The body is still a battleground
I DON’T know if it was by design or happenstance, but two stories in yesterday’s “The World” section of this paper touched on two extremes of thoughts and attitudes regarding nudity, modesty and, yes, women’s rights.
The first story had to do with the “burkini ban” in some beach resorts in France. The “burkini” or “burqini,” is a portmanteau (combination of two words) for burqa (the garment that in conservative Islamic countries is used to conceal every part of a woman’s body except the face and, in some extreme cases, the eyes) and the bikini (the two-piece swimsuit that in the early 1960s created shock waves around the world for its alleged undue baring of the feminine form).
By any estimation, “burkini” is a jarring pairing, a concept that incorporates two different—in fact, opposite—urges to conceal and reveal.
Designed by Australian designer Aheda Zanetti, the burkini, according to Wikipedia, is “intended to accord with Islamic traditions of modest dress,” covering up parts of a woman’s body not intended for public viewing while enabling the wearer to enjoy the benefits and pleasure of swimming.
But the garment has lately created controversy after about 30 beach resort owners and restaurant managers in France refused admittance to women wearing the concealing garment. The proposed “burkini ban,” it is thought, is based more on Islamophobia than any concerns about security or appearance. A rising wave of anti-Islamic sentiment has hit France, which has suffered from a series of terroristic attacks traced to Islamist sympathizers and operatives. And apparently, the sight of women cavorting in French beaches in their burkinis raises fears of Muslim incursions to new heights. Indeed, conservative French politicians, led by former president Nicolas Sarkozy, have begun to campaign for the enactment of the “burkini ban” into law.
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I’M REVEALING my age, but do you still remember that silly song about the “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” that a girl wore to the beach; but, too shy to display her body, she would rush to the water’s edge covered in a beach towel, drop the towel hastily and then run to the water?
These days, girls and women think nothing of donning bikinis in public. (When did it become common for beauty contestants to parade around in bikinis, by the way?) But how did it come to pass that an opposite impulse, to go swimming in a garment that covers up the entire body, is now meeting the same resistance once accorded to the bikini?
The proposed “burkini ban,” recently shot down by the French government, may find links in geopolitics and the clash of cultures, but in the end it is also all about women’s bodies and the desire of society to control them, or at least limit or dictate their display.
True, the burka may have been devised precisely to control women’s bodies, to limit the sight of them to the private, personal sphere, the feminine body being deemed as too much of a temptation for the fragile male sensibility to resist. But as long as the women opting to don the burka do so willingly, whether out of a sincere desire for modesty or to conform with the desires and preferences of their peers and menfolk, it’s none of our business.
I’ve seen photos and footage of outraged Westerners (including police) stopping veiled women on their streets and forcibly tearing off their head coverings. To my mind, it is as much a violation of the women’s human rights as it would be to chase women down the street with a stick or whip for the simple crime of walking unescorted by a male or showing a bit of flesh.
In both instances, it smacks of an arrogant lack of respect for women in general—women’s autonomy, dignity, choice and discretion—and a desire to control and suppress through the most visible manifestation, their bodies.
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AND now to the other item.
Cheek by jowl with the “burkini ban” item was the news story that women (and some men) in the United States observed “GoTopless Day” that “promotes gender equality and women’s rights to bare their breasts in public.”
Participants marched bare-breasted in Los Angeles and New York, with other marches planned in New Hampshire, Denver and other locales. In one march, a “giant inflatable pink breast” with a sign saying “My Body is not a Crime” led the gathering. An organizer told the media that they are hopeful such events “would take away the shock and awe around seeing female breasts.”
Indeed, while most people and societies think nothing of men walking around with bare breasts (here, about the first thing a man does when out with his buddies is to raise his shirt to his neckline, revealing his nipples and protruding tummy), female breasts are causes for scandal. Nobody knows when women’s breasts suddenly became occasions of sin, but I’m sure their falling within the erotic zone has something to do with it. (By the way, men, too, get aroused through their nipples.)
So squeamish have we become about the sight of women’s breasts that mothers who nurse in public are admonished for their lack of modesty, with many looking away if not “scolding” the women for creating a scandal. Whaaat? Since when did doing right by your child become a scandal, or a crime?
“GoTopless Day,” to be clear, was not linked in any way to the right of women to breastfeed in public; it was intended instead to push the principle that baring one’s breasts is normal and natural and should not be considered a crime. I don’t know what the law on breast-baring is in this land, but I bet a woman could get arrested, if not subjected to abuse, if she walks around with her mammaries on display.
So there you have it. In the Year 2016, women’s bodies are still a battleground.
