Rebellion and insubmission in Rita Lee: Uma autobiografia (2016)

Abstract

The main aim of this article is to understand Rita Lee's perceptions of the gender subversions she staged in her personal and artistic career, based on the narratives in Rita Lee: Uma autobiografia (2016). To do this, we draw on the considerations of Pinto (2003), Moraes (2012), Napolitano (2023), among others, in order to reflect on feminism in Brazil from the 1960s onwards, with a view to understanding how this discourse permeates Rita's trajectory. Next, we discuss the artist's relationship with writing and how she decided to narrate her autobiography. Finally, based on excerpts from the narrative, we reflect on Rita's perceptions of herself and the behaviors that went against the patriarchal impositions she adopted throughout her life. We understand that, in her own way, ever since she was a child, the artist escaped the standards of behavior considered to be proper for women, and found ways of expressing her perceptions of the world in examples coming from male references, which allowed her to break with social and family prescriptions, which is why she was constantly considered strange or crazy. In doing so, through a feminism alike Rita Lee, she offered women other possibilities of being in the world.