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A Modesty Proposal
As you’ve probably heard, France is in an uproar about burqinis. Three French mayors have banned them. A brawl reportedly broke out in Corsica last Saturday over women swimming in burqinis.
The word is a portmanteau of “burqa” and bikini,” but it’s is a misnomer, because the garment in question, unlike a burqa, doesn’t cover the face. France banned the burqa and the niqab six years ago. I wrote about that decision here — I was reluctantly in support of the ban. “Reluctant” for obvious reasons:
Let’s be perfectly frank. These bans are outrages against religious freedom and freedom of expression. They stigmatize Muslims. No modern state should be in the business of dictating what women should wear. The security arguments are spurious; there are a million ways to hide a bomb, and one hardly need wear a burqa to do so. It is not necessarily the case that the burqa is imposed upon women against their will; when it is the case, there are already laws on the books against physical coercion.
But in the end, in favor of it:
At its core, the veil is the expression of the belief that female sexuality is so destructive a force that men must at all costs be protected from it; the natural correlate of this belief is that men cannot be held responsible for the desires prompted in them by an unveiled woman, including the impulse to rape her. …
A woman who has been forced to veil is hardly likely to volunteer this information to authorities. Our responsibility to protect these women from coercion is greater than our responsibility to protect the freedom of those who choose to veil. Why? Because this is our culture, and in our culture, we do not veil. We do not veil because we do not believe that God demands this of women or even desires it; nor do we believe that unveiled women are whores, nor do we believe they deserve social censure, harassment, or rape.
I was careless about my nomenclature in that article. By “veiling” I meant using garments that cover the face. We can’t pretend that a garment that makes it impossible to see whether a woman is smiling, afraid, or sad — a garment that erases her face, her identity and uniqueness — is just another fashion choice.
But the argument over the burqini has nothing to do with face covering. According to the ruling, women must wear swimsuits “that respect good morals and secularism.” The ordinance says that “beachwear which ostentatiously displays religious affiliation, when France and places of worship are currently the target of terrorist attacks, is liable to create risks of disrupting public order, which it is necessary to prevent.”
Needless to say, this has prompted international ridicule and outrage. The language of the ruling is weirdly reminiscent of dictates from the Saudi Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. The British media, especially, is delighted at the opportunity to mock the French:
Nothing says “losing the plot” to me more than demonising what is, let’s face it, a wetsuit. Is full-piece swimwear really more offensive than seeing a middle-aged bum crack? Is it really going to terrorise your Mr Whippy into a total meltdown?
Non, they say, we must ban the burqa. Ban the burkini! Ban the bikini! Oh no, wait, the last one is OK because it’s not related to religion or politics. Apparently. Let’s not forget that back in the 50s, the itsy-bitsy bikini was not so welcome in wider society either: in addition to censure from the Catholic church, it was banned in Spain, Portugal, Australia, Italy and many states across the US. It was even banned from beauty pageants after contestants in the first Miss World scandalously wore the two-piece swimwear.
Politicians talk constantly about integration and inclusion, and then proceed to kick out to the fringes the very women they claim are oppressed and excluded from society.
On Saturday, French courts upheld the ruling, saying the move was legal under French law forbidding people from “invoking their religious beliefs to skirt common rules regulating relations between public authorities and private individuals.” The judge noted that the Cannes ban had been declared “in the context of the state of emergency and recent Islamist attacks, notably in Nice a month ago,” and “The wearing of distinctive clothing, other than that usually worn for swimming, can indeed only be interpreted in this context as a straightforward symbol of religiosity.”
Some background: I’ve never been to Cannes, but from what I understand, the influx of Saudi tourists has in recent years been a sore spot:
Tensions have been high in the French Riviera ever since it emerged that a Saudi king has been allowed to commandeer a public beach all for himself.
King Salman is expected to arrive in the Riviera on Saturday, where he and his family will stay at his plush villa which stands just metres from the Mirandole beach in Vallauris.
Local beachgoers from nearby Cannes and Antibes, however, have been protesting against the fact they will be barred from the beach for the entire duration of the family’s stay.
Saudi royals further inflamed relations with local hosts when they were given the green light to build an elevator down to the sand to make it easier for them to access the beach from their villa.
