This paper analyzes the construction of feminine "models" in a specific religious space. Part of a broader doctoral study of social practices among Pentecostal women, this text result from an exercise that examines day-to-day practices of resistance in the context of contemporary religions. The objective is to identify to the social construction of women's bodies in colonial Brazil. This study proposes to break both with the (persistent) view that "woman" is a universal sociological category of marginal status and with the resulting discourse of continuous inequality and subordination of "the feminine" by "the masculine." It emphasizes, instead, a plurality of femininities and masculinities. An analysis of practices of resistance on the part of non-poor white women during this period highlights the tension between these feminine practices and a normalizing model that sought to dominate women's minds and bodies in order to maintain a patriarchal system along with its control of society.