitted is not performed.
According to Rigoni (2014), the media has a significant role in shaping identities
since it offers information and knowledge that recognizes “us” and the “Other.” In addition,
multiple social markers, such as race, gender, and class, are important in comprehending the
dynamic of social interaction between dominants and those who resist. Unlike in-person
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interaction, in cyberspace, there is more control over how that information can be presented,
making social interaction easier to occur (Life, 2011). Moreover, identity can be forged
online, creating a multiplicity of them. That fragmentation can be a space to build and rebuild
identity where the demand can be negotiated (Guta & Karolak, 2015).
Pretas and Pardas Women's Performance of Identity on TikTok
In order to comprehend further how Black female creators perform on TikTok, it is
necessary to highlight the standpoint theory from Patricia Hill Collins (2022). In everyday
life, Black women find in their own experiences and social position a source of knowledge to
depict and understand their notion of feminism. Those experiences are not homogeneous
since each Black woman has her own standpoint. That concept of standpoint is applied to
social media, as explained by Jackson & Banaszczyk (2016), which is a space where
marginalized women’s standpoints can become viral due to the platform resources or
collective advocacy. However, even with that elaboration, the marginalization of those
women is reproduced due to their intersectional characteristics.
The oppositional gaze of hooks (2012) explains that Black women can recognize
themselves in media through their own gaze, enabling them to define their reality while
resisting marginalization. They can resist their objectification and create new representations
of themselves in media. In a Brazilian context, the concept of the oppositional gaze of hooks
is applicable due to the marginalization of Afro-Brazilians and the neglect of Black women in
mainstream media (Gillam, 2012).
According to Simões et al. (2023), the social media TikTok is a digital environment in
which people are most likely to perform themselves authentically, not needing to use
resources to emulate behavior that is not real. Those rehearsed behaviors are most common
on other social media sites like Facebook, Linkedin, and Instagram. In addition, Robson &
Tsou (2023) explain that Black female creators, usually on social media, are not allowed to
28
demonstrate emotion and vulnerability. However, for Black women content producers and
minority groups, such authenticity on TikTok enables them to form communities. In those
communities, Black female content creators can produce and disclose content regarding the
culture to which they belong (Steele, 2021).
The Current Study
This research study seeks to answer the following questions:
RQ1= How does MC Carol use TikTok to promote her music within feminist discourse?
RQ2= How is the Preta Brazilian funk singer MC Carol’s negotiation of feminism on social
media?
RQ3= How is the feminist discourse of the Preta Brazilian funk singer MC Carol perceived
by her audience?
Method
In order to achieve the central objective of this research, the following study will
probe the negotiation of feminism on social media by the Brazilian funk singer MC Carol. As
a Preta Brazilian woman from an impoverished background, this research will consider
negotiation as a concept elaborated by Amer (2020) in which the subject performs and
strategically positions their identity in response to how others perceive them. That perception
of identity through intersectionalities is essential to comprehend how the subject acts to
control the recognition that will be received to develop a positive self-concept.
The social media to be considered for this research is TikTok. According to Ceci
(2024), until January 2024, Brazil is the third country with the largest audience on TikTok,
corresponding to 98,59 million users. In addition, 65,9% of internet users in Brazil are on the
platform (Santos, 2023). According to Depexe & dos Santos Freitas (2023), TikTok operates
under an algorithm dynamic, offering content based on the user's watch. Thus, any content
29
can be viral since TikTok’s algorithm is not dependent on the content's popularity or the
creator’s number of followers (Depexe & dos Santos Freitas, 2023).
The subject of the thesis is MC Carol, a Brazilian funk singer who is Preta and from
an impoverished background and one of the leading contemporary feminist funk artists. MC
Carol is known for lyrics about racial and gendered politics along with domestic violence
(Lawson, 2019). 100% Feminista, a sample of lyrics shown at the beginning of the thesis, has
become a classic feminist funk song. This song launched MC Carol as a feminist woman who
decided to fight against domestic abuse witnessed while she was a child. The singer has a
significant presence on social media and is one of the most followed Brazilian feminist funk
artists with her social media, resulting in more than two million followers on her Instagram,
TikTok, and YouTube.
In order to implement the goal of comprehending the negotiation of feminist discourse
by MC Carol on TikTok, the textual analysis method was performed to identify the
ideological and cultural assumptions of the text (Fürsich, 2009). For this method, texts are
interpreted to investigate the ways in which the author understands the world around them,
grasp how texts might be interpreted by the audience, and check the narrative’s context
(McKee, 2003).