A regional councilor took the matter a step further and launched a petition against the privatization of the beach, gaining over 50,000 signatures of support, reported the BFM TV channel.
Locals are infuriated by this, but business-owners need the money. “Clearly this is good news,” said Michel Chevillon, president of an association representing hotel managers in Cannes.
“These are people with great purchasing power which will pep up not only the luxury hotel industry but also the retail and tourism sectors of the town,” he told the AFP news agency.
Anyway, France is clearly determined to say, “This is France. We don’t wear garbage bags to the beach in France.”
But I think there’s a way to make this point that isn’t needlessly mean to women who’d prefer to dress modestly at the beach. Ban black burqinis.
How does that solve anything?
Well, just look. A beach full of women dressed head to toe in black would be depressing, joyless, and un-French. Sights like the one to the right are calculated to inflame anti-Muslim sentiment. The mayor isn’t wrong to say that an insistence upon dressing like this is a provocation. Cannes is known, after all, for its film festival, its glamour, and the young Brigitte Bardot in a revealing bikini.
That said, not everyone beautifies a beach by wearing a bikini. Everyone could probably agree about that. A beach that allowed women to dress in bright, cheerful, modest wetsuits shouldn’t offend anyone but the profoundly bigoted. The difference between the black burqini and colored ones is the difference between funereal joylessness and “a pretty good fashion choice for women with cellulite.”
But French mayors want to prove that they’re tough on terrorism, so they’re going to plump for meaningless gestures like burqini-banning. And Islamists want to prove that France is at war with Islam, so they’re going to plump for maximal outrage about it. It’s a problem that could actually be solved by goodwill and common sense, but neither seem to be available in abundance.
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Would burqinis be a red drapeau to a bull at this point? If so, I can see the French point. Otherwise it seems a bit cargo culty.
Wrt the rest – those hijab wearing women in the sea in your photograph look like they’re having a wonderful time. Would banning them going to the beach like that mean they wouldn’t wear the hijab any more, or would it functionally bar them from that joy? I suspect the latter.
I honestly don’t know, but my solution ensures that no one would be functionally barred.
It would be fine if this attire did not come with a load of moralizing attached to it but it very much does. It would also be fine if gender inequality was not so horrendous and so prevalent in Muslim countries. The burkini is trivial on the face of it, but only on the face of it. More deeply, it is a criticism of the liberated Western woman and risks turning the clock back. It is not surprising then that French women don’t want that criticism in their own country. There is a reason why Marianne is the symbol of France and her bust is in every city hall in every French town. Gender equality is a necessary condition for progress. Maybe there should be a law that a woman can wear the burkini if every male in her company also does the same.
Is it safe to swim with all that fabric on? How many Muslim women drown because they are wearing all of that?
It is a dilemma isn’t it. On one hand you have French culture and what is the norm for the French and a burqini is a very alien sight indeed. But even the colorful ones still go against the French culture. I don’t think this is solvable in a diplomatic way.
I can’t say I’ve missed the niqab and the burqa since France banned them.
Why would it be unsafe? It’s a wetsuit — people swim in wetsuits all the time.
I’ve never heard of that.
Not really — as long as it’s colorful and elegant, it’s French enough.
Not if neither party to the dispute is determined not to solve it, which I suspect is true. It would be eminently soluble if people really just wanted a common-sense solution.
The burqa is a nonstarter imo because our public life in the West rests on trust and we need to see faces to determine trust. The face is where it all resides. We don’t care if arms are covered, as far as trust is concerned.
This pleases me greatly.
Sounds like a reasonable solution.
I’m going to ponder it a bit more, but this strikes me a good balance at tolerance and assimilation.
And this is the crux of the problem with Islam.
The Saudis, et al, are not good stewards of the oil wealth they currently live on. It’s time to change their relationship with that wealth, either by taking their oil rights, or forcing them to divest oil rights to others.
Generally I believe in property rights but when that wealth is used to threaten other nations then we have a superior right to remove the threat created by that wealth.
Worrying about how people dress is just plain stupid. Taking power and money from the enemy is smarter — and it would soon end the oppression, if there is any, of the burqa.
We can fight against terrorists for generations, or we can acknowledge who the foe really is and end their source of power: oil.
