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The Bling Scandal: Transforming

Young Femininities in Mozambique
Christian Groes

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'The Bling Scandal' : Transforming Young Femininities in Mozambique

Christian Groes-Green
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DOI: 10.1177/110330881101900303

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Land
ArticleAcquisition for the Railways in Bengal, 1850–62 291

Young
‘The Bling Scandal’: 19(3) 291–312
© 2011 SAGE Publications and
Transforming YOUNG Editorial Group
SAGE Publications
Young Femininities Los Angeles, London,
New Delhi, Singapore,
in Mozambique Washington DC
DOI: 10.1177/110330881101900303
http://you.sagepub.com

Christian Groes-Green
Cultural Encounters, Roskilde University, Denmark

Abstract
In the Mozambican capital of Maputo, young women’s sexuality has become an issue
of public concern, as popular culture as well as changing socio-economic landscape
change female identities and pave the way for emerging forms of female agency and
sexual assertiveness. In this article, I analyze how a highly erotic concert performance
in 2007 by the pregnant music star Dama Do Bling accentuated certain ideals of
femininity and revealed a set of ideological contradictions concerning sexuality and
femininity in Mozambique. ‘The Bling scandal’, as it was called, served as a can opener
in terms of making women’s sexuality publicly debatable among and between young
women as well as among the media, politicians, organizations and religious leaders.
While some young women see ‘the Bling scandal’ as a denigration of womanhood
others see it as a sign of increasing freedom for women that involves transactional
sexual relationships with sugar-daddies.

Keywords
Sexuality, femininity, erotic expression, popular culture, class, Mozambique

Introduction
From various African cities there are stories in the media about young women who
publicly express themselves erotically in and through fashion, clothing, music, danc-
ing and nightlife activities. According to scholars these phenomena, in some settings
causing controversies, are informed by a globalizing popular culture as well as a
changing socio-economic landscape on the continent (Cole, 2004; Hawkins et al.,
2009; Karlyn, 2005; Spronk, 2006). The question is how recent social changes in
Mozambican society affect formations of femininity, or rather femininities, when
women’s bodies and sexualities become a major concern in public discourse. In the
article I analyze the ways in which a highly erotic concert performance in Maputo in
2007 by the popular singer Dama Do Bling accentuated female ideals and subject

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292 Christian Groes-Green

positions among young women and made female sexuality a public priority in pol-
itical and religious circles. During fieldwork among young women in the city from
highly different social backgrounds, I discovered how the event, as part of popular
culture, yielded diverse responses and meanings according to social class, religion
and ideological positioning in society. Not only did the event, later referred to as ‘the
Bling scandal’, reveal dissonances among young women, it also generated a feroci-
ous debate among politicians, intellectuals, international aid organizations, the media
and the Catholic Church. While these central voices in the country’s power matrices
decried the destructive ramifications of the Bling show, the event also served as a
reference point for ongoing transformations of young women’s sexual subjectivities
vis-à-vis other women and men.
In order to explain the transformative potential of the Bling scandal, Taussig’s
(1999) concept of defacement is drawn upon. While defacement normally implies
to ‘disfigure’ or ‘spoil’ an appearance, in Taussig’s work it also refers to subversive
events which reveal or make explicit what has hitherto become known as ‘a public
secret’. By revealing public secrets, such events tend to destroy conventional ideo-
logical power based on a tacit understanding that such knowledge or acts must stay
clandestine in order to avoid moral uncertainty or ideological contradictions (Taussig,
1999). Consequently, referring to classic and recent ethnographies, it is suggested
that sexuality in Southern Africa maybe less of a taboo than normally assumed.
Rather than being subject to societal control and constraints in the realm of kin and
peers, sex and erotic expressions have historically been confined to specific locales
of intimacy while being banned from public places and institutions such as the city
centre, schools and the media. Rooted in colonial and post-colonial power structures,
an ideological, moral and spatial differentiation between poor and marginal parts of
the city and the modern part has taken place which has invariably defined the restric-
tions and opportunities for young women.
The city of Maputo is under the influence of global currents which emanate from
the cultural and political epicentres of Brazil, the United States, Europe and South
Africa. These currents have placed gender equality and women’s rights on the public
agenda through the NGOs, the government and the UN (Aboim, 2009). At the same
time pop music, American movies, Brazilian telenovelas and fashion increasingly
celebrate young women’s eroticism and sensuality (Hawkins et al., 2009). This
occurs amid neo-liberal policies and a privatization which has restructured the econ-
omy to an extent where unemployment is pervasive and formerly male or female
occupations have become blurred sites for competition (Agadjanian, 2005). These
global influences have had a significant impact on the social and sexual landscape
of young people. When young women in Maputo enter the world of seduction and
night life, they face the new possibilities that their sexual and reproductive powers
give way to, especially in the absence of access to education, regular jobs and other
means for social mobility (Hawkins et al., 2009). This transition from childhood to
womanhood is a time of self definition and formation of a social habitus in relation
to a sexual arena where choices are influenced not only by one’s own interests but
also those of the surroundings.

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‘The Bling Scandal’ 293

While there is a vast literature on male dominance and female subordination in

Africa, there is still a knowledge gap on femininities that challenge patriarchal struc-
tures and ideologies. Yet, in recent years there has been a rethinking of theories on
femininity in African societies that has made us look at the multiplicity of ways to
being feminine, including powerful and non-heterosexual femininities. Recognizing
that not all women are necessarily subordinated to men, some researchers have paid
attention to the developing notions of female agency and power in Africa, including
notions of respectability and female independence (Haram, 2005; Spronk, 2006). It
has been argued that constructions of male dominance in Africa are at least partly a
consequence of the colonial encounter (Arnfred, 2006; Oyewùmí, 2006), and some
scholars have demonstrated how female assertiveness, being a significant feature
in many pre-colonial societies, is still manifest in areas like agriculture, cooking,
spirituality, eroticism and same-sex practices in present day Africa (Amadiume,
1987; 1997; Arnfred, 2007; Dankwa, 2009; Tamale, 2006). Spronk (2007) illustrates
how young female professionals in Kenya look for pleasure and love rather than ’a
good husband’ or ‘a provider’ and Tamale (2006) gives examples of young Ugandan
women’s use of erotic practices in order to seduce and satisfy men whom they wish
to establish a relationship with. In both Kenya and Uganda, young women’s erotic
assertiveness meet resistance from older generations that uphold an idea that such
practices are derived from Western influences or that they are incompatible with the
decency of African women. Similar conflicts are displayed in the study from Maputo
where especially parents express concern about the explicit erotic manifestations
in the way daughters dress, walk, speak or act in public, particularly in relation to
young men. While parents are often very conscious about the way daughters ought
to behave in a community saturated by moral standards of the church, young women
are often more concerned with their ability to attract and build relationships with the
opposite sex.
After a short outline of the social setting and the methods used in the study,
I will show what happened at the Bling show and how the event caused havoc in
the Mozambican public. Thereafter, it will be discussed how erotic manifestations
and sexuality are intrinsically tied to colonial and post-colonial ideologies and the
separation of moral spheres. This leads to an analysis of the implications of trans-
gressing the divide between sexual practice in private and public spaces for young
women and society in general.

