Twenty-year-old trainee volunteer surf life saver Mecca Laalaa runs along North Cronulla Beach in Sydney during her Bronze medallion competency test January 13, 2007. Specifically designed for Muslim women, Laalaa’s body-covering swimming costume has been named the “burkini” by its Sydney based designer Aheda Zanetti. REUTERS/Tim Wimborne (AUSTRALIA) – RTR1L4WJ
Source: The Atlantic
When Smile13 announced its plans to host an all-women’s “Burqini Day” at the privately owned Speedwater waterpark in Marseille, the French women’s group probably didn’t anticipate controversy.
The park’s rules only allow standard swimwear during regular hours, and the organizers of Burqini Day promoted the event on its Facebook event page (since deleted) as a space for Muslim women to “enjoy games and park activities while wearing clothing that covers their bodies from their chest to their knees.” But the planned event sparked an angry public debate across France, led to death threats, and to the event’s cancellation this week.
But the controversy over the dress isn’t new: Last month the mayor of Cannes passed a bylaw banning the Burqini from the city’s beaches, calling it a “symbol of Islamic extremism.” Those who violate the rule will be fined 38 euros. A similar controversy erupted in June at a public pool in Brooklyn that offered women-only swimming hours four times a week to cater to the community’s large Hasidic population. Opponents argued public facilities should be equally accessible to all people under the law, and the city agreed to reduce—but not eliminate—the segregated hours.
I spoke with Heather Akou, a professor at Indiana University Bloomington who specializes in fashion design and merchandising of non-western dress, about why this not quite itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny swimwear design is so contentious. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Yasmeen Serhan: So, how did the Burqini come to be?
Heather Akou: Well, the original Burqini was created as a response to a situation in Australia [in 2006], where the volunteer-lifeguard association needed to recruit people from minority communities, and particularly from Muslim applicants. While the uniform for the men was fine, the uniform for the women needed to be a little more modest, so they contracted with this Lebanese woman living in Australia to create a new uniform for the female lifeguards. She’s the one who gave it the name “Burqini.” But kind of like the word Kleenex, it’s a brand name that just has now become very widely used. Most Burqinis you see people wearing in pools or in the media are not official Burqinis, but people call them that I think because the name is really catchy.
Serhan: You mentioned in your writings that the design of the Burqini isn’t actually all that new. How long has this swimsuit design been around?
Akou: From what I understand, “swimming costumes,” as they were called, really didn’t come until the Victorian era. When women would go swimming, there was no particular swimming outfit. Queen Victoria was really a key in making swimming costumes a part of everyday fashion because she decided that she wanted to go swimming but needed to be properly dressed. So her tailors came up with this full-body swimsuit that would allow her to go out into the water and swim just like other people. So the full-body swimsuits were really just like ordinary clothing. It wasn’t until the 1950s, that you really started to see the first one-piece swimsuits widely worn. In fact, in a lot of the world, it’s still not acceptable to go out into the water dressed like that. It’s kind of a uniquely North American, Australian, European thing.
Categories: Hijab, The Muslim Times, Women In islam