Tell Me My Bum Looks Big In This

When it comes to turning heads in Brazil, well, I just don't. I've come to accept that I'm built upside down for the aesthetic ideal here. I'm all boobs and no bum. When it comes to junk in the trunk, I'm carrying a leaf of paper in a laptop bag. But here, the bigger the bunda, the better.

It took me a while to get used to this idea. For years I though every woman in the world wanted a bottom as flat as Avenida Atlantica. But then there was the whole J-Lo-Beyonce-Shakira thing, and I married a Brazilian, and my eyes were opened to entire populations that valued just the opposite: Big, round, Sugar-Loaves.

Suddenly, I had a whole new hang-up: It really is impossible to rock the Brazilian bikini look without a decent pair of peaches to wedge the bottoms between. As for an authentic samba wobble, just forget it! My cheeks are just too apologetic, too shapeless, too still.

So, acquiring a Brazil-worthy bum has become my personal holy grail. I suppose my lack-lustre European genes aren't doing me any favours in this department. Am I allowed to admit I assume that the Brazilian big bottom thing is due to the sizeable percentage of the population with African origins?

I'm just not Brazilian enough (yet), and frankly too much of a pussy, to have my cheeks pumped full of my own fat, known as the "Brazilian Butt Lift", one of the most popular plastic surgeries here. But I am uncovering less radical ways of faking it:

First technique: Walk like a Brazilian. Here, even women who aren't blessed with the national curves just arch their back, throw their shoulders back, their ribs forwards and, of course, their arse out behind them. It kind of works, except that you have to be OK with the potbelly it gives you. Quite a compromise, and not for me.

Second technique: One thousand repeats per day of the on-all-fours-pissing-dog move with ankle weights up to your crotch. I have seen this in the gym. It's incredible. Some Brazilian women could lift a house with their glutes. For some the workouts work. On me it's just manly. No thank you.

My most recent attempt to get the perfect derriere was a series of ten structural integration, a.k.a. 'Rolfing', sessions. Rolfing entails intense manhandling of ones connective tissues, with a view to returning all your bodily bits to the position where they function most efficiently. My friend, the Rolfer, promised this would effectively give me a more Brazilian bottom. With iron fingers and pool-cue elbows she corrected the angle of my pelvis, the curve of my sacrum and set free my pinched-together sitting bones. At the end of it I think I did discern a slight shape in my jeans...or did I?

Finally, I've resorted to the bum pants (pictured). Yes, here in Brazil, you can buy knickers with soft, foam-moulded, padded, bum cheeks. You can buy them in the underwear stores in the commercial districts like Saara in Rio and Vinte-Cinco de Marco in Sao Paulo, hidden away discreetly so as not to detract form all the frilly dental-floss stuff. Admittedly, they look really, really bad when you're just in your undies, but under a pair of jeans they are the bomb, if a little sweaty!

None of this helps with the bikini issue. Perhaps I should concentrate instead on getting a smaller waist to create an optical illusion. Perhaps, I should do exactly as you are thinking, and get a life.