Her "Latin lover" (ugh, how I hate that term!) and baby daddy Pablo da Silva calls her "coneja," which is Spanish for "(female) rabbit." (note: score -1 for the research team: "Pablo" is the SPANISH version of the name Paul. "Paulo" is the Portuguese version, and probably the more likely variant you'd call a Brazilian by.) I don't know about Brazil, but where my family's from, "coneja" is anything BUT a term of endearment - more like an offensive term for a woman, as in "(breeds like a) rabbit." It implies a woman of indiscriminate sexual tastes, the kind of woman we in this post-Jerry Springer and Maury Povich world would be more likely to term a "baby mama."
If any of you is of Portuguese (or Brazilian) extraction, is the term for "female rabbit" the same, or a similar word as in Spanish? And does it carry negative connotations?
I know it's asking too much of Lynn and the Lynnions for authenticity, or Heaven forfend, real, honest to God *research*, but I got really stuck on that, being that my native language is Spanish. I don't know of any culture in the world where being called a "rabbit" is a term of endearment (though I could be wrong). Maybe they were shooting for "bunny," in which case it would have been more appropriate to use the diminutive, "conejita." However, considering Connie has no children to speak of at that point in the story, it's still odd and out of place as a term of endearment. Did Beth pick the only Spanish/Portuguese word she knew that sounded vaguely "term of endearment-like" (highly likely)?
OK, sorry - I've ranted for far too long on this minor point, but it's another example of sloppiness from the Lynnions. Um, Lynn, just because your readership is mostly white and middle-aged doesn't mean there aren't some readers out there from other cultures (horrors!) who speak other languages and might recognize your particular brand of bullshit in languages other than English.