Big Brother Brazil

The World

Brazil’s cities take part in the globalized world of reality TV as much as anyplace, so it probably won’t shock anyone to hear Brazil has been broadcasting a homegrown version of the reality show Big Brother for 11 seasons running. But what’s perhaps more surprising is that, until recently, one of the stars of this season’s Big Brother Brazil — that's BBB, among fans — was a male-to-female transsexual.

Audience members voted Ariadna off the show last month, not long after she confessed her re-assigned gender. To be fair, it's not clear how gender factored in her ouster, but at least one international version of the Big Brother franchise has proven more tolerant of transgendered contestants. Season five of the British version of program featured a post-op male-to-female, Nadia Almada, and she went on to win the show.

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