The TikTok profile of MC Carol holds 230 videos (until March 7th, 2024). Of those
230 videos, 60 were investigated with patterns and themes related to feminist content. In
detailing the nature of MC Carol’s videos on TikTok, the time limit of her videos consists in
60 seconds. The starting point for choosing the videos related to feminism for the analysis is
regarding MC Carol’s sexual agency, which is the main characteristic of Brazilian funk
feminism. The data collected was divided monthly into sheets from April 2024 to April 2020.
Those sheets had columns separated thematically in four parts by the elements of feminist
content in the videos’ lyrics, either song or speech, captions, audience commentaries, and
30
performances of the singer. All data obtained were analyzed following the same standard for
analysis and interpretation.
Comprehending a text as a negotiation, Fürsich (2009) argues that media content is a
space where representations and latent discourses of society are disclosed. The media text
producers, such as MC Carol, act as cultural mediators and echo cultural trends in discussion
in society. As elaborated by McKee (2003), the analyses of posts will not define which one is
correct but find the likely interpretations from a post-structuralist perspective.
The performance of MC Carol and the lyrics of her songs in the TikTok videos will be
considered for each post analyzed, along with her audience's reaction to the lyrics and videos
in MC Carol’s TikTok profile. Such investigation will allow the researcher to find omissions
and implicit patterns in the text (Fürsich, 2009). In addition, it is necessary to check the
context in which the research subject is inserted to comprehend a sense-making of their world
(Fürsich, 2009).
Findings
The research performed on the negotiation of feminism in Brazilian feminist funk on
social media unveiled three dynamics that occur while that negotiation takes place. That turns
out through the Brazilian funk singer MC Carol’s feminist discourse, her audience’s
perception of that feminist discourse, and MC Carol’s use of TikTok to promote her feminist
songs. Feminism is at the center of that relationship and is strengthened by the racial
perspective and sexual agency of MC Carol’s discourse. Following this, it will be described
three dynamics that connect the negotiation of feminism in Brazilian funk on TikTok by MC
Carol.
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MC Carol's Feminist Discourse: Challenging Oppression and Embracing Sexual and
Financial Agency
Similar to the feminism in the lyrics of Brazilian feminist funk, the performance of
MC Carol is shaped under the bandida2 performance category. However, for MC Carol, being
a “badass” is explained as “we are badass women without being from a drug house.” Her
performance is unrelated to the criminal scene; she is a malicious, aggressive, and
authoritarian woman who celebrates her sexual independence (Ribeiro, 2022) (see Figure 1).
That characteristic is also observed in Ferreira & Giorgi (2022), in which Brazilian feminist
funk singers transform female vulnerability into empowerment in order to be in equal
opposition to male bravado. Such behavior is reinforced by the actions of a sexually active
person who has a preference for aggressive sexual performances, as demonstrated in the
lyrics “spit in my face, tease me, come on top. Pulls my hair, call me a badass.”
Figure 1
MC Carol Embracing The Bandida Performance Through an Authoritarian Posture
2 The word bandida is translated to “badass” in English. For contextual purpose, the meaning of bandida by MC
Carol is unrelated to a person who is part of a criminal group. Instead, the singer pictures bandida as a woman
who refuses male submission sexually and romantically.
32
In MC Carol’s discourse as a “badass,” domestic violence is forbidden. The singer
reacts to that, advising that violence is not tolerated because she created her own narrative.
Similar to the lyrics of Brazilian feminist funk, in which themes such as sex and relationships
are addressed explicitly (Moreira, 2017), under the refusal of man’s authority, MC Carol
reinforces that the man needs to do what she wants or he would be scolded, either verbally or
physically, having the chance of being killed in case of a violent behavior against her, as
explained in “now Jorginho will lend me the G3 gun. I will shoot this son of a bitch.”
Another category that resulted from the feminist discourse of MC Carol on TikTok is
her sexual agency. The singer's performance is of a subject with the power to make
relationship decisions. MC Carol nominates herself as piranha, translated to English as a
promiscuous woman. As demonstrated in the lyrics “the sun is about to rise, go home. Don’t
talk to anyone about last night” and “love is over, you better forget me. What happened will
never happen again”, men are used intentionally as objects of her sexual life and dismissed
according to MC Carol’s will. In addition, in her TikTok videos, men are pictured as servants
(see Figure 2), being not worthy of love, as exemplified in “he asked me to marry him, but I
don't understand. I'm a slut, damn it, I live in the moment”.
