Society has been silencing women's pleasure since childhood
Aos 44 anos, a atriz Samara Felippo escolheu a voz onde a cultura escolheu o silêncio — falando abertamente sobre sexualidade feminina, envelhecimento e prazer numa sociedade que, desde a infância, ensina às mulheres que seus corpos e seus desejos pertencem à vergonha. Sua fala não é apenas pessoal: é um mapeamento de como o etarismo e a repressão sexual se alimentam mutuamente, tornando as mulheres progressivamente invisíveis à medida que envelhecem. Ao recusar essa narrativa — nas redes sociais, no teatro, na maternidade e no antirracismo — Felippo propõe que a liberdade feminina não é um privilégio da juventude, mas uma reivindicação permanente.
- A sociedade começa a descartar as mulheres aos 36 anos — e Felippo nomeia esse processo como violência silenciosa contra a autoestima e a saúde.
- A vergonha sobre o prazer feminino não nasce na meia-idade: ela é instalada na infância, nas mãos que se mandam tirar do próprio corpo, nas vozes que ensinam o pudor antes do desejo.
- Felippo recusa a caricatura do relacionamento aberto e redefine os termos: não fidelidade, mas lealdade — a escolha diária do parceiro de voltar para casa vale mais do que a posse de seus desejos.
- A maternidade a confrontou com duas fraturas: o fim do conto de fadas romântico e o racismo que só se tornou real quando ameaçou a identidade de suas filhas negras.
- Sobre o antirracismo, ela é direta: o trabalho de aprender é dos brancos, feito em silêncio — não é responsabilidade das vozes negras carregar o peso da educação alheia.
Samara Felippo faz dos 44 anos um ponto de partida, não de chegada. Em entrevista recente, a atriz articulou o que a cultura trabalha para calar: a sexualidade feminina depois dos quarenta é tabu — e esse tabu começa muito antes, na infância, quando meninas aprendem que seus corpos são fonte de vergonha e não de prazer. O etarismo, ela observa, já alcança mulheres aos 36 ou 37 anos, que encontram hostilidade ao buscar educação ou simplesmente ao se recusar a desaparecer. A mensagem é implacável: você já não é capaz, já não é desejável, já não é relevante.
Felippo passou a vida resistindo a essa narrativa — postando fotos sensuais sem pedido de desculpas, rastreando a origem da vergonha até as advertências da infância. Ela fala sobre o prazer sem eufemismos: comprar um vibrador, fazer barulho durante a intimidade, simplesmente existir como mulher desejante são atos que a sociedade ainda pune com o silêncio.
Seu relacionamento com Elídio Sanna é aberto — mas ela cuida de definir o que isso significa. Não é imprudência nem performance de liberdade. É a substituição da palavra fidelidade, que ela considera ultrapassada, pela palavra lealdade. O que importa é que o parceiro escolhe voltar. Seus desejos fora da relação são dele; ela não reivindica posse sobre eles.
Mãe de Alice, de 13 anos, e Lara, de 9, Felippo também fala do lado sombrio da maternidade — o que ninguém discute, o que ela transformou em peça teatral depois de conversar com outras mulheres que queriam dizer o indizível. O fim do casamento com Leandrinho quebrou o conto de fadas que a sociedade a ensinou a construir, e essa fratura se tornou matéria de criação.
Como mãe branca de filhas negras, chegou tarde ao antirracismo — e reconhece isso. Foi quando sua filha pediu para alisar o cabelo que o racismo deixou de ser abstrato. Hoje, ela é direta sobre a responsabilidade branca: escutar, não falar. Os intelectuais e filósofos negros não estão ali para educar brancos — estão falando para suas próprias comunidades. O trabalho de aprender pertence a quem tem o privilégio de não saber.
Samara Felippo, at 44, has made a habit of speaking plainly about sex on social media—a choice that has forced her to confront something she spent years afraid to name. In a recent interview, she articulated what had long held her tongue: the deep cultural taboo around female sexuality after forty. Not just the fact of it, but the way it operates, the way it silences women from childhood onward.