Methods and the Social Setting

The study was carried out in different social settings in Maputo, the capital of
Mozambique, which has a population of around one million inhabitants. The female
participants in the study were between 16 and 23 years old and the majority of them
attended secondary school. The data for this article are drawn from individual in-
depth interviews with 12 female informants, six focus-group discussions with 34
female participants as well as various informal talks with many other women during
fieldwork that lasted from March 2007 to April 2008 and with a short follow-up
study in May and June 2010. A few months into the fieldwork I gradually began to

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294 Christian Groes-Green

do participant observation by following informants in their everyday life. Through

the different stages of participant observation, a contact was established with three
groups of informants consisting of 24 young women who came from different social
and cultural backgrounds. One of the groups consisted of seven young women living
in middle-class urban neighbourhoods and attending secondary schools in the city
centre. This group was studied by socializing with them in their homes or at public
places like ice cream shops, private piscinas (swimming pools) and parks in the
downtown area. Another group consisted of twelve young women living in and at-
tending secondary schools in suburban and relatively poor suburbs. Socialization
with this group, most of who no longer lived with their parents, took place at street
corners in their neighbourhood, in their homes, and on weekends I went with them to
the barracas (open-air roadside bars), private parties, the beach and discotheques. A
third group consisted of five young women who had dropped out of secondary school
and lived on the outskirts of the city in a semi rural area. Interaction with this group
was shorter than with the two other groups but because I stayed in a house close to
their neighbourhood, I had easy access to their social environment which enabled
close interaction with them in their everyday life. Prolonged interaction with in-
formants produced a climate of trust and confidentiality which is a prerequisite for
open dialogue about intimate issues (Groes-Green, 2009). Being a young white man
(33 years when initiating the study) influenced the fieldwork in significant ways
due to difference of gender and race. On the one hand, I was initially uncertain about
the nature of the information I gathered from interviewees because of the risk that
the women depicted an ideal version of themselves as morally correct and sexually
restrained. Yet, by participating in their daily lives for a long period and not being
afraid to sometimes get drunk with them or disclose intimate information about
myself, I was able to create a climate of openness that allowed them to treat me more
like an older brother (they called me that) than as a white male researcher. On the
other hand, for ethical reasons, I constantly tried to find a middle ground between
avoiding emotional or bodily intimacy with them and at the same time indulging in
the highly sexual culture of parties that gave me a rare insight into the contextual and
shifting nature of erotic life and feminine practices.

Inside the Event: The Dama Do Bling Show

As Ivanêa Mudanisse alias Dama Do Bling went on stage in Cine África concert
hall in Maputo City, 29 June 2007, the show received enormous public attention
throughout Mozambique and was broadcasted on national radio and TV channels as
well as on the Internet. Everybody was expecting a blast from the rising star who
was not only inventing a new style of music, a blend of hip hop, punk and traditional
African rhythms, but had also been presented in the media as the first ‘intellectual
performer’ among young talented musicians in the country. The award winning
singer graduated from law school at Mozambique’s most prestigious university from
which she earned the title of doutora (doctor of science or law), and she has, therefore,

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‘The Bling Scandal’ 295

been seen as a role model for younger generations of Mozambicans. As she walked
into the spotlight that night amid great applause, she was only wearing her sunglasses,
a pearl necklace and transparent lingerie that covered only the most intimate body
parts. While her lack of clothing and her sexy performance was indeed provoking to
many, what shocked people most was the obvious fact that she was well into her
pregnancy. Shortly after the band started playing the introductory tunes, Dama do
Bling began touching her breasts while stroking her voluminous stomach. After a
few song performances she ended up placing one of her hands between the legs so
as to simulate that she was masturbating.
The show provoked very different reactions from the crowd. Most of the older
and mature crowd eventually walked out of the concert hall as Dama Do Bling
became gradually more daring in her performance. Others expressed their anger
or unease about the show by shouting and demanding that the singer should ‘be
decent’ or ‘stop it’. During the show, I was standing at the back wall of the hall from
where I observed middle-aged couples shaking their heads as they hurried towards
the exit doors, some of them dragging their teenage daughters with them by the
hand. Most of the younger audience seemed excited about the show. Some were
dancing around in circles making wild gestures, others made V signs with their arms
and fingers, signalling approval of and solidarity with the performer. Some female
informants, whom I accompanied to the concert, later said that the show was the
greatest experience in their lives and that the daring atmosphere felt liberating and
inspiring. As the 18-year-old woman Maria1 said:

Everybody was paralyzed when they saw her, pregnant and naked and all that, but most of
us loved her courage and pride, and she is someone everybody would like to be, cause she
doesn’t care what the fine people think or how society judges her.

Although the majority of young women in the crowd were delighted with the per-
formance, I later realized that some of the young women had been disappointed with
the singer’s behaviour. Some weeks later another informant, Alissa, 19 years old,
told me that her disappointment was due to Dama Do Bling acting disrespectfully
towards her unborn child. According to Mozambican traditions, she told me, chil-
dren are a holy gift from God and ancestral spirits and therefore acting overly sexual
may cause danger to or harm an unborn baby. In Alissa’s opinion, since Dama Do
Bling used to be a publicly respected and respectable woman her performance had not
only denigrated herself but ‘all respectable Mozambican women’. Alissa’s reaction
illustrates the paradoxical position of the female body in discourses on femininity
and sexuality in Mozambican society. The naked female body is conventionally seen
as erotically powerful and as a beautiful symbol of fertility, celebrated in initiation
rituals and ceremonies (Arnfred 2007). At the same time pregnancy is somehow
seen as desexualizing the body, although sexual activity is its very prerequisite. Or
rather the relationship between sex and pregnancy is symbolically problematic and
dangerous, which is why pregnant women and newborn babies cannot come into
contact with sexually active persons (being hot). Thus studies have shown how being

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296 Christian Groes-Green

at once pregnant and sexually active has in some parts of Mozambique be seen as
antithetical, contaminating and disastrous to the baby, the mother or the extended
family (Chapman 2010).