Figure 2
MC Carol’s Sexual Performance of a Bandida’s Character
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MC Carol's agency is also constructed by her financial independence, which is
interchangeable with the sexual agency discourse. Under a sarcastic tone, the singer, who is a
Preta woman belonging nowadays to a wealthy background due to her career success,
elaborates in her discourse her ability to support men financially in exchange for giving back
instantaneous sexual pleasure. That is a reaffirmation of MC Carol’s financial independence
by buying gifts for the man instead of demonstrating romantic feelings. Focusing on the
bandida character, romantic love is refused by the singer, in additionally to fitting in the
social role of a passive wife who has full availability for the husband, as pictured in “my
money calls you, aggressive in bed. I don't give affection, I give Dolce & Gabbana, trip to
Rome, earning in dollars” and “he wants me to go to church and be a passive woman. He
wants me to give up on everything and stop singing”.
The racial debate is also present in MC Carol’s feminist discourse. Her lyrics on
TikTok videos highlight important Brazilian Black female figures, historically significant
characters of Brazilian feminist history. Aqualtune, Dandara, and Chica da Silva are Pretas
Brazilian women essential to the resistance to the slavery period in Brazil. Aiming for a
positive racial identity of Pretas and Pardas Brazilian women, MC Carol also mentions the
writer Carolina Maria de Jesus as a successful Black woman. That positive representation is
comprehended as social activism, a form of resistance valuing the representation of Pretas
and Pardas women.
MC Carol’s positive representation of Blackness is outlined by praising her physical
characteristics, such as her “nappy” hair (see Figure 3). Moreover, the singer calls for a
sorority among Pretas and Pardas women, affirming that self-love is their vibe, making them
exude power. Her background is alluded to proudly, justifying her strength as a Preta and
Parda woman due to her childhood living in the favelas. “I'm a woman, I'm black. My hair is
34
nappy. My fragility does not reduce my strength. I came from Preventório, Black from the
ghetto. I have carried this hate since I was born”.
Figure 3
MC Carol’s Positive Reaffirmation of Racial Identity Through Valorization of Her Hair
The Audience’s Perception of MC Carol’s Feminist Discourse
The audience of MC Carol’s TikTok videos attributes the singer's portrayal as a
woman ahead of her time, disruptive. Such portrayal is explained by the maternal meaning
given to the singer, as demonstrated in “I love you, MC Carol. You are like a mother to me”.
The audience portrays the quality of being a revolutionary woman as a diva representing the
reality of other Brazilian women, who are 25% of the total of over 200 million inhabitants
and correspond to the country's lowest tiers of socioeconomic classes (Alvarez & Caldwell,
2016). In addition, the representation of MC Carol as a strong woman influenced the
audience from an educational perspective, teaching them authority over daily struggle and
empathy with other Pretas and Pardas women, as attested in “You are very ahead of the
time!!!” and “I already think Carol is perfect, and she still does this... Wow, she thinks about
everyone. Queen!”
35
Another depiction by the audience is MC Carol as a feminist icon whose main
characteristic is self-love discourse. Like Carneiro (2019), the audience comprehends MC
Carol’s self-love discourse as a resistance to stigmatizations that harm her social value due to
multiple social marks of gender, race, and class. That perception is justified by the
performance on social media of a Preta woman like MC Carol, who has a background similar
to her audience and is a role model for women who are unsuitable for social beauty standards.
Moreover, as an authoritarian female figure with a self-love discourse, MC Carol debates the
reversion of social roles attributed to women and places the responsibility on men to execute
domestic work. Although her positive self-esteem validates the audience's opinion in
representing a real woman, as demonstrated in “A woman who loves herself bothers a lot of
people,” some of her audience comprehend MC Carol’s positive self-esteem more related to a
man’s attitude. Thus, it is a “song that totally broke men who never imagined a woman would
send the real thing like that to everyone.”
Similar to the bandida’s performance in MC Carol’s TikTok posts, the “MC Carol
Bandida” is also pictured by the audience’s perception of MC Carol’s feminist discourse.
Comprehended as an aggressive woman, the audience's reaction is positive to it, as an
example of when MC Carol “punched that guy near her.” Moreover, the singer’s criticism of
patriarchal behavior of responsibilizing women for domestic work is celebrated by the female
audience, enabling them to criticize other women who reject MC Carol’s music, as
demonstrated in “She bothers you because she does what your husband always does and you
think it’s normal!” The audience perceives the bandida’s performance as associated with her
racial background, justifying her life strength due to being a Preta woman and Iansã’s
daughter, a female warrior orixá. Although MC Carol is a Preta woman and racial activist,
the female White audience also explains that they feel represented by her feminist discourse.
