Brazilian beauty queen Martha Rocha dies

second-place finish representing Brazil in the 1954 Miss Universe pageant made her a hero in her home country, in part because of a widely-held belief there that she had unfairly lost the crown by a matter of inches — bodily inches — died July 4 in Niterói, Brazil, across the bay from Rio de Janeiro. She was 87.

Her son Álvaro Piano confirmed her death, in a nursing home, saying the cause was a heart attack following a long bout with emphysema.

Popular opinion in Brazil has long maintained that Rocha was runner-up because her figure — she was 2 inches wider around the hips and thighs than the winner, Miss USA — did not conform to a U.S. standard of beauty that prized a less curvy look. The pageant was held in

Long Beach, California.

Those 2 inches — whether they were the real reason she lost (Rocha herself did not believe it) or just an urban legend — became a rallying cry and source of pride in Brazil, where beauty standards for women favored a socalled guitar shape and where the North American fixation on thinness was frowned upon.

Although Rocha came in second, her country nevertheless treated her showing as a moral victory. As she arrived home from the United States, tens of thousands thronged the streets of her home city, Salvador, to catch a glimpse of her riding from the airport.