At this point so does the bikini, apparently.
A wetsuit is tight to the body, these are more drapy and the more drapy the fabric the heavier it gets when wet. I’ve seen Muslim women wear this type of bathing costume and it didn’t look safe to me. Not tight to the body at all.
maybe this is a good compromise but i agree with Marion in that there is cultural and moral baggage with this costume.
I think France has every right to want to maintain its French Culture. France is as an Idea is about being French. That is different than the Idea of America, or even Great Britain, both with long histories of mixing cultures.
According to the ruling, women must wear swimsuits “that respect good morals and secularism.”
Love that.
As I am married to a man who likes the beach, is physically-fit, and turns an irritating shade of golden-brown in the sun I’ve often wanted to buy and wear a burkini to protect my dreary, greyish-pink skin from yet more precancerous damage. I like the colorful ones, but black is so chic (and slimming..)!
But the French ban seems like a bad idea to me. It’s mean-spirited, in that the net effect, as Zafar suggests, doubtless will be Muslim women deprived of a jolly beach day (and exposure to the presumably morally superior sight of other women splashing, unencumbered by more than a few inches of Lycra).
Along the same lines I can’t tell you how I’ve been morally improved by exposure to bare flesh at the various Sydney Gay And Lesbian Mardi Gras dance parties I attended (when I was younger, had hair and was less saggy).
Words literally fail me.
Though you’re right – black is both chic and slimming.
What people wear shouldn’t be a government decision, ok nudity aside, but they can and should control immigration.
I think this all,depends on why these ladies are at the beach to begin with. Are they enjoying looking gorgeous in their bathing costumes, like the girls in the fashion pictures you included? Or do they, and their male handlers, just want to make a point that Muslim women can swim , too, even if they have to do it looking like a herd,of seals?
(BTW, do women go to the beach AT ALL, in countries governed by Sharia law? Anybody know?)
I don’t think banning black will solve the problem. If the,point of the burka and burkini is to make women invisible, then that’s a religious right they’ll insist on. Black is also culturally important, I believe, and not just cuz of the black flag of ISIS–read up on the Bedouin with their black tents. Remember, nuns used to wear voluminous black habits; this would be like saying they could only come to the beach in Atlantic City if they had splashy Hawaiian print robes and wimples for the purpose.
Until after WWI, men and women had to use sex-segregated beaches in the UK, and “bathing machines” were widely used: dark little sentry boxes on wheels, where ladies undressed and donned “bathing costumes”, to exit the box from the back, and bob around in the surf while tethered to the “machine”, then climb back in, be towed back to shore, and emerge again fully dressed.
Oh and those “bathing costumes”? Knee- length, puffy-sleeved frilly dresses, often worn with tights to cover the legs–STILL considered too “indecent” to be displayed to the opposite sex….
What changed? Culture! After WWI when women had been driving ambulances on the front, and nursing, and doing all the work (See “Testament of Youth”, Vera Brittain) well, there just was no point to all this scrupulous modesty. If these Muslim ladies remain in France, I think they’re in the bathing-machine stage right now…the fashionable bright Burkinis are the dawn on the horizon…I think France is giving them a justifiable nudge in the right direction. The religious controversy won’t lie down and die, but it’s in its death-throes. The ghosts of Scott and Zelda are smiling!
Interesting article, but I am not sure what difference it makes in the intermediate to long term.
France appears posed to live indefinitely under emergency law or succumb to its latest invaders at which point bikinis and swim trunks will be banned and the punishment for not obeying will likely be death or dismemberment.
Burkini’s seem a silly symptom to concern a country with when they refuse to acknowledge or treat the long term ailment.
Can you wear a bikini anywhere in the Islamic world? I didn’t think so. Not even a fairly modest bathing suit. Not even a dress above the knee. Or you are rape material.
Much of this burka craze is modern fashion imposed by religious zealots. Only the most conservative Islamic countries demanded women to wear burkas. Women in Egypt and many other Muslim countries dressed quite differently a few decades ago, and they weren’t any less Muslim, or were they?
Note there are no women frolicking in burkinis at beach resorts in Islamic countries. Why is that?
Take into consideration also that their culture claims that uncovered women are sluts and deserving of male sexual aggression. These women are facilitating that idea.
