She nonetheless frequently reminded her admirers that she wasn’t particularly brave, and that she needed to push herself beyond her fear.
“I am a person who is driven by curiosity and fear,” she said in a 2018 interview. “If I stop to think rationally, I do nothing. I have to let go of rationality to go forward, let curiosity and fear take over, and then I’ll do anything.”
Unpretentious in both manner and speech, Glória Maria was especially adored by Brazilians who, like her, came from poverty.
“People identified with her, they felt represented by her,” said Pedro Bial, who co-anchored the newsmagazine “Fantastico” with her for a decade. “It gave viewers — the poorest Brazilians, those most deprived of opportunities — the experience of living what Glória Maria was living on television.”
Her ubiquitous presence on television was also deeply symbolic in a country where Black people are disproportionately affected by poverty, violence and lack of opportunity, despite making up the majority of the population.
“Here is this Black woman, riding a roller coaster, having fun,” said Flávia Oliveira, a Brazilian television presenter. “She showed us that the Black body is also entitled to leisure. It’s not only about pain, about racism, about wounds, about problems.”
Still, Glória Maria was often the victim of racism. In the 1970s, she famously filed a police complaint when a manager barred her from a luxury hotel. Decades later, when she was co-hosting “Fantastico,” the first program of its kind in Brazil, viewers would call in demanding that she be replaced with a white presenter.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nytimes.com
