Of Burkinis, Tuxedos, and Miniskirts
Clothes are a human invention. The primary reason for them has always been to protect our bodies from the elements, since we don't have nice, thick fur. As society evolved, so did clothes. That made from nicer materials, colored with difficult-to-find natural colors, has always been for those who could afford it; the nobility in ancient times. Clothes also became indicative of sex; women wore certain pieces of clothing, men others. They became a way of knowing who was who in society, from the ruling class, to the lowest slave. Over time styles have evolved, and styles have also been used to keep certain parts of society in line, denying the lower classes the ability to wear ostentatious clothing. Women were controlled by being expected to dress in certain ways if they wanted to be considered respectable. Otherwise, they were shamed in front of everyone.
At the end of the nineteenth century women began to rebel against these strictures. Women who wanted to ride the new bicycles decided to do so in their bloomers, because their voluminous skirts wouldn't allow them to pedal more than a few feet without getting entangled. They were first ridiculed, then grudgingly, fashions were adapted to the middle-class women who were becoming more and more interested in sports.
There are two wonderful books describing a family of twelve between the early years of the twentieth century and the end of World War Two. They are Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on Their Toes. Both were written by two of the children, Frank Gilbreth Jr., and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey. In the first book there's a scene in which the eldest daughter, Anne, decides to buy new flapper clothes like all her friends are wearing. The father goes berserk, yelling about "convents with 12-foot walls." But, eventually, the elder daughters are allowed to wear short skirts, silk stockings, teddies, and bobbed hair. The father, and to a lesser extent, the mother, considered the new fashions a temporary depravity from which the world would soon awaken. It never did.
In the second book, there is a scene where the children have arrived at their summer home in Nantucket, where they await their mother, who had gone on a lecture tour of Europe to give the lectures the father had had scheduled before he had suddenly died. (Both parents were pioneers in motion study and simplifying factory work.) While they are awaiting, they decide to go swimming. Martha, the third child, had forgotten her bathing suit at home, and decides to wear her mother's. When the other two, wearing their modest suits, see her coming out of the cottage with only the under half of her mother's old-fashioned suit, their eyes pop out. Because instead of wearing the entire suit, Martha had put on only the part that hugged her curves, and rolled up the legs to her knees, and the arms to above her elbows. She had decided not to wear the overdress nor the lace-up boots that were part of the bathing suit, much less the scarf. The other girls consider her indecent because the under half "leaves nothing to the imagination."
Quite a few women, arguing for their rights to wear what they wished, decided to wear men's clothing during the Roaring Twenties. Coco Chanel was a woman who believed women should wear comfortable clothing, and apart from designing pantsuits, wore them. Of course, there were complaints, mostly from men, decrying that women had stopped having curves and were becoming indistinct from men and therefore less desirable. It was seen as an affront to society that women dress like men.
Women's struggles to wear comfortable, uncomplicated clothes the way they want, continued, and still continues. When Mary Quant popularized the miniskirt, it was considered scandalous because it showed so much leg. Society has always held that a woman should dress respectably, yet sexily. A woman should show skin, but only so much. If she shows a little bit more than is considered normal at the time and anything happens to her, she is "asking for it." If a woman covers up, she's frigid or obliged to cover herself by her culture or family. It has become normal for beachwear to show as much skin as possible. But there is a catch. If the woman is fat or old, she should wear a bathing suit. If she's young and has a nice body shape, it's then expected of her to wear a bikini. That is "normal" in our society. These women are considered "free." But are they really? A stout woman wearing a bikini is talked about and laughed at. A young girl wearing a bathing suit is thought to be "over-protected." A woman who feels uninhibited and totally at peace with her body enough to be on the beach without any clothes is shown to the nearest nudist beach, away from the rest of the common beach goers.
Because with every choice women have made for themselves about their clothes, others have seen fit to lock them into those choices. If you want to wear a miniskirt, don't wear a skirt down to your ankles. You look like your grandmother. If you want to wear low-necked tank tops, don't wear high-necked, long-sleeve blouses. You look like you're not modern. And if you want to wear a bikini, don't wear a burkini. You look like your husband is telling you what to wear, and, hey, you just might be a terrorist, too, because you're Moslem.
And that is so ironic. The burkini was first designed so that women who had a high sense of modesty due to their culture or upbringing, could do water sports and preserve that modesty. It is the same as a full-body wetsuit. And it even covers less than the strange garb some Chinese women wear at the beach to protect their lily-white skin from the sun's rays. A woman wearing a burkini to the beach has made a choice of swimwear. And she is not covering more at the beach than on the streets. Or is it now illegal to wear long pants, long sleeves, and a head scarf in European cities and towns? The problem goes beyond controlling a woman by what she wears, which is bad enough. It reaches the why of what women wear. If a woman wears a wet suit, she wears it because she's doing water sports. And if a woman wears a burkini people assume she is wearing it because she is repressed and kept from participating in normal life at the beach and is a potential terrorist. Where is the sense in that?
