As the world marked International Women’s Day on March 8th, Brazil debated the female obsession with beauty as the country ranks number one in the world for plastic surgery.

Lucrecia Franco filed this report from Rio de Janeiro.

Angela Bismarchi has been parading as a samba queen in Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival for sixteen years. She is also a model and a fashion designer but she is better known as Brazil’s plastic surgery queen.

Although local and foreign media have reported she has gone under the knife more than 40 times she confesses to only 11 cosmetic procedures, including liposuction, a nose job and breast implants. Married to a plastic surgeon that has operated on her seven times, the 47-year-old model and her husband agree there is growing obsession with beauty in Brazil but say cosmetic surgery can’t perform miracles.

According to the International Society of Aesthetic Surgery, 1.45 million surgical procedures where performed in Brazil in 2013, 88 percent are women, comparing with 905,000 in 2011.

Marisa Chaves, president of the Women’s Rights State Council, says she is concerned about the growing demand of cosmetic procedures that are even putting Brazilian women lives at risk.

As for Angela, she says she will continue doing surgeries if needed because she makes a living off her looks but feminists argue many Brazilian women are willing to take the same path at any price just for the sake of maintaining the status quo.