These people can’t assimilate. Or they won’t. Go home to the Islamic State of your choice, or assimilate to the culture of the country you seek to inhabit.
That isn’t always the case. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are more liberal than your description. There may be only certain beaches where western swim attire is allowed, but they do (or at least when I was there) exist.
General question. If western customs, mores, and dress are so anathema to Islam why do so many Muslims wish to immigrate into western culture?
Exactly, Franco! The fact that Muslim women are frolicking in the surf at all is really the most significant aspect of this topic.
i guess…but see my comment (18) about”bathing machines”. Till they were invented, the only way a well-bred English lady would ever get anywhere NEAR the waves woulda been if she were shipwrecked!
I agree with this 100% (as you may have noticed if you’re familiar with my comments!) As I said, it depends if these Muslim women really WANT to swim, or if they’re just being paraded out to the Riviera by their male handlers to blight the view. If they do really want the freedom to swim and to,parade their beauty, then even a bright print burkini is just a canary in the coal mine where the total religious suppression of female sexuality will suffocate and die.
I hope.
Of course, France does have nude beaches, which makes this law feel a lot like the respectable way of saying a common internet meme: (paraphrased) “Show us your body or go away.” What’s that line about first becoming tolerated, then accepted, then mandatory?
I was actually wanting to post on a similar topic, namely, the reaction I’ve seen of “conservatives” to this photo from the Germany/Egypt beach volleyball game:
When did “conservatives” decide that the woman in the background is more subversive to morality than the ones in foreground? When did we morph into people who think women who don’t wear bathing suits skimpier than a Hooters uniform should be given the choice of stripping off their clothes or not be allowed to join society’s celebration of the summer months?
We’re not talking about veils and the “garbage bags;” we’re talking about does a woman have the right to go to the beach without putting every curve on display and her body hair grooming up for judgment. And frankly, just as feminism as a whole was supposed to mean freedom of choice but instead just changed the one acceptable choice career to worker, it seems the sexual revolution has deemed that the only acceptable form of modesty is the one that hides areolas and labia and not much else.
The other solution to this problem is getting those X-Ray glasses to market. We have the technology!
That would make a good post. I would read it.
I think the difference is perception/reality. Are the women in this picture (both teams) wearing a uniform of their choosing or helps their ability to play their sport? Or are the women wearing something they are being forced to by men and/or religious zealots in their society.
Additionally, people who have similar beliefs to the women in the background are killing those with similar beliefs as those in the foreground because of things such as those uniforms.
Leave it to the French to ban not immodesty, but modesty. I’m trying to get “good morals” and “secularism” to fit together, but…well.
I’m with Kate—I wish there were a male version of this, so I could avoid slathering on so much of the sunscreen I hate. I’ve already had two precancerous spots removed, and I know my dermatologist by first name. I’d prefer vacations in the mountains and the shade, but my wife and daughters are big on the beach. And my wife is Romanian; our elder daughter is practically olive-skinned and actually tans.
Anyway, I understand the friction that burkas, niqabs, and the like cause. I don’t like them, and though I appreciate modest dress, I think these go too far. But even while I let my girls swim in bikinis, I can’t imagine outlawing these “burkini” swimsuits. I could go into a whole oration about individual liberty, but we all know that.
The thing this really points out to me is that France really is different. Its attitude seems not so much one of individual liberty, but conformity to a single view of how to live. That view may be justified in the language of freedom, but it’s coercive. “You will live according to our vision, and that will be ‘freedom.'”
The cultural background of this ban is so far from our Anglo-American culture that it’s probably pointless to argue the end result.
I agree Claire. I think Pierre Manent would agree too. In his book Beyond Radical Secularism he argues that French Muslims ought to be given the space to live their faith in ways that might set them apart: for example, dietary accomodations in schools or separation of the sexes in some activities. But there are two prohibitions that Muslims must accept: polygamy and the burqa. He writes:
The burqini does not violate this principle.
Only for you,my friend:
Burqa ban: What should female tourists wear in Islamic countries?
Sure. This is Bodrum; I’ve been there a few times and it’s beautiful. I’ve worn a bikini in Tunisia (long ago). I assume it’s normal in most North African beach resorts.