‘The Massacre on Women’: Public Outcry and Ideological Contestations

The Bling show triggered a fierce public debate on sexuality, pregnancy and women’s
behaviour that revealed new dissonances as well as underlined recurring ideological
cleavages in Mozambican society. Through major newspapers, public opinion put
pressure on Mozambican Women’s Organization (OMM) to intervene against the
‘immorality of Dama Do Bling’ whose show was labelled by a newspaper editor as
‘a massacre on women’ (Savana, 2007: 9). Conservative papers depicted Dama Do
Bling as ‘a threat to Mozambique’s proud family traditions’ and further described
her show as an insult to the founding fathers of the FRELIMO, the country’s ruling
party since independence in 1975. A popular magazine compared Dama Do Bling’s
performance to prostitution and the party’s political icon, former president Samora
Machel was cited as saying that women should not use their bodies to make indecent
gestures (Tvzine, 28 July, 2007: 3). In an interview on a popular radio programme, a
member of parliament pointed to the failure of ‘some celebrities’ to live up to their
responsibilities as family role models by ‘taking Mozambique in the wrong direction’
(Radio Moçambique, 2007). In the same programme, the archbishop of the Catholic
Church remarked that Dama Do Bling reduced ‘the sacred time of pregnancy’ to ‘a
public striptease’. Defending Dama Do Bling, academics from Universidade de
Eduardo Mondlane argued that it was hypocritical to ostracize the singer for an ex-
pression of nudity which traditional Mozambican communities have condoned for
centuries and which Portuguese colonialists and later post-colonial society banned
for ‘andro-centric reasons’ (Serra, 2007).
Despite the public outcry, Dama Do Bling kept defending her style and opinions.
The fact that she had an abortion only a few weeks after her show, she commented,
only intensified her dedication to the struggle against ‘antiquated values of old men’.
She made the case that her abortion had been a result of stress and public critique
and then underscored that pressure or threats would not keep her from being a
women’s liberator in the world of an old conservative generation (TVM, 2007). In
her public appearances on television or album releases, she showed her disregard
for female norms by wearing highly erotic clothing or by showing up in a fireman’s
uniform. In her song lyrics, Dama Do Bling openly criticizes sexually restrictive
norms and the idea that women are responsible for taking care of the home and
children. In the song ‘Calls for Bling’, from her 2007 album, she mocked the way
her family tried to influence how she dressed:

Messages, messages, calls, calls

Even aunt Raquel called me all the way from Chimoio
Since she discovered Onecell
Grandad Samuel also wanted to contribute

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‘The Bling Scandal’ 297

He send a tailor to dress me up

‘You have to dress up or at least cover your legs
Cover everything from the legs to the ears2

The strongest backfire from Dama Do Bling came when a reporter asked why her
reaction to the critics had been so unbridled. In her response, she quoted another
song where she questioned the legality of the political elite and their right to decide
over women’s behaviour:

So a young woman with a diploma is not allowed to sing, while a minister with sixth grade
is allowed to legislate? (Macua blogs, 2007)

Using an anti-elite rhetoric against her critics, she fed into a widespread but nor-
mally silenced impatience with politicians who are seen as corrupt and detached
from the world around them. In the following weeks, Dama Do Bling gained
massive popularity among some of the young women in the study who generally
had little sympathy towards politicians and journalists. When I talked to them about
women’s ideals and roles in society, they often referred to Dama Do Bling songs
that encourage girls to ‘advance’, ‘to show it all’, ‘to take of their clothes’ and ‘be
crazy’. As fans, they practiced certain rituals before concerts. Dama Do Bling’s most
famous music videos were played on the computer and her movements, gestures and
lyrics were imitated. Songs by other female idols, like the American singers Rihanna
and Beyoncé, were also played and compared with the Mozambican singer. There
was also an exchange of opinions about her looks, clothing, hair and jewellery in
music videos and a discussion about what to wear in order to look like her.

Female Sexualities and Subject Positions

In the following, I present the social and cultural background of three informants and
portray different subject positions of young women in the study through their experi-
ences of and opinions about the Bling show. The cases serve to elucidate contrasting
tendencies encountered among the young women in the study by highlighting the
thrust of class, morality and kin relations towards shaping their sexual lives and
erotic behaviour. Although they represent disparate reactions to and personal choices
under particular ideological and social circumstances, they also show a common
search for a femininity which bridges the dilemmas of pursuing dreams of independ-
ence and freedom while ensuring some kind of social respect and recognition from
kin and broader society.

Sylvia: Private Eroticism Amid Kin-based Restrictions on Sexuality

Sylvia was 17 years old and lived in a semi-rural area on the outskirts of Maputo
with her mother, stepfather and two older sisters. She had dropped out of secondary
school when she became pregnant and was now working with her mother on the

