Despite its permissive reputation and the wild, cross-dressing costumes seen at its street carnivals, Brazil is an increasingly dangerous country for LGBT people. According to the non-profit Bahia Gay Group 343 LGBT people were killed in 2016, compared to 260 in 2010.
Against this backdrop of prejudice, however, the country’s latest pop sensation is an openly-gay drag queen in a flowing platinum wig whose glossy pop videos have been watched hundreds of millions of times.
Pabllo Vittar, 22, has 4.9 million followers on her Instagram, enjoys the patronage of Anitta, one of Brazil’s most famous singers, and recently starred on the cover of celebrity magazine Contigo with the headline: “Who is this phenomenon?”
Besides her commercial success, Vittar has also become a symbol of resistance for those Brazilians dismayed by the rising influence of a self-appointed moral minority who have won a string of recent victories in the country’s culture wars.
“People have really embraced my ideas, my work, my engagement,” said Vittar in an interview at Rio de Janeiro’s YouTube studios, before the launch of her latest single, Corpo Sensual – Sexy Body.
Dressed in skin-tight trousers and outsized fake eyelashes, Vittar said many fans share their problems with her. “They tell me a lot about their daily struggle to go out on the street being gay, being drag,” she said. “I want to give them strength so they can continue being who they are.”
She told Fantastico, a primetime TV show: “I like to be a girl, I like to be a boy.”
Such plain speaking has helped push Vittar onto the front lines of a string of skirmishes with Brazil’s new right, a loose alliance of free market advocates, those angry over political corruption, and the growing number of evangelical Christians.
When a Brazilian judge overturned a long-standing federal ban on discredited “gay conversion” therapy, Vittar tweeted “we are not ill” to over 600,000 followers – and was applauded for her stance.
After she appeared alongside Black Eyed Peas singer Fergie at the Rock in Rio festival, actor Fabio Assunção welcomed her presence in a rising tide of what he called “neo-fascism” and “totalitarianism”.
“You represent the possibility of truth in a sea of hypocrisy. Your public figure is the voice of many suffocated people,” Assunção wrote in a Facebook post.
Vittar, 22, and her two sisters, Phamella (her twin) and Polyanna, 23 were raised by their mother Verônica, a nurse, in the poor, provincial states of Pará and Maranhão.
Born Phabullo da Silva, she always knew she was gay, and was bullied at school where her notebooks were ripped up and soup was thrown over her at lunchtime.
“When you suffer prejudice, your self-esteem is low, you don’t want to do anything, you don’t want to leave the house,” she said.
Pabllo had sung since she was a child and began making herself up at 16. At 18, she overcame her fears and went out in drag for the first time, to a Halloween party at an underground gay club in the city of Uberlândia, in the interior of Minas Gerais state.
“I was really ugly,” she said, collapsing into giggles. “But I had a lot of fun.”
Soon after, a TV producer saw a YouTube video of Vittar, who has a powerful and melodic voice, singing a Whitney Houston song and she was hired as one of two vocalists on a raucous, late night television show called Love and Sex.
The video for her first hit, Open Bar, featured a cast of drag artists partying in a swimming pool. The glossy pop video she and Anitta filmed in the Moroccan desert with for the hit Sua Cara (Your Face) – recorded with American group Major Lazer – has been watched 242m times.
Anitta – born Larissa Machado – has also faced down fierce criticism for the sexual empowerment expressed in her lyrics. “She takes a position and raises the feminist banner. She’s wonderful,” Vittar said.
But despite the superstar friends, Pabllo still talks to her mother every day, who she credits her for supporting her throughout, unlike many Brazilian families hostile to gay children.
“Even before my sexuality flowered, my mother already talked very openly about this with me,” she said. “My family always really respected me and gave me total freedom to do everything I wanted.”
Such progressive attitudes are not reflected across Brazil. Jair Bolsonaro, an extreme rightwing lawmaker currently polling second for next year’s presidential elections, has said he could not love any child of his if they turned out to be gay.
“Support your children because whether they are gay or not, they will always be your children,” Vittar said. “When you throw positivity to the world, it responds.”