Beautiful as always: the Karajá ladies, their garments and body care

Abstract

In this article I present a little of the pluriverse of the Karajá girls, the ijadòkòma/ijadòma, from a collaborative perspective. I highlight two rituals that mark the beginning and the end of this phase of youth: the transition from “big girl” to young woman, from their first menstrual cycle, the menarche, and marriage, which marks the departure from the period in which one is a young woman. In both celebrations, I talk about garments, paintings and body care. I also present other themes that the ladies brought up, such as the use of cell phones and dating, seeking to contextualize in which people those garments are worn. This is an excerpt from the dissertation “Ijadòkòma itxỹtè: the Karajá girls ‘crazy’ and ‘beautiful as always’” (2019), produced within the scope of the Professional Master’s Degree in Sustainability with Traditional Peoples and Territories (ME-SPT), at the University of Brasília (UnB), with new notes added. The methodology used in the work was action research, a process in which they took the lead in the activities. In addition to the dissertation, the research resulted in two films produced by the ladies.