Nietszche identified a general human propensity to find meaning in suffering. As he pointed out in The Genealogy of Morality, it is not the suffering itself that humans find so unbearable in life, but rather the fact that it is meaningless (1994, 127). Under conditions of poverty everybody suffers, but it is the women in the slums who are most creative in their attempts to glorify it. Men do not have the same notions of altruism and sacrifice – this is not how they define themselves as men. Nietzsche identifies Christianity as the most successful ideology to give meaning to suffering. The telenovelas give it a modern and glamorous gloss.

However, the telenovelas and the religious stories about the world are not ones that the women in the bairros have actively chosen, or ones over which they have any influence. Yet they are the most accessible form of sociability that the women have. This is reminiscent of their great grandparents' experiences of the dominant culture, as described by Gilberto Freyre: