The Battle Over the Burkini

Last summer I posted a piece titled “Judgment in Neoprene”, relating my ambivalence about the appearance of an Arab family at our motel swimming pool, the wife/mother of whom was covered in an ankle-to-neck-to-wrist dive suit plus black head scarf on a swelteringly hot August day. Her cultural-modesty outfit set off in me a running argument with myself, pitting the impression of a crass subjection of women against my default liberal bias toward honoring diversity in cultural values and practices.

Plenty of other people, it seems – indeed, whole nations -- are experiencing the same quandary about what has infelicitously come to be known as the “burkini,” or burka bikini. As the New York Times reported last week, the issue has been particularly fractious in France, where “burkini bans” have been a burning issue this summer. Enacted by a number of French resort towns, including Cannes, the bans against total body coverage at the beach have inflamed political sensitivies, with no less a personage than French Prime Minister Manuel Valls decrying the burkini as both a means and example of “the enslavement of women.”

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