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298 Christian Groes-Green

machamba (small plot of land) while trying to get a job as a housemaid. Her step-
father was unemployed and the household income was based on crops from the
machamba which the sisters tried to sell on the local market place. Sylvia had little
contact with peers from school and mostly socialized with her sisters and other girls
in the neighbourhood while taking care of her son. She maintained a sexual relation-
ship with her ex-boyfriend who was the father of her son, but he declined to take
responsibility and did not want to make any commitments although he sometimes
supported Sylvia with money and gifts. Sylvia did not go to the Dama Do Bling con-
cert but saw the show on television at her neighbour’s house. She believed Dama Do
Bling was a strange person and said that she would never behave like her, in the
sense of showing her body and masturbating in public. But at the same time she
added that she was sometimes envious of women who dared being openly sensual
and erotic. As she said, she loved to be ‘dirty’ (safado) when she was with her son’s
father and she knew nothing better than to make a striptease for him or asking him
to ‘do naughty things’ with her. Sex was not treated as a taboo-ridden issue in her
family or among her friends. Although she never spoke about it with her stepfather,
she frequently discussed intimate matters with her aunts and her sisters, who she
recalled, had given her advice on men and sex since she had her first menstruation.
In Sylvia’s opinion, sexual pleasure and mutual satisfaction were essential to a well-
working relationship. So even though the financial help she received from her son’s
father was one motivating factor for meeting to have sex, she stressed that their good
knowledge about each other’s needs and fantasies was equally significant for her
desire to stay with him. But her family who were regular churchgoers insisted on a
set of rules as to how their daughters should behave and dress in public. Her mother
reminded her to dress as ‘a real women’, indicating that she should wear a capulana
(the ‘traditional’ dress in Mozambique) and on Sundays when going to church she
was asked to wear a white dress covering her arms and legs. Sylvia accepted her
mother’s instruction but said that she got annoyed when she was going to a birthday
party and her mother asked her not to wear short skirts and bikinis which she warned
was used only by ‘cheap girls’. Although she agreed that the pop star acted insen-
sitively towards the audience, she deemed the debate about Dama Do Bling’s
behaviour misplaced because, as she mentioned, the singer had merely behaved like
many young women do every weekend at parties or nightclubs. As she said, every
Mozambican woman ‘…like to move the body in flirtatious ways and dance around
with little clothes on. It is a competition about who is most womanly and who has
the power to get the best men.’
Since Sylvia rarely had money to ‘go out’ at bars and discos she instead liked to
dance and ‘play little games’ with her female friends at home. When the parents were
out, they held small parties where they took off their clothes, made strip and danc-
ing shows and lay on the bed cuddling each other. Cheerfully, Sylvia also admitted
that they sometimes watched porn movies and had fun imitating the female actor’s
movements, expressions and moaning. In fact, most female informants in the study
watched porn movies regularly and almost always in the company of friends rather
than individually.

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‘The Bling Scandal’ 299

Maria: In Search of Freedom and Erotic Power at the Expense of Kin

Support
Maria, 18 years, lived on the outskirts of the city in a small apartment which she
sometimes shared with girlfriends. Her parents had both died when she was a child
and she had grown up with her grandparents in a small rural town on the coast. At
the age of 15, she had travelled to the big city against the will of the grandparents in
order to, as she said, ‘try her luck, and escape poverty.’ At first she had lived with a
cousin who took care of her while she attended secondary school. But her situation
changed when she met an older Dutch man in a nightclub who soon became her
lover. He decided to give her a monthly contribution so she could rent an apartment
where they would be able to meet in privacy when he was in the country to do busi-
ness. After a while, he convinced her to drop out of school since, as he had said, she
no longer needed an education or a job when he was paying for everything she
needed. Her circle of friends were young women of her own age or older with whom
she went to discos and the beach to ‘have fun and look at men’. Many of her girl-
friends had left their home and lived together in worn-down apartments in the city’s
less-fashionable parts. Besides her lover, she also had casual sexual relations with
other men she met in the city’s nightlife, mostly older men who catered for her and
bought her gifts. The reason was her desire to remain relatively independent on the
Dutch lover, since in her mind, too much attachment could limit her opportunities if
one day he turned abusive or if he suddenly decided no longer to support her.
Maria disregarded her grandparents’ advice of not to engage with patrocinadores
(literally: sponsors) who support women financially in exchange for sex. Yet, at the
same time some family members tacitly accepted her sexual relationships because
of the economic benefit of no longer having to support and take care of her. When
they went out to bars in the city centre, Maria and her girlfriends dressed up in sexy
outfits and prepared fancy hairdos. Most of them, identified as curtidoras (literally:
enjoyers), defined as young women having sexual relationships with patrocinadores.
In Mozambican youth slang and among curtidoras themselves, the word refers to
women who enjoy life and to have fun and implies engagement with patrocinadores
in public places such as restaurants, bars, parks and beaches. Curtidoras often
identify with trends and youth cultures in the United States, South Africa and Brazil
and do their most to keep up with fashion currents. Many curtidoras survive, pay
their studies and occasionally support their families by means of gifts and money
from boyfriends or patrocinadores. Patrocinadores are usually much older and have
a wife and children, so curtidoras rarely dream of marrying them.
Maria and most of her friends were big fans of Dama Do Bling and went to all
of her concerts. In fact, the large majority of fans were young women who lived
in the city, and although they came from different social backgrounds, there was
an overweight of young women who opted for ‘a patrocinador solution’ to their
problems of being poor or having abusive men or families. Maria saw Dama Do
Bling as a woman who did not accept to become dependent on one man but wished
to remain free to choose as many men as she liked without being controlled or
punished:

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300 Christian Groes-Green

We all would like to be independent like Dama Do Bling, in the sense of having our own
car, house, work and money to sustain our whims. When we get older we can find out if we
are going to get married or not. Because when we are already settled in a man’s house and
don’t have work, he always tells you that, ‘it is me who sustains you’, ‘you are not going
out, stay here’. There is a lot of quarrelling because you were with somebody outside. But
when we are together and there is a woman passing by, he appreciates her shamelessly and
you are not allowed to question him. They want us to keep quiet and stop dressing up sexy,
but we will not be like silent dolls.

Maria’s notion of ‘freedom’ (liberdade) implied that she could choose from dif-
ferent men, ideally by changing partner if somebody became too demanding or turned
violent. At the same time, she was aware of the necessity of saving up the money she
received from her patrocinador to invest in property and in order to support her kin
financially. She explained how she sensed a change among her peers when it comes
to the equality of men and women in terms of behaviour and power:

Yes, there is freedom and more power to the women. In past times, a woman wouldn’t go
alone for a soda or a beer at the barracas. There were places where the woman had to be
accompanied, not anymore. Now we can even make a man support us, and ask him for
money. Women are studying, there is development. But the best part is that we can behave
just like men, go out and go crazy.

I repeatedly heard curtidoras saying that they did not mind what people thought
about them when expressing erotic intent towards men in public, even if they knew
that ‘fine women’ scorned them. Maria and her peers rarely went to church although
many saw themselves as religious. Whether their families were Christian or Muslim,
they felt that they were not welcome in the church or the mosque because of their
‘way of living’ which the rest of their families could not accept, at least publicly.
However, many curtidoras like Maria, were accepted by the curandeiros (local
healers/witchdoctors) who gave them all kinds of advice ranging from tackling
spiritual problems to seducing a man and ensuring that he stayed faithful and sup-
ported her with money. For example, an erotic trick known as ‘putting a man in a
bottle’ entailed using love potions such as drinks made of herbs or special body
creams thought to create an erotic and emotional tie with the lover. Experiences with
erotic and spiritual tricks circulated between curtidoras but were vigorously kept
a secret from boyfriends, lovers and families since such practices are considered
malevolent witchcraft ( feitiço) in contrast to more acceptable practices of benevolent
healing (curandeirismo).

