When the king of Carnival has gastric surgery and young women drop off in rapid sucession from anorexia, it's clear there's something going on in Brazil.

An excerpt from the NYT story:

Brazil may well be the most body-conscious society in the world, but that body has always been Brazil’s confident own — not a North American or European one.

For women here that has meant having a little more flesh, distributed differently to emphasize the bottom over the top, the contours of a guitar rather than an hourglass, and most certainly not a twig. Anorexia, though long associated with wealthier industrialized countries, was an affliction all but unheard-of here.

But that was before the incursions of the Barbie aesthetic, celebrity models, satellite television and medical makeovers made it clear just how far some imported notions of beauty, desirability and health have encroached on Brazilian ideals once considered inviolate.

By “ ‘upgrading’ to international standards of beauty,” said Mary del Priore, a historian and co-author of “The History of Private Life in Brazil,” the country is abandoning its traditional belief that “plumpness is a sign of beauty and thinness is to be dreaded.” The contradictory result, she added, is that “today it’s the rich in Brazil who are thin and the poor who are fat.”