I like wearing white linen shirts in the summer, partly because they are cooling but mainly because it looks like something one would wear on a boat off the Amalfi coast. True as it is that pastel summer looks are the epitome of nautical chic, the magazine ads of perfect people laughing perfectly on large yachts on sunny days all have one thing in common: none have sweat stains under their arms. It’s the bane of all our summer lives I think, that ring of deception that creeps out from your armpit. It edges out like an ink spot on the blotting paper of your self-esteem, the universal and horrific reminder of just how uncool you are, in every sense of the word.
I was complaining about this to a friend recently after I noticed a ring of dark grey sweat beginning to shatter the illusion of my pastel Amalfi coast vibe. We were due to go to a dinner shortly afterwards and I didn’t have time to change but she said she had the perfect solution. With a flourish she pulled out two swatches of cotton that had an adhesive side to them and told me to place them under each pit. Fifteen minutes later I was dry, my ring of shame has receded and my confidence soared. I had no idea they made things for this!
Many have wondered whether wearing a wetsuit is now prohibited. Or is it just that France doesn’t want Muslims swimming in its oceans?
It occurred to me then how much our clothing affects us; aside from how you look, it is the way clothes make you feel that is perhaps the most powerful thing about them. If you feel fat in a clingy t-shirt then that will show up in everything from your self-deprecating speech to your awkward pulls at the hem of your shirt. If you feel great, that confidence echoes itself in your gait, your laugh, even your posture.
I was saying exactly the same thing to this couple I met at the party later, when the man asked me what I thought about the latest sign of French Islamophobia - the ban on the burkini. Let me make something quite clear: the burkini is a ridiculous outfit. It’s unflattering, saggy and impractical. I have no idea why someone would want to wear it on a hot summer day and I think the name is a bad joke. I also happen to not like the idea of a niqab or a hijab to be honest. The idea of women projecting modestly begs the question of why they have to be modest in the first place. Why is a woman’s modesty valued at such a high premium and what, after all, is wrong with a hairline? Is it the gazes of men that have to be protected? In short, I have much distaste for ostentations religious displays.
Commentators have asked whether the ban on burkinis also extends to wetsuits
But - and I want to be clear about this - my opinion doesn’t matter one little bit, and that’s exactly how it should be. As a man, I have no right to judge what a woman wears, why she wears it and whether or not what she wears must gel with my own sense of morality. Much like with a woman’s right to abortion or birth control or method of breastfeeding, men don’t have the right to have any say at all. We just don’t. What a woman does with her body is all her business and her business alone. And it definitely doesn’t warrant being the subject of national legislation - in Europe or anywhere. What French authorities have done is no different from what the Taliban did by forcing women into shuttlecock burqas; it treats a woman’s body as if it were under their control, and that is an abhorrent, evil thing to do. Just like when you force women to cover up because somehow your sense of dignity is tied to their physical being. (With honour killings as rampant as they are, I would encourage Pakistanis to be circumspect in this fact, though this is hardly a solely local problem)
Many have already pointed out that the burkini is basically like a wetsuit (a point I agree with in concept, except that a wetsuit lets you have a waist) and rightly wondered whether wearing a wetsuit is now prohibited or is it just that France doesn’t want Muslims swimming in its oceans, or otherwise. The answer is fairly obvious, but hearteningly, women around the world have responded with messages and acts of protest against this dangerous ban. Nigella Lawson, the seductively sumptuous domestic goddess who has built an empire and brand based on self-empowered femininity, took to the beaches of Australia last week wearing what appeared to be a burkini. She didn’t look amazing doing it, but that’s not the point. She did it. That in the 21st century, we are still having debates about women’s “role” in things, is asinine.
The debate around the burkini ban has stirred intense emotions in France and elsewhere
This is, more or less, a transcript of the speech that I gave without pause to the poor couple at the party who had asked me about the burkini in the first place. I ended my tirade with a “I support a woman’s right to choose whatever the hell she wants to!” as I downed my wine glass triumphantly and with a flourish.
Precisely at that moment, one of the adhesive the cotton swatches from under my arm dislodged and fell on the floor at the woman’s legs. She looked slightly startled but collected herself quickly, and in a voice that was as airy as it was sympathetic, she picked up the swatch, raised her hand, looked me right in the eye and said: “Here, I think you dropped this sanitary pad.”
My friend had given me menstrual pads to wear under my arms as sweat protection. And I’m OK with that; because that was her choice. Though we did have a word on the taxi ride back home.