The Case of Alissa: Choosing Moral Safety and a Femininity of Public

Decency
Alissa, 19 years old, lived with her parents and brothers in an affluent part of the city
centre. She had just finished secondary school and was going to enter law school.
Her father was a pilot and her mother worked as a secretary in the Ministry of

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Education. Her family was frequent churchgoers and her mother had a high position
in the church community. Both of her parents and her brother were members of the
Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO), the ruling party in government
since independence in 1975. Alissa was engaged to her boyfriend who was 24 years
old and came from a family of Portuguese descent who owned a large transport com-
pany. Talking about her experiences from the Dama Do Bling concert, she underlined
the importance of behaving correctly in public:

Bling seems to forget this, that women should be responsible for the household and the
children, not going around sharing their bodies with everyone and forgetting where they
come from.

Alissa believed that it was her responsibility to behave publicly in a way that
would make her family proud and when she went out to bars with her friends there
was usually a brother who looked after her. On several occasions, when going out to
restaurants, bars or discos, I observed how family members of middle-class, young
women tried to prevent their sisters or daughters from talking to or approaching
men. For example, men with cheap clothes or ‘bad manners’ would be pushed away
while an educated and well-dressed man would be allowed to dance with her. How-
ever, neither the young women nor their families allowed any intimacy or explicit
sexual interaction to take place in public space.
Among middle-class families, like Alissa’s, the establishment of a sexual or
amorous relationship must pass through the stage of introduction to the family fol-
lowed by a ritual presentation of the couple to the extended kin group at a special
ceremony. After a period of twelve months, Alissa’s fiancée is expected to marry
her in the Christian tradition as well as pay the bride price (lobolo) according to
‘tradition’. Most ethnic groups in Maputo perform the lobolo ceremony, but socio-
economic hardship has made it increasingly difficult for many groups of poor men
to pay the bride price (Granjo, 2005). After the lobolo ceremony, the young woman
formally becomes a member of the man’s kin group and from then on is seen as be-
longing to her husband (Da Costa, 2005). Alissa believed that the traditional ideal
of a Mozambican woman is one who takes responsibility for raising the children,
takes care of the housework and does the cleaning, washing and cooking. When
asked who does not live up to this ideal, Alissa mentioned women who go dancing
at the discotheques every weekend, who sleep with foreign men or who live alone
without a family or husband. During informal conversations, Alissa told me that she
agreed with local priests who stress that women are better off staying at home and
taking care of their children rather than strolling around the city ‘half naked like a
prostitute’.

Self Definition, Livelihood Strategies and Transactional Sex

As the three cases show, sexuality is a core theme in the construction of young
femininities in Maputo. In the years of 2007 and 2008, the Bling scandal became a

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reference point for further definition and display of one’s sexual subjectivity by em-
bracing or repelling her controversial behaviour. But during a short stay in Maputo
in 2010, I found that the event still served as a significant identity marker among the
three women. By now Sylvia was not only dating her ex-boyfriend but also had an
affair with a man ‘from the city’ who had more money. She was afraid what her son’s
father would do if he found out, and I gathered that she feared he would use violence
against her. In order to know whether she welcomed recent developments in the
government’s gender policy, I asked Sylvia what she thought about a new law against
domestic violence passed in 2009. She told me that this law was probably necessary
because young women are becoming ‘so unruly that men can no longer control their
girlfriends and wives’. When I asked what she meant, she spoke as if she was be-
coming one of Dama Do Bling’s followers:

We all think that we are kind of women of Bling [mulheres do Bling], and if parents cannot
help us get a better life, maybe we can get the money we need by finding a rich man. But
when we do that the other men get angry because they do not like to share a woman. Then
they beat up the women, calling them whores [putas].

The Bling scandal seemed to favour a polarization of types of women and be-
haviour according to the ideological distinction between femininities, inherited
from colonial and post-colonial discourses. From different vantage points, these
discourses juxtapose the moral, decent and educated women to the immoral, dirty,
erotically savage and uncontrollable women of lower social status. The polarization
of femininities and the financial aspect of relationships can be illustrated by looking
at the way categories like boyfriends and lovers are increasingly replaced by terms
such as patrocinador, HR (short for homem rico, a rich man), cote (old lover, liter-
ally meaning fee) or even an ATM. Concurrently, young women like Maria who
are identified as curtidoras or girlfriends are now from many sides, including the
Catholic Church, labelled as prostitutes, whores or ‘fallen women’ in need of help.
In addition, segments of particularly middle-class youth tend to describe curtidoras
with derogatory expressions like interesseira (women only interested in the money),
sanguessuga (leech) and golpista (women who rob men of their property). At the
same time, women of higher social status, such as Alissa, seem to be preoccupied
with showing themselves as decent and respectable women in contrast to ‘scandalous
women’ such as Dama Do Bling and women who seek casual sexual liaisons with
men. A similar trend has been observed by Spronk (2006) in her study of young
women’s self definitions in Nairobi. She notes that the moralizing responses to
Kenyan women’s engagement in casual and commercial sexual relationships tend
to arise in periods of social change where conventional gender roles of patriarchal
society are challenged (Spronk, 2006: 126). Yet, the ideological polarity which
she describes between ‘respectable’ traditional African values and ‘western’ cor-
rupted values in Kenyan postcolonial discourse differs in significant ways from
the ideological contradictions observed in Mozambique. While there are similar

