Each year, Brazil sells a hyper-sexualized Carnival to tourists, treating women’s bodies as a national attraction. A news website called G1 recently presented its readers with a quiz: “Whose breast is this?” There were close-ups of nude or seminude breasts from the Carnival parade and readers had to guess to which celebrity they belonged. (I got four answers right out of 10. But then I looked at my own and got a little depressed.)

Ours is a nation obsessed by beauty and slenderness à la Gisele Bündchen. Brazil is second only to the United States in the use of plastic surgery, with 1.5 million operations a year. If you become slightly overweight, Brazilians will comment; you will feel bad about your body and start hesitating in the shadows around swimming pools, like a shy hippopotamus.

Lately there’s been an explosion of fitness bloggers whose jobs are — in theory — to give tips on health. But they face frequent accusations of actually being paid to advertise weight loss products like fat-burning supplements and diet shakes. Their websites tell us that a “negative” belly is the key to happiness.

But this pressure is largely directed at women, and men face much less criticism about their looks. Also their salaries are higher than ours; I earn 35 to 50 percent less than my male colleagues, although we cannot say for sure it is a gender issue. Maybe it’s just lack of talent.

Considering how much public attention is paid to the shapes of bellies and breasts here, and how much of the tourism industry is built on Brazilian beauty, the country is oddly sensitive when it comes to other countries objectifying Brazilian women in the very same way. For instance, it seemed a bit hypocritical when, recently, Brazil’s tourism board told Adidas to stop selling two World Cup T-shirts because of their sexual connotations. One of them had the message “I Heart Brazil,” where the heart was an upside-down buttocks of a woman wearing a thong. The other shirt displayed a girl in a bikini and the slogan “Lookin’ to Score.”