ABSTRACT
In August 2016, a woman was made to remove her swimwear on a beach in Nice, France, as two police officers towered over her seated figure, overseeing her disrobing amid a throng of beach-goers whose exposed flesh was deemed more anodyne. Earlier that month, the particular swimsuit variety she was wearing – a ‘burkini’ (portmanteau of burqa and bikini) 1 – had been outlawed by various French seaside resorts, as the clothing was deemed to be a ‘provocation’ (Rubin 2016) which flew in the face of ‘good morals’ (Quinn 2016), and was considered to be symbolic of Islamic extremism (Breedan & Blaise 2016) in the aftermath of a Muslim man having massacred holidaymakers in Cannes earlier that summer. The burkini ban was by no means a marginal political move; it was supported by almost two-thirds of the French population (Pech 2016). Where justifications were ventured, the dominant rhetoric was one of alleged concern for the well-being of burkini-clad women. Commentators claimed to regard the swimwear as a visible manifestation of the patriarchal subjugation of Muslim women, who were deemed to have the right, or perhaps the obligation, to engage in similar levels of nakedness to other women on the beach.