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beliefs that the ‘sexualisation of women’ emanates from American or Western

popular culture, the opposition to female erotic expressions and transactional sex
draws heavily on the aforementioned colonial and post-colonial polarization of the
traditional and uneducated women versus the civilized and well mannered woman.
As Arnfred (2004: 114) writes, the FRELIMO ideology cast women as oppressed not
just by colonialism but also by ‘traditional society’ which through initiation rituals
and the lobolo, reduce women to sexual objects rather than liberated compatriots.
Researchers have observed how women are subject to men’s widespread powers
in the patrilineal kinship systems of Southern Mozambique, not least in the realm of
sexuality and reproduction (Da Costa, 2004). Among many ethnic groups, including
the Manchangana and Ronga (also called Tsonga) who constitute the majority in
Maputo, the man is often depicted as the one who takes the initiative in sexual matters,
inviting a woman to have sex or to be his partner (Loforte, 2000). Yet, the notion
that it is inappropriate for a Manchangana woman to show sexual desire, to seduce
a man or to be active in the sexual act has been modified by scholars suggesting that
women in fact are highly active in the sexual act and do regard their own pleasure
as a priority (Loforte, 2000). Also the ideal of the responsible ‘housewife’ with good
manners cannot merely be ascribed to traditional African traditions but is also rooted
in colonial times and reproduced in post-colonial discourses. As Arnfred (2004)
argues, the Christian ideal which was prevalent during Portuguese colonial rule
stressed that the woman was to be ‘queen of the home’ (rainha do lar), an ideal
which did not fundamentally change when FRELIMO introduced the notion of the
female ‘companion’ (companheiha) in the post-independence period (Arnfred, 2004:
111–17). The double standard of FRELIMO’s original tenets consisted in the idea
that although a woman was her man’s equal companion, she was de facto assumed
to take responsibility in the household. Moreover, sexual or erotic expressions were
seen as examples of prostitutions or as vile obscenities that should become extinct
(Arnfred, 2004). It can be argued that the Catholic Church and FRELIMO in different
ways contributed to the binary model of femininity in which women who engage in
sexual affairs for money or who have children with different men are condemned
while the responsible housewife is posed as the female ideal. As Arnfred comments,
the FRELIMO’s icon, former president Samara Machel, was highly supportive of
this view.

Even worse than ‘children of the bush’ were prostitutes, ‘women who transform their
bodies into shops.(…) A prostitute is a rotten person with a foul stench’ (Machel 1982: 33)
A particular kind of prostitute, according to Machel, consisted of ‘girls of twelve to sixteen
years who hunted down adult men in political power. Interesting, the President’s blame
was laid exclusively on the girls, and not on his fellow Party members. (Machel in Arnfred,
2004: 117, reference in original)

In such statements, expressing some similarity with debates around the Bling scandal,
women who engage in relationships with patrocinadores are not only condemned
for their immorality, they are also portrayed as dangerous predators who corrupt men

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in power. Against this background, it is not difficult to understand why a woman like
Alissa needed to distance herself from female representatives of sexual assertive-
ness in order to appear more decent and sexually pure. Also, coming from an educated
middle-class family, it is quite common to sympathize with the views of both the
Catholic Church and the ruling party. To Maria, however, such prevalent views
tainted the relationship to her family and kin who were closely tied to the church and
deeply influenced by its teachings. Although the sharpened discourse tend to put
curtidoras in a bad light, they also drew on the conceptions of them as erotically
‘dangerous’ and ‘powerful’ in order to justify choices of female independence and
fun seeking behaviour through flexible sexual relationships.
As shown in other studies in Mozambique young women get involved in an urban
consumer culture where they encounter the possibilities of being part of a lifestyle
that they see as an alternative to the female housewife ideal they have been taught
at home (e.g., Hawkins et al., 2009). The emergence of Maputo’s urban consumer
culture is a consequence of neo-liberal policies adopted by the FRELIMO since the
end of the 1980s and which today has paved the way for a growing middle class as
well as deepening inequality and massive unemployment. So while female idols
such as Dama Do Bling represent a celebration of the new world of consumer
goods and luxuries, they at the same time inspire the poorer segments of society and
women like Sylvia and Maria to look for social mobility through a manipulation of
erotic powers vis-à-vis the middle-class men. Casual sexual engagements with men
in exchange for goods, money and luxury have been studied in different parts of
Africa under the concept of ‘sugar-daddy relationships’ (Silberschmidt and Rasch,
2001) or ‘transactional sex’ (Cole 2004; Hawkins et al., 2009; Luke and Kurz, 2002).
Transactional sex is probably not a recent phenomenon in Africa but it seems to
be growing in modern times with an increasing commercialization of sexuality,
deepening inequalities and a change in values and family structures in urban
centres (Cole, 2004; Cornwall, 2003; Hunter, 2007; Luke and Kurz, 2002). It is cer-
tainly not without risk that young women in Maputo engage in transactional sex.
Patrocinadores are often reluctant to use condoms and due to the inequality of the
relationship most young women find it hard to insist (also see Hawkins et al., 2009),
although scholars have observed subcultures of youth with more negotiating power
(Karlyn, 2006). The risks involved are underlined by the high number of young
women infected with HIV/AIDS. In Mozambique, the youth (age 15–24) accounts
for 60 per cent of new HIV infections (UNAIDS, 2009) with young females being
most vulnerable with an HIV prevalence rate of 23 per cent in Maputo (MISAU,
2010). However, to many young women in poverty-ridden contexts, the short-term
economic benefits of having unsafe sex by far outweighs the long term risk of being
infected with HIV (Reddy and Dunne, 2007). And, as observed in previous studies,
women in Maputo who engage in these relationships see themselves as strong
social agents who have the upper hand vis-à-vis patrocinadores and boyfriends,
especially because of a feeling of controlling the man through sexual powers
(see also Hawkins et al., 2009). Expressions like ‘milking’, ‘sucking’ or ‘putting
men in the bottle’ point to this sense of being powerful agents who extract value

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and money from men seen as at once easily manipulated and persons who need
to be taken care of. Some young women confirmed that the ambiguous role of
‘caretaker’ and ‘manipulator’ of men can at times convey a sense of pleasure in
the sexual act and hence, be seen as constitutive of a particular female identity.
As Gregg (2003) notes in her analysis of female agency and cervical cancer in a
poor suburban settlement in Brazil, young women in thoroughly patriarchal societies
sometimes feel they have to choose between the security of family life and marital
stability and the relative independence that characterizes casual and fluid sexual
relationships. Relative independence is guaranteed by ensuring that the material
benefit of sexual engagements comes not from a single man who wants control
over a woman but from a changing and flexible network of men none of whom are
allowed to have the final say (Gregg, 2003).