36
On the other hand, MC Carol's sexual agency is depicted as the opposite of being a
feminist by the audience. In her talk, “spit on my face, tease me, come on top. Pulls my hair,
call me a badass”, the singer has the authority and control over the sexual intercourse, which
is misunderstood by some of her followers as being favored to domestic violence, as
exemplified in “then she appears with bruised eyes and bald, and she doesn't know why.” In
contrast, part of her audience, its majority of women, claims that the use of verbs in an
imperative mode, such as spit, tease, and pull, reaffirms MC Carol’s consent regarding her
preference for aggressive sexual attitudes. Thus, misogynist people use the sexual discourse
focusing on female sexual agency in Brazilian feminist funk music to justify domestic
violence and obliterate women’s authorization of their own sexual freedom.
Promotion of Feminism in MC Carol’s Music Through Her Use of TikTok
In order to understand how MC Carol uses TikTok to promote her feminist discourse
in music, one must comprehend the interaction between captions, lyrics, and images of the
singer’s videos on TikTok. Those interactions occur simultaneously and interdependently.
Figure 4
MC Carol’s Critique of Standardization of White Beauty in the Song “Levanta, Mina”
Promotional Video
37
The picture above is from a TikTok video (see Figure 4) in which a new song by MC
Carol entitled “Levanta, mina,” translated into English as “wake up, sister,” is publicized
through the post. Although the singer does not frequently use captions to communicate with
her audience, the launch is publicized with a hashtag and the song’s date by MC Carol, as
determined in #Wakeupsister on 01/15. As elaborated by Pinto-Bailey (2021) & Steele
(2021), Black women create a new representation of themselves as a disagreement with the
oppressions regarding their intersectionalities of gender, race, and class. Thus, MC Carol uses
the visual elements of the videos as the main medium to express her feminist ideas to the
public, promoting a new representation of Pretas and Pardas women, valuing her physical
characteristics of being a Preta woman, overweight, and from an impoverished background.
The verbal elements also reinforce the disapproval of the standardization of beauty by
MC Carol in the video. The verbal writing of “beleza, essência daquilo que se expressa como
belo” translated as “beauty, the essence of what is expressed as beautiful,” in English, is a
criticism made by the singer due to being the opposite of the beauty standards. In that aspect,
the singer reaffirms the positive racial identity by posting a photo with elements that do not
correspond to beauty stereotypes, such as no makeup and valuing Pretas and Pardas
women’s braids.
Moreover, the facial angles of MC Carol are highlighted to mark what it is needed to
be modified to fit into aesthetic norms. Thus, the captions are not the focus on MC Carol to
communicate the main discourse. Instead, visual elements are used from a racial and
gendered perspective to connect to other Pretas and Pardas women in order to enable the
audience to feel represented by her content.
38
Figure 5
MC Carol’s Performance of Black Goddess in the Song PUT@RIA! Promotional Video
In the Figure 5, the caption “lembrando desse dia que eu tava muito atriz de
hollywood gravando clipe com @Rubel @BK’ e @Dj Gabriel Do Borel” with translation to
English as “remembering that day that I was as a Hollywood actress recording a video clip
with @Rubel @BK’ and @Dj Gabriel Do Borel” is used by MC Carol. In that image, the
singer is depicted as the Preta version of Aphrodite, a goddess of love and beauty in Greek
mythology. Such representation of MC Carol is visually related to elements of the Goddess
figure in her clothing, such as a long light dress and accessories.
The portrayal of MC Carol as a Preta Aphrodite is not just a visual representation
while resignifying the meaning of beauty, in Greek mythology represented by a White
woman, to an endorsement of Black beauty, but also a narrative that extends to her music.
Similar to Cardoso & Adelman (2016), elaborating that Pretas and Pardas Brazilian
feminists examine Brazilian history to resignify from a perspective of Pretas and Pardas
feminist culture, MC Carol examines other points of the history from the standpoint of a
Preta woman.
39
In her released song PUT@RIA!, featuring Rubel, BK, and DJ Gabriel do Borel, MC
Carol’s narrative is one of using her body in service of her own pleasure, such as “I'm the
badass, I'm the naughty one, and you wash my dishes.” This narrative, built from the image
and lyrics in the TikTok video, is a statement about the singer’s appreciation of her own body
and protagonism during sexual intercourse. As the main characteristic of her definition of
feminism, the term“bandida” is reinforced by making the man as a subject of her commands
either sexually or socially.