The taboo, she explained, extends far beyond her own age. Ageism has begun claiming women in their mid-thirties, she said—people of 36 or 37 already feeling its weight, already encountering hostility when they pursue education or simply refuse to disappear. At 44, she watches women her age treated as though their expiration date has passed, as though they have become disposable. The message is relentless: you are no longer capable, no longer desirable, no longer relevant. And sexuality becomes the proof of that supposed obsolescence.
Felippo has spent her life resisting this narrative, posting sensual photographs without apology, refusing the shame that society has worked so hard to install. She traces the roots of that shame backward—to childhood warnings to keep her hands to herself, to cover her body, to feel embarrassment about desire itself. The shame extends everywhere: to buying a vibrator, to experiencing pleasure, to making a sound during intimacy. It is, she said, a systematic erasure of women's right to their own bodies and their own joy.
Her own relationship offers a counterpoint to conventional expectation. She is married to Elídio Sanna, and they maintain an open relationship—a choice she was careful to define against caricature. It is not, she emphasized, about recklessness or the performance of liberation. It is about replacing the word fidelity, which she finds dated, with loyalty. What matters to her is that her partner chooses to come home, that he finds pleasure in waking and sleeping beside her. His desires outside the relationship are his own; she does not claim ownership of them. She knows she is a desire of his, and that knowledge is enough.
Maternity has shaped much of her public conversation. She is mother to Alice, thirteen, and Lara, nine, both from a previous relationship with Leandrinho. The separation that ended that marriage struck her hard—the collapse of the fairy tale she had been taught to build, the shattering of the romantic idealization that society had encouraged her to construct. That experience led her to create a theatrical piece called "Women Who Are Born With Their Children," born from conversations with other women who wanted to speak the unspeakable: that motherhood, while rooted in unconditional love, has a shadow side that nobody discusses.
As a white mother of two Black children, Felippo has also become an advocate against racism, though she arrived at that work late. She was seven years old when her daughter asked to straighten her hair—a moment that cracked open Felippo's awareness of something that had never touched her directly, never knocked on her door, never demanded her attention. Racism had remained abstract until it threatened her child's sense of self. She wishes she had understood sooner, but the path to antiracism came through motherhood.
On the question of white responsibility, she is direct. White people need to listen, not speak. The Black philosophers and intellectuals doing this work are not there to educate white people; they are speaking to their own communities. The burden of learning falls on those who have the privilege of not knowing. It requires white people to be quiet, to do the work themselves, to stop expecting Black voices to carry the weight of their education.
Notable Quotes
The taboo of female sexuality and orgasm in women over 40 is something I always wanted to speak about, but I was blocked by fear because it was a taboo, and it still is for many people— Samara Felippo
White people need to be quiet and listen, because Black philosophers and intellectuals are not there to teach whiteness—they are speaking to their own communities— Samara Felippo
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
When you say the taboo around female sexuality after 40 is still alive, what does that look like in practice? How do people express it?
It's not always loud. Sometimes it's the way someone's eyes move when you post a sensual photo. Sometimes it's the assumption that you've stopped wanting, stopped feeling. There's this invisible line where a woman is supposed to become decorative, maternal, safe. Anything else reads as desperate or inappropriate.
You mention ageism affecting women in their mid-thirties now. That's younger than you are. Does that surprise you?
It terrifies me, honestly. It means the window keeps shrinking. It means we're not even giving women time to live before we start telling them they're past their prime. And it compounds everything else—if you're a woman of color, if you're poor, if you're disabled. The machinery of disposability just works faster.
Your relationship is open. That's a choice that goes against a lot of cultural messaging about what women should want.
People hear "open relationship" and imagine chaos. But for me it's about honesty. It's about not pretending I own another person's desire. The loyalty is real—it's just not built on the fiction that we can be everything to each other. That's actually more honest than most marriages.
You didn't grow up thinking about racism. Your daughter's question about her hair changed that. What shifted in you?
I realized I had been living in a bubble that was only possible because of my whiteness. My daughter couldn't have that luxury. And once you see that, you can't unsee it. The responsibility isn't to teach—it's to listen and to do the work of understanding what I've been blind to.
In the theatrical piece about motherhood, you talk about the shadow side. Why is that so important to name?
Because the alternative is that women carry this impossible weight in silence. We're supposed to be endlessly patient, endlessly fulfilled by our children, never tired, never resentful, never human. Naming the complexity doesn't diminish the love. It just makes the love real.