‘Public Morality, Private Eroticism’: Transgressing

Boundaries
The widespread notion that sex is a taboo issue in southern Africa has been ques-
tioned by scholars with reference to historical and ethnographic sources. Delius and
Glaser (2002) argue that erotic play and sexual experimentation were in fact actively
encouraged in certain rituals and practices throughout the region, But, the encour-
agement of these practices did not imply a culture of permissiveness. In fact erotic
play was consistently separated from village life and confined to hidden places and
particular moments. And there were severe sanctions against transgressions of vil-
lage taboos, such as the taboo of penetrative sex, which led to unwanted pregnancies.
Impregnation not only put shame on an unmarried girl but, more importantly her loss
of virginity devalued her as woman and made it practically impossible to demand
lobola (bridewealth) future husband’s family. Peers and kin played a central role in
the sexual education of adolescents. To prevent male adolescents from making po-
tential wives pregnant family and kin members gave them explicit sexual advice
about ‘protection’ and older girls known as amaqhikaza had the role of monitoring
the practice of hlobonga, also known as thigh sex, which was allowed because it in-
volved sexual experimentation without outright vaginal sex. In hlobonga practices,
the boy was allowed to rub his penis against the outer parts of the girl’s vagina but
was instructed to come only on her thighs. Such sexual socialization based on peer
instruction and advice from the elders was challenged in many parts of South Africa
under the impact of Christianity, labour migration and increasing urbanization. When
Christian morality began to spread through the process of colonization disagreements
about limits to sexual behaviour began to flourish between generations. New forms
of colonial and male power eroded chiefly and customary rule in some places and
this concomitantly undermined the logic of sexual socialization. Under expanding
Christian influence, communities were unable to keep control, and an increased
sense of shame was followed by a ban on explicit sexual socialization. But since sex

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was rarely spoken about at home and improper erotic behaviour was exiled from
communities, curiosity was aroused and young peoples’ sexual practices became
uncontrollable outside the safe environments (Delius and Glaser, 2002: 34–43).
Among female informants from semi-urban and rural areas, such as Sylvia and
Maria, there were plenty of stories about families deploying rules for their daughter’s
behaviour similar to those described above where elders and peers monitor their sexual
practice. The young women explained that at the time of their first menstruation,
their sisters or aunts would take them aside and teach them about pleasures and
pains of love and sex, telling stories about erotic tricks and ways to seduce a man
through sexual activity or control him with spiritual or erotic powers. Many female
informants recounted how they, during wedding feasts, birthday parties and other
social activities involving drinking and dancing, were allowed to dance and flirt
intimately with men but had to keep out of sight if they wished to be more intimate.
Examples were given about festivities where they had been kissing their cousin in
the backyard or given the boy next door a broche (blowjob, oral sex) in the woods.
These illicit erotic practices, they said, were tacitly accepted and considered normal
for young people as long as they were well hidden so that nobody could witness it
and gossip about it publicly to other family members and neighbours.
To understand how different moral stances apply to private and public behaviour
and the various versions of femininity among young women, we must pay attention to
the historical separation of ideological, social and physical spaces for female sexual
expression in Maputo. During the Portuguese colonization, an ideological system of
binary classifications was formed in which moral behaviour, and especially female
behaviour, was a central aspect. Colonial subjects were divided into the superstiti-
ous, uncontrollable, savage and rural versus the assimilated, Christian, educated,
civilized and urban. In this system, the erotic practices and female initiation rites
were aligned with superstition and savagery and attempts were made to ban all that
was deemed un-Christian (Arnfred, 2004). In this colonizing process, Mozambican
women, who were formerly active in agricultural work, were now taught the skills
needed to become ‘queens of home’ (rainhas do lar) and men were expected to be-
come providers for the household by working in the fields (Arnfred, 2004). As the
Comaroffs (1992) have shown, colonial subjects of southern Africa were transformed
by means of a certain ‘esprit de corps’, involving reversing prior rules for men and
women’s proper bodily behaviours and appearances. The Comaroffs (1992: 216)
argue that the project of nineteenth-century British colonialism was linked to the
rise of a biomedical science that attempted to draw clear distinctions between what
was perceived by the colonists to be a potentially contagious African body and the
white, sanitized European body which was then exposed to such sources of danger
and disorder (Comaroff and Comaroff, 1992: 224). In Mozambique, a similar pro-
ject was implemented by the Portuguese, distinguishing between assimilated women
who embodied the housewife ideal and women who were seen as savage or ‘filthy
prostitutes’ (Arnfred, 2004).

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During colonial times, there was a spatial aspect to the ideological division
between public and private which has continued until today. Specific places are
associated with specific meanings, languages and behaviours that are historical
products of political and ideological struggles. In territorial terms, the periphery of
the city or what today is termed as Maputo caniço (reed Maputo) where houses are
made of reed and other elementary construction materials, is in the popular middle-
class imagination associated with filth, disorder, ignorance, witchcraft practices and
native languages like Changana and Ronga. These zones of ‘traditional practices’,
tied to ideas of home, birthplace or a true African lifestyle, encompass a certain
sexual permissiveness in terms of erotic language and ‘dirty’ practice by contrast to
modern and public sites of the nation state such as schools, hospitals and work places
where sexual language and behaviour must be controlled or contained (Groes-Green,
2009). Sylvia eloquently described her position in the city’s ideological matrix
through the notion of ‘entrapment’ (emprisionamento). She described this as feeling
trapped in a place where there was little room for independence and freedom from
her partners and family but where there was at least some room for playing around
with girlfriends and lovers. Yet, she was wary of the risky way of living epitomized
by Dama Do Bling. Sylvia was not satisfied with living in a poor neighbourhood but
the city seemed so far away, and although she saw it as an attractive place with access
to luxuries, she also feared it was an insecure place where she would be severed from
family and friends. She expressed an almost fatalist notion about her connectedness
to the neighbourhood, her family and the church and held that her future depended
on her destiny which only God knew. Maria, on the other hand, felt that she belonged
in the city but complained that it was getting harder to maintain her lifestyle as more
and more people were critical towards her engagement with different men.
As mentioned, the Bling scandal not only gave way to strong condemnations by
politicians and the church, there were also powerful voices emanating from differ-
ent foreign aid organizations and feminist groups. The USAID and other Western
funding agencies in Maputo have continually put pressure on local governments,
the UN and the NGOs to fight prostitution and pushed for measures to decrease
casual sexual relationships in favour of monogamous and stable unions. While these
efforts have sometimes been informed by religious and moral ideas about proper
male and female behaviour and the contaminating effects of ‘promiscuity’ in the
HIV/AIDS epidemic, these is also a growing preoccupation with human trafficking
and the more sinister sides to prostitution. Yet, although curtidoras have little in
common with stereotypes of exploited and powerless prostitutes, their relationships
with patrocinadores is now on top of the development agenda as an example of ‘the
exploitation of women and children in The Third World’ (Speech by an UNICEF
official, Maputo, September 2007). UN organizations and a number of NGOs are
beginning to carry out studies into these illicit practices, in which the agency of
is questioned and whose assertiveness is discursively transformed into victimhood
of male domination and ‘pop culture’. In this ideological environment the Bling

