The Divka z Ipanema

That's czech for 'girl from', folks. Turns out the fat Brazilian women pictured in Larry Rohter's recent article about fat Brazilians (notice no more photos) were not, in fact, Brazilians. They were Czech. According to O Globo, the women in the photo will sue the Times. Perhaps that contributed to the Times' decision to run this editor's note today...

In all fairness, this wasn't Rohter's fault: he had no control over the picture, and probably none over the piece's title or even its emphasis on the Girl From Ipanema angle. It was, however, the fault of the photographer, John Meier. I'm not totally unbiased on the subject of John (less than full disclosure here: let's just say we have friends in common), so I won't delve into the ethics of getting paid a bundle for snapping an unauthorized picture of somebody on the beach which you intend to caption "a fat Brazilian". Suffice it to say that I got a good deal of pleasure from the following description of him from Milena Suchopárková, one of the women in the photos:

"um homem que lá pelas tantas se aproximou de nós trazendo vários cachorros, na verdade, estava disfarçando, que o que ele queria mesmo era fazer umas fotos nossas."

("this guy slowly came up on us, bringing some dogs, but he was really dissembling; he was really trying to take a picture of us.")

A ridiculous end to a ridiculous story. Here, of course, it was front page news. Imagine people's relief: NYT proved wrong: Brazilian women hot after all!