Figure 6
MC Carol’s Eroticized Performance in the Song “Ki Suco and Xereca” Promotional Video
The erotic exploration of MC Carol’s large body is reinforced in her feminist
discourse on TikTok by the choice of colors and gestures of the singer in the video’s
performance (see Figure 6). In releasing her song “Ki Suco and Xereca,” as translated to
English as “juice and pussy”, MC Carol uses features inserted in a sexual context, such as the
color red, as a reaffirmation of being a highly sexual woman. Moreover, the singer plays
sensually with an item of provocative clothing while eating a fruit to simulate an intimate
40
moment of a lubricated vagina. That eroticization performance on the image is
interdependent with the caption of “SEXTOU SEUS FDPPP #KisucoEXereca” translated as
“It is Friday, son of a bitch” in English.
The song’s lyrics are also interdependent with the sensual content of the post. MC
Carol’s narrative elaborates on her freedom, wearing a mini skirt and attending a random
Friday party. In control of her own life, she committed herself to performing a desire of
protagonism, being especially transgressive because of the context of being a Preta and
overweight woman from the favela. In order to be a protagonist, being tricked, mainly by a
man, is not accepted by MC Carol. Thus, the singer threatens her partner, saying that “You
owe me more than five months. You are fucked if I see you on the street. Jorginho will lend
me the G3, and I will shoot this son of a bitch”. The language of MC Carol’s videos on
TikTok is illustrated under a violent context in a daily struggle with oppressions of race,
gender, and class in the favelas’ ambiance in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Discussion
This research aimed to analyze the negotiation of feminism by MC Carol on TikTok,
motivated by the necessity to explain the unfolding of that arbitration by the feminist
discourse of the singer, the perception of that discourse by the audience on social media, and
the promotion of the feminist discourse in MC Carol’s music through TikTok. The findings
reveal that the negotiation occurs through the bandida performance as the feminist discourse,
a perception by the public of MC Carol as a real woman, being similar to the audience, and a
focus on visual communication and song’s lyrics as main components promoting her feminist
discourse on TikTok. Those three results affect the negotiation and are explained next.
The Bandida Performance Acknowledged as MC Carol’s Feminist Discourse
As observed previously in Cardoso & Adelman (2016) and Perry (2016), Pretas and
Pardas Brazilian women have in their feminism racial and class intersections as the main
41
types of domination, being affected by those inequalities. The results showed that in
analyzing MC Carol's feminist discourse on TikTok, the racial and class types of
discrimination are explained by the bandida performance. In addition to racial and class
perspectives, the bandida performance attaches sexual agency, financial independence, and
positive racial identity.
The feminist discourse of MC Carol on TikTok under the bandida performance is
connected to her childhood, which is based on her lived experiences, as proposed by Cardoso
& Adelman (2016). In resisting men, the singer uses them as sexual servers as a form of
self-defense. Such a mechanism helps Pretas and Pardas Brazilian feminists fight against
historically stereotyped points, combating the idea of female fragility (Cardoso & Adelman,
2016). Moreover, the research data shows that MC Carol also has financial independence
discourse as a self-defense mechanism to resist society. As explained by Emerson (2002), it is
a goal of Pretas and Pardas women to present themselves as independent and self-reliant in
popular culture in order to negotiate their existence.
As proposed by Moreira (2017), Brazilian funk feminist singers reject cultural norms
of controlling their bodies, as do Pretas and Pardas women from the favelas. They resist
those norms by negotiating ethical standards in society. The research data indicate that MC
Carol uses her sexual agency from the bandida character, being a woman who performs a
rejection of romantic love, focusing on immediate sexual pleasure through giving money and
other material goods to men. Using satirical attitudes in that performance, the singer
celebrates her sexual agency by exhibiting her body. MC Carol has agency about her own
boundaries not taking into account the commodification of feminism. As alleged by Lyra
(2016) and Moreira (2017), Pretas and Pardas Brazilian feminist singers focus on being
subject and object in their musical performances, demanding equality and, at the same time,
42
having an exacerbated sexuality. Moreover, besides the sarcasm in her songs, MC Carol also
performs that on social media.
According to Moreira (2017) & Garcia & Sousa (2017), Brazilian feminist funk
singers curse men in their music as a refusal of female submission and react with violence in
case those women are under patriarchal violence. The research data indicate that performance
is also reinforced on social media by MC Carol’s feminist discourse. Under the bandida
character, the singer performs an aggressive, authoritarian, and malicious woman in her
discourse on TikTok, threatening men verbally or physically and intimidating them to be
killed if they have violent actions against her.