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show and the lifestyle of women like Maria tend to contest predominant views about
African women’s powerlessness in a sexual arena which is allegedly monopolized
by men. Yet, recent studies of how gender relations are transformed among young
Mozambicans testifies to an alternative perspective which open for a rethinking of
gender relations, female power and which questions the idea of an absolute hegem-
ony of coercive men (Hawkins et al., 2009; Karlyn, 2005; Arnfred, 2006).

Conclusion: Sexual Defacement or Unmasking Female

Eroticism
In the broader picture we may understand the Bling scandal and the controversy that
followed it through the concept of sexual defacement. Taussig (1999) defines deface-
ment as the revelation of a ‘public secret’ which is generally known but, due to
certain ideological and moral conventions, cannot easily be articulated. Knowing
what not to know or express is a very powerful form of social knowledge, and un-
masking such knowledge at once disturbs and re-enchants the subjectivities that
surround it (Taussig, 1999). The Bling scandal had a strong impact on the way
sexuality could be spoken about in the Mozambican public and as no other single
event it brought sexuality and eroticism on the political agenda as a ‘talkable’ issue
(Van Gelder, 2006). I have dealt with the implications of the Bling scandal which
pictures Mozambican society as a place where sexuality and its uses are contested
between social classes, ideologies and groups of young women. If seen through the
looking glass of a Mozambican popular culture of pop music, Brazilian telenovelas,
pornography and sexy clothing, one might get the impression that young women’s
explicit erotic practices and expressions are recently introduced phenomena. But by
looking closely into the historical construction of femininities in Maputo, it turns out
that erotic expressions of Maria and Dama Do Bling merely made public what most
of Mozambican society has known for centuries, that is, female sexuality plays a
powerful role in the gender matrix and serves as a significant resource in the for-
mation of women’s identities and in their empowerment vis-a-vis men. What disturbs
the dominant ideological order upheld by the political elite, the church and foreign-
aid organizations is the way female sexual behaviour is becoming something that
defines women as social actors in public space. The transgression of boundaries of
public and private is most vividly represented by curtidoras who dress up in sexy
outfits flirt with men in the very heart of the modern cityscape, and nightlife estab-
lishments and the media. Perhaps, the Bling show became a scandal exactly because
the singer revealed what everybody knew and had witnessed for a while but nobody
dared to state in the open—that the public and the city as such is under transformation
and that women are increasingly acting in openly erotic ways. The nakedness and
erotic performance of Dama Do Bling can be seen as an act equal to the one played
by the little boy in the fairy tale when he cried to the public that ‘the emperor has no
clothes on’. Her performance made obvious what had been masked by years of
ideological divisions of the said and the unsaid, the proper and the improper female

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‘The Bling Scandal’ 309

behaviour and the imagined separation of private from public domains. As a prom-
inent voice in the critique of Dama Do Bling’s behaviour wrote in a newspaper:

It was an insult to spit on the Mozambican people this way, because we know that every
citizen do their outmost to ensure that there are educated and well mannered persons, and
not bald-fazed people who show nudity (…) And do not come with the argument that you
(Dama do Bling) are persecuted and that people disturb your privacy. It is you who broke
your own privacy, that is, if that ever existed (Noticias, 2007).

The perception of the Dama Do Bling show as an event which epitomized the
transgression of public and private behaviour was underlined by a commentary
on the blog of the Mozambican sociologist Carlos Serra by his colleague Patricio
Langa:

In an article I wrote I referred to the necessity of paying attention to what I consider a

profound social transformation that occurred and still occurs in the private and public
sphere of our society. I termed this phenomenon a silent revolution. In my understanding,
and hypothetically speaking, phenomena such as Dama do BLING reveal a profound
process of democratization of the private sphere which is now becoming reflected in public
space. (Langa, 2007, capital letters in original)

Arguably, the subject positions of Maria and Alissa and to a certain extent that of
Sylvia are examples of an increasing assertiveness among young women in urban
Mozambique. As I have shown, Maria and Alissa, in different ways, defended their
rights to decide over their bodies and to define their own versions of a Mozambican
femininity. In her effort to express opposition to the behaviour that she witnessed
in Cine África, Alissa shows an interesting affinity with her female opposite in the
shape of Maria. It seems as if ‘the Bling scandal’ demanded that all young women,
irrespective of social background, took a stand on issues of sexual permissiveness.
Even Sylvia, living on the very margins of the city, justified her engagement with
different lovers in stories about Mozambican women, herself included, as becoming
less controllable by their male companions. If these issues were controversial before,
as a consequence of this extraordinary event, they now require an explicit definition
of versions of femininity which enables each one to make sense of their own subject
position as young women. Hence, the Bling scandal has intensified young women’s
need to carve out an identity which separates them ideologically but at the same
time unites them as I open unfiltered discussions of an issue which was for a long
time considered ‘a public secret’. The Bling scandal made already existing practices
visible by pointing to the fact that erotic expressions, formerly confined to the
intimate realm, are now increasingly exposed by young women who dress in highly
sexual styles, talk ‘dirty’ on the street and express sexual intent towards men in bars
and restaurants, in particularly, older men seen as conveyers of money and status.
Rather than suggesting a complete rupture of ideals and perceptions, I argue that
the emergence of strong female idols such as Dama Do Bling and her influence on
young women using their erotic power does not indicate a complete breach with
the past but rather points towards an accelerated transgression of private and public
boundaries with specific ideological connotations and social consequences.

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310 Christian Groes-Green

Notes
1. All informants’ names are pseudonyms.
2. All songs are translated from Portuguese.

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Christian Groes-Green holds an MA in anthropology and a PhD in Public Health

from the University of Copenhagen. He has done extensive eldworks in Brazil and
Mozambique and has published a number of articles on gender and sexuality among
youth in Southern Africa. [email: chgr@sund.ku.dk]

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