Biography

Elvira Olivieri Cozzolino (6 September 1920 – 8 May 2003), better known by her stage name Elvira Pagã, was a Brazilian vedette, actress, singer, writer, and painter. She was the first Rio Carnival Queen, the first woman to wear a bikini in public, and one of the first women to undergo cosmetic surgery in Brazil. Talented and controversial, she defied the status quo and challenged prevailing sexism with fearless audacity during the Brazilian military dictatorship and the revolutionary 1960s. In her later years, Pagã withdrew from public life, devoting herself to writing and painting, and eventually died in seclusion. Wikipedia