Further discussing highlighted points of this research, the positive racial narrative in
MC Carol’s feminist discourse is executed by challenging Eurocentric perceptions of
femininity and underlining characteristics of Afro-Brazilian women (Pinto-Bailey, 2021). The
outcomes showed that the singer values the Afro-Brazilian culture by endorsing her physical
features, which are marginalized by Western or White beauty standards, confidently outlining
her “nappy” hair. Moreover, in order to validate the Pretas and Pardas culture, MC Carol also
challenges the perception of feminist history in Brazil by celebrating important figures of
Afro-Brazilian history in her songs, pointing out Aqualtune, Dandara, Chica da Silva and
Carolina Maria de Jesus, women who are related to the feminism in Brazil from the colonial
period, around the 1500s, until 20th century.
Black women create new representations of themselves through their gaze in media,
as hooks (2012) proposed. Those new representations communicate resistance to gender and
sexual identities in the public sphere. That recognition in media enables them to resist
objectification and marginalization of being Black and women (Taylor, 2002). Based on that,
the findings revealed that MC Carol creates a new persona by assuming her bandida
performance to resist the marginalization of being a Preta woman from an impoverished
43
background. As a consequence of that resistance, her sexual agency, when the singer
nominates herself as piranha, a promiscuous woman translated to English, and financial
independence discourses are used against the stigmatization of her racial and class
inequalities.
While reinventing themselves in media, Pretas and Pardas women challenge their
social role as women under a historical perspective of being passive and ready to serve men
to a transformation of being combative women with feminist ideals (Dürks Cassol, 2022). For
MC Carol’s feminist discourse analysis, that transformation is based on the new
representation of Pretas and Pardas women on TikTok as financially and emotionally
independent, using men as objects of her private life and abandoning them whenever she
wants. This independence enables MC Carol to be proud of her marginalized
intersectionalities as a Preta woman from an economically disadvantaged background.
According to Steele (2021), Black female content creators on social media
communicate their culture through the subject disclosed on the internet. Beyond the
dimensions already observed in the literature, the findings reveal that the positive racial
identity of MC Carol on TikTok aims to promote a sorority between Pretas and Pardas
women under a discourse of self-love as a core feeling to enable Pretas and Pardas women to
empower themselves. The public behavior of the singer reinforces female empowerment
through their sexual agency to a desire for sexual liberation and aggressive performances
during sexual intercourse.
According to Carvajal (2014), sexual agency for Brazilian feminist funk singers
focuses on the manipulation of men to have sexual emancipation. In the song’s lyrics, verbs
are present in the imperative mode, such as take, eat, or sit, when speaking of a sexual
context (Ribeiro, 2022). Similarly to the Brazilian feminist funk music, the discourse of
feminism by MC Carol on TikTok has on sexual agency, the meaning of manipulating men as
44
revenge for the abuse suffered since her childhood, motivating the singer to find in her anger
a way to perform her character as a bandida. That manipulation is executed authoritarian as
one of the main characteristics of MC Carol’s feminist discourse.
On TikTok, Simões et al. (2023) attest that the performance of Black women is related
to their true selves, focusing on authenticity and not emulating a behavior in the digital
environment. However, Robson & Tsou (2023) affirm that Black female creators cannot
demonstrate vulnerability and emotional performances in order to reinforce their authenticity.
The research data indicate that MC Carol emulates her emotions, as Robson & Tsou (2023)
elaborated, hiding them so as not to look exposed. Therefore, against Simões et al. (2023),
those vulnerable feelings are replaced by anger and sarcasm during the bandida performance.
The Feminism of a Real Woman for The Audience
Another crucial point of this discussion is regarding the perception of the feminist
discourse by MC Carol’s audience on TikTok. As a result of the data analyzed, the audience,
which is in its majority a public similar to MC Carol’s background as Preta or Parda women
from backgrounds of poverty, recognizes a feminism centered on the maternal figure, as
proposed by Cardoso & Adelman (2016). According to the authors, the cultural and political
activism of older generations of Pretas and Pardas Brazilian women against the traditional
order are the core of their feminism. Thus, the maternal representation of MC Carol is
explained by an inspirational figure being constantly called mother, reinforced by the fact that
MC Carol is a disruptive woman ahead of her time.