There is no sense, because added to the original control of women through women's fashions, is now added the fear of a culture and a religion different from ours. Yet not so different. All we have to do is look back just a hundred years. Our culture also considered modesty in a woman extremely important. It reflected not only on the woman, but also on her family and the family's honor. Maybe we should think about that. And maybe we should think that a woman can choose whatever she wants to wear, and follow whatever fashion she wants without being a slut, being repressed, being weird, being old-fashioned, being a geek, being...
At the end of the nineteenth century women began to rebel against these strictures. Women who wanted to ride the new bicycles decided to do so in their bloomers, because their voluminous skirts wouldn't allow them to pedal more than a few feet without getting entangled. They were first ridiculed, then grudgingly, fashions were adapted to the middle-class women who were becoming more and more interested in sports.
There are two wonderful books describing a family of twelve between the early years of the twentieth century and the end of World War Two. They are Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on Their Toes. Both were written by two of the children, Frank Gilbreth Jr., and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey. In the first book there's a scene in which the eldest daughter, Anne, decides to buy new flapper clothes like all her friends are wearing. The father goes berserk, yelling about "convents with 12-foot walls." But, eventually, the elder daughters are allowed to wear short skirts, silk stockings, teddies, and bobbed hair. The father, and to a lesser extent, the mother, considered the new fashions a temporary depravity from which the world would soon awaken. It never did.
In the second book, there is a scene where the children have arrived at their summer home in Nantucket, where they await their mother, who had gone on a lecture tour of Europe to give the lectures the father had had scheduled before he had suddenly died. (Both parents were pioneers in motion study and simplifying factory work.) While they are awaiting, they decide to go swimming. Martha, the third child, had forgotten her bathing suit at home, and decides to wear her mother's. When the other two, wearing their modest suits, see her coming out of the cottage with only the under half of her mother's old-fashioned suit, their eyes pop out. Because instead of wearing the entire suit, Martha had put on only the part that hugged her curves, and rolled up the legs to her knees, and the arms to above her elbows. She had decided not to wear the overdress nor the lace-up boots that were part of the bathing suit, much less the scarf. The other girls consider her indecent because the under half "leaves nothing to the imagination."
Quite a few women, arguing for their rights to wear what they wished, decided to wear men's clothing during the Roaring Twenties. Coco Chanel was a woman who believed women should wear comfortable clothing, and apart from designing pantsuits, wore them. Of course, there were complaints, mostly from men, decrying that women had stopped having curves and were becoming indistinct from men and therefore less desirable. It was seen as an affront to society that women dress like men.
Women's struggles to wear comfortable, uncomplicated clothes the way they want, continued, and still continues. When Mary Quant popularized the miniskirt, it was considered scandalous because it showed so much leg. Society has always held that a woman should dress respectably, yet sexily. A woman should show skin, but only so much. If she shows a little bit more than is considered normal at the time and anything happens to her, she is "asking for it." If a woman covers up, she's frigid or obliged to cover herself by her culture or family. It has become normal for beachwear to show as much skin as possible. But there is a catch. If the woman is fat or old, she should wear a bathing suit. If she's young and has a nice body shape, it's then expected of her to wear a bikini. That is "normal" in our society. These women are considered "free." But are they really? A stout woman wearing a bikini is talked about and laughed at. A young girl wearing a bathing suit is thought to be "over-protected." A woman who feels uninhibited and totally at peace with her body enough to be on the beach without any clothes is shown to the nearest nudist beach, away from the rest of the common beach goers.
Because with every choice women have made for themselves about their clothes, others have seen fit to lock them into those choices. If you want to wear a miniskirt, don't wear a skirt down to your ankles. You look like your grandmother. If you want to wear low-necked tank tops, don't wear high-necked, long-sleeve blouses. You look like you're not modern. And if you want to wear a bikini, don't wear a burkini. You look like your husband is telling you what to wear, and, hey, you just might be a terrorist, too, because you're Moslem.
And that is so ironic. The burkini was first designed so that women who had a high sense of modesty due to their culture or upbringing, could do water sports and preserve that modesty. It is the same as a full-body wetsuit. And it even covers less than the strange garb some Chinese women wear at the beach to protect their lily-white skin from the sun's rays. A woman wearing a burkini to the beach has made a choice of swimwear. And she is not covering more at the beach than on the streets. Or is it now illegal to wear long pants, long sleeves, and a head scarf in European cities and towns? The problem goes beyond controlling a woman by what she wears, which is bad enough. It reaches the why of what women wear. If a woman wears a wet suit, she wears it because she's doing water sports. And if a woman wears a burkini people assume she is wearing it because she is repressed and kept from participating in normal life at the beach and is a potential terrorist. Where is the sense in that?
There is no sense, because added to the original control of women through women's fashions, is now added the fear of a culture and a religion different from ours. Yet not so different. All we have to do is look back just a hundred years. Our culture also considered modesty in a woman extremely important. It reflected not only on the woman, but also on her family and the family's honor. Maybe we should think about that. And maybe we should think that a woman can choose whatever she wants to wear, and follow whatever fashion she wants without being a slut, being repressed, being weird, being old-fashioned, being a geek, being...
thank you for this sane perspective.
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