The Great Burkini Debate

I'm sure you've heard the debate about burkinis in the news recently.  This modest swim attire has been banned on the beaches of three cities in France for being a "symbol of Islamic extremism".  Are you effing kidding me?  Look, I get that France is reeling from the recent tragedies there.  But, this is downright Islamophobic.  Not to mention sexist.  And what the hell did the burkini ever do to you anyway?

I happen to be the owner of a burkini I bought while I was living in Morocco.  (You can read the story of how I purchased my burkini  here.)  No, I wasn't required to wear a burkini as a foreigner.  Neither are Moroccan women.  All women in Morocco have the freedom to wear whatever they choose to on the beach or anywhere else.  Personally, when I'm on the beach, I wear a bikini.  Mostly because I have such a long torso a one piece bathing suit becomes a thong on me.  Sure, sometimes I got looks, but it's not as if women on Daytona Beach don't get ogled even with most of the female population wearing a bikini.  And it's not as if you won't get leered at in a burkini.  Also, it's not as if women don't check out men in their swimtrunks or a wetsuit either.  Cause we do.  This is how the world works and why we've got over 7 billion people in it.

But no one dictates how a man dresses.

Though I personally think banana hammocks should be banned.

Sometimes less is just way less appealing.

But wait, isn't the burkini an oppressive sexist symbol?  (See what I did there?)  If some misogynistic regime forces you to wear a burkini, that's sexist.  If a woman wears one because they don't want to shave, wear sunscreen, expose their cellulite, stretch marks or their tampon string because of modesty (religious or otherwise) but still kinda wanna look like a badass ninja Bond girl, that's a choice.  You're starting to see the appeal aren't you? If Islamophobes force women not to wear burkinis, that's also sexist.

Banning burkinis is about misplaced fear.  Which there's far too much of in the increasingly reactionary world we live in.  We're too quick to hate what we don't understand.  Like why grown men and women would use filters to make themselves look like cartoon cats on Snapchat.  Or why anyone would purposefully make themselves orange.  Or a huge hateful, racist misogynist. But, that's their choice (within the letter of the law, of course).  You can't legislate people out of fear or hate.  But, legislating using fear and hate only proliferates what's already wrong in the world.