MC Carol’s public on TikTok is connected with the singer due to her representation of
a real woman in her songs and on her social media. As a character who sings about similar
struggles of Pretas and Pardas women in Brazil, the artist is read under the influence of
having the strength of Iansã, an orixá of independence and female energy and a deity from
the Candomblé, a Brazilian African-based religion.
45
The cosmovision of comprehending MC Carol by the audience under the perspective
of African culture in analyzing this finding is part of Afro-Brazilian feminism as a result of
the similarity in perceiving femininity. This positions the feminism of Pretas and Pardas
women as being distant from the White and Western Judeo-Christian female perspective
(Cardoso & Adelman, 2016; Pinto-Bailey, 2021).
Through the perception of MC Carol as an inspirational figure by her audience on
TikTok, the bandida performance characterized mainly by an independent woman is
comprehended under the proposition of Carvajal (2014) and Lyra (2016) as the first contact
of MC Carol’s audience on TikTok with the feminist movement. Moreover, such
performance, as alleged by Goffman (2002), has the influence of her audience due to their
consentiment and similarity with the singer’s social context. That bandida performance of a
woman who refuses male submission and is authoritarian and aggressive while resisting the
patriarchal cultural norms is a positive awareness by the audience on TikTok (Garcia &
Sousa, 2017; Moreira, 2017).
The aggressiveness and authoritarian behaviors from MC Carol are an answer to be in
comparable opposition to the male bravado conduct, a reality to which women from the
singer’s background are exposed daily. However, in reference to the sexual agency of MC
Carol, which is part of her bandida performance, her aggressiveness is comprehended
negatively by the public. According to the research data, aggressiveness over sexual
intercourse is understood as unrelated to feminism by MC Carol’s audience, as the public
compares it to being favorable to domestic violence. That is incompatible with the meaning
of aggressiveness over the resistance of patriarchy, being denied the feminist interpretation of
MC Carol’s sexual agency by the audience’s perception.
On social media, Pretas and Pardas women discuss their reality and how their
marginalization has an impact on the population, debating topics that are not priorities by
46
other feminisms and challenging racism and misogyny through their performance (Martinez,
2019; Steele, 2021)). Findings reveal that MC Carol elaborates on her TikTok, through her
bandida performance, an educational influence over the audience by teaching survival on the
daily struggle in the favelas, either sexually, romantically, or financially. MC Carol’s
audience also perceived a self-love discourse. That discourse is related to the agency of
Pretas and Pardas women not being submissive to men, rejecting women's social roles to
execute domestic work.
MC Carol negotiates her main characteristic as a bandida character through the
audience's approval of women's aggressive and authoritarian characteristics toward men,
being read as an inspirational figure by her audience. The singer’s social engagement in
social media is positive as a consequence of her social activism with discourses of sexual
agency and positive racial identity. Thus, each fragmentation of MC Carol’s identity in
supporting and teaching her audience forms her identity and fills the demand of what is
necessary to approve her feminist discourse, being negotiated with the audience (Guta &
Karolak, 2015; Stanton et al., 2017).
MC Carol’s self-love discourse is the main characteristic of this negotiation as a
bandida, enabling her main quality of performing as a superior woman, representing the real
Pretas and Pardas Brazilian women from impoverished backgrounds and ahead of her time
by the audience.
Visual Communication and Emphasis on Songs’ Lyrics as the Main Element of
Promotion of Feminist Discourse in MC Carol’s Music on TikTok
A further discussion point on MC Carol’s negotiation of feminism is the singer’s
promotion of feminist discourse on TikTok. Focusing on visual elements of the video related
to a new representation of Pretas and Pardas women launching music videos, the data
reveals that MC Carol endorses her physical characteristics as a Preta woman with her
47
braided hair and large body, aiming to frame a positive racial identity as the main discourse.
Pinto-Bailey (2021) reinforces that by explaining Pretas and Pardas Brazilian feminists’ use
of social media platforms to combat racism. Through a dialogic translation, MC Carol uses
the experiences of Pretas and Pardas women’s lives to present her feminist idea on TikTok.
Moreover, verbal elements are also used to complement the discourse of rejecting the
standardization of beauty and celebrating diversity.
In abandoning the Western and White perspective of beauty, the captions are not the
focus of MC Carol to communicate her positive racial identity. Instead, besides the visual
elements used to engage the audience, the singer also focuses on the song’s lyrics to promote
the standpoint of a Preta woman's life on TikTok. As proposed by Stanton et al. (2017),
engagement on social media is positive when forming a self-presentation combined with
activism. It is through popular culture that Pretas and Pardas women negotiate their
existence (Emerson, 2022). As a result of the data analyzed, it is relevant to the feminism in
MC Carol’s TikTok to explore her body, Black and overweight, as the main point of the
performance for her own pleasure. Images and lyrics of videos are the main resource for
constructing the feminist narrative of the singer.
Similarly to the Brazilian feminist funk music, with various versions of femininity
being transgressive and refusing male submission (Lyra, 2016; Garcia & Sousa, 2017;
Moreira, 2017), according to the data, the use of verbs in imperative mode by an authoritarian
presentation of MC Carol in her posts on TikTok reveals a performance in which there is a
desire for protagonism. As part of her negotiation of feminist discourse with the public, MC
Carol exercises this protagonism to empower other women to follow her example but also
because it is a strategy that sells her music. Being a Preta and overweight woman from the
favelas, MC Carol pictures herself in a transgressive form while acting in an eroticized
performance. Under sexual content, the singer makes a choice of colors and explicit gestures
48
to reinforce her sensual performance, making up a protagonism in sexual intercourse.
Moreover, the song's lyrics are also interdependent with the sensual content of the posts.
According to Ribeiro (2022), empowered performances result from the dominance of
women’s bodies, while there is pride in being part of the intersectionalities of race and class.
Framing MC Carol’s context, coming from a marginalized background and being a Preta woman,
that use of her body in service of her own pleasure is a result of challenging socially accepted and
moral beliefs. Thus, as TikTok is a digital environment to perform authenticity for the content
creators, MC Carol uses visual and song lyrics to engage with her audience and create a new
representation of Pretas and Pardas Brazilian women.
From the discussion regarding the negotiation of feminism by MC Carol, three main
contributions of this research are highlighted here. Firstly, the understanding of bandida
performance as the main element of the singer’s feminist discourse, which has the narrative
of a woman with sexual agency and financial independence aiming to represent her racial
identity positively. Besides that, the maternal representation and self-love discourse as a
perception of MC Carol by her audience and the similarity of the feminist narrative on
TikTok with the Brazilian feminist funk music are also important contributions of this thesis
to academia. Finally, using visual communication and verbal language with the song’s lyrics
promotes her feminist discourse through her music on TikTok, turning out to endorse a
positive racial identity and sexual agency as elements of her feminist narrative on social
media.
Conclusion
The core of this thesis research was unraveling the negotiation of MC Carol's
feminism on TikTok. Results revealed that the feminist discourse of MC Carol on TikTok is
mainly shaped by the bandida performance, which is a form of self-defense against racial and
class discrimination as a Preta and overweight woman from a lower-income background.
49
Furthermore, such performance is also defined by her sexual agency, financial independence,
and positive racial identity discourses, which have an influence on the feminist debate.
MC Carol’s audience has the perception of the singer from a maternal representation,
being an inspirational figure and pictured as a woman with similar daily struggles to the
audience. However, her sexual agency through an aggressive performance in sexual
intercourse is interpreted as a denial of her feminist identity by the audience, framing the
singer in a position of being favorable to domestic violence by the public. In addition, it is
also a result that the artist has an educational influence over her public, who claims that the
self-love discourse of MC Carol inspires them.
The last finding indicates that the singer focused on verbal elements and used visual
resources, such as the song’s lyrics, to promote her feminist discourse on TikTok. The videos
extensively explored her body, endorsing the Pretas and Pardas’ physical characteristics
under a positive racial identity. Moreover, MC Carol executed an eroticized performance
using colors and gestures under sexual content, framing herself as the protagonist in service
of her own pleasure.
Those results confirm that Pretas and Pardas Brazilian feminist funk singers who are
creators self-present on TikTok with positive racial identity and sexual agency. On the
internet, the singers have a chance to enlighten the debate of themes that are not priorities in
other feminisms in Brazil, performing themselves authentically. In addition, their feminist
discourse on TikTok has an Afro-Brazilian perspective, being disconnected from Eurocentric
influences and focusing on Black ideal figures of femininity. Through their resistance to
creating new representations of themselves in media, Pretas and Pardas women perform
what is morally acceptable to their own reality in a negotiation with the audience.
This study contributes academically by recognizing and expanding the context of the
resistance of Pretas and Pardas Brazilian feminist funk singers on social media, identifying a
50
similar feminist discourse with the Brazilian feminist funk music movement and its lyrics. In
studying MC Carol as a research subject, comprehending her bandida performance as the
most important element of her feminist discourse, and investigating further that portrayal on
social media, therefore, the idea of Brazilian feminist funk discourse is renewed.
51
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