I'd like to continue this conversation about some of the issues surrounding the burkini, but we're no longer in France, so perhaps we could think of some of the ramifications here in Canada surrounding body image, body display, gender, and values. I have not heard of the burkini being used here and really I'm not sure if anyone would really notice it much. As I said, here, Muslim women on occasion go in public fully veiled. Even if people don't like it (I don't) we generally all accept and respect it as the woman`s right to express or not express herself in public in a way that is best for her. As long as it is her choice, and no one is imposing it on her. And it turns out that this is the way it is here. We are not in Saudi Arabia, but we will dress or undress as we choose.
Last night on the CBC I heard an interview with an Israeli musician, a young woman who was ordered to cover up her bikini top while singing in an outdoor concert on a beach. The young woman was outraged, refused to cover up and I believe had to face some consequences afterward (I think she was fined). In the interview she crowed quite eloquently about women`s rights to do as they wish with their own bodies. The interviewer, the incomparable Laura Lynch, slyly interjected a question about the attempted ban on burquinis in France. The Israeli singer suddenly waxed shrill and strident as she insisted that those women are oppressed, they are being told what to wear, it`s an open door to more oppression and the burkini should be burned and thrown into the ocean. Not for one nanosecond did she appear to be aware of her hypocrisy as well as her complete ignorance by making such a sweeping judgment, and possibly was also betraying her own anti-Muslim (anti-Palestinian?) bais.
On the other end of the spectrum I did witness, sort of, the annual women's topless march in Vancouver. No, I did not come out to look. A friend and I were having coffee in the elegant terrace café nearby and on our way out, there they were. A crowd of maybe forty or fifty topless people, mostly men, with perhaps four (my friend's estimate) or maybe two (from what I could see) women. There was also a mob of very stupid and ignorant fully clothed men with their cameras and phone cameras out, ready for a cheap shot of naked breasts. (Ironically, I thought that a lot of them looked Middle-Eastern.) We could call those guys the Real Boobs.
My friend and I had an interesting talk about it after. We agreed on two things: women should have the right to wear or not wear whatever they want in public (men, too) and that it is still often helpful for those of us who want the freedom of unbridled self-expression to consider and respect the kind of impact our self-expression is going to have on those around us.
There are tonnes of issues around the way we dress, or choose not to dress when in public, especially body issues. There is a general consensus (well, sort of general) that women should have just as much right and freedom to take off as many clothes in public as men. On the surface that all sounds well and good. It could even be helpful to consider that it isn't just women whose chests can look beautiful and alluring but men as well. I would also like to add that it wouldn't be just women (who are not anywhere near as visual when it comes to sexual attraction as men) but to more men than would care to admit that they are not one hundred percent heterosexual. This rather crosses over to another theme but I would like to briefly touch on here. Given that we live in a historically heterocentric culture where, despite many recent advances towards legitimizing same sex marriage etc., it is highly likely that very few men, outside of the exclusively gay, are going to be forthcoming or honest about their personal same-sex attractions, so it gets sublimated and often with accompanying violence. I am thinking here particularly of mixed martial arts and ultimate fighting championships. Young, handsome and very fit men clad only in tight skimpy shorts beating the crap out of each other before bellowing mobs of male audiences howling for blood. Ultimate closet cases and as a cover for their sublimated homosexual attractions they act out their accompanying shame and self-loathing by cloaking it in violence and thus justifying it in the most naked, raw and ugly caricature of primeval masculinity.
I often have wondered, what if the two combatants pulled a total one-eighty on their audience. Instead of beating each other up, while in one of their wrestling holds, if instead they were to begin caressing, embracing and kissing each other in the most intimate and tender way, like lovers totally lost in each other. What would happen then? I think it's worth a thought or two.
Back to women. There is one particular reason for needing to postpone the public baring of women's breasts. It has nothing to do with equal rights or choice, and really, as far as I'm concerned, they should have the right to do this if they want to. But there is still this one, unpleasant and naked (pardon the pun, Gentle Reader) reality that has to be reckoned with. The ongoing and absolute public sexualizing of the female body. Men appear to be nowhere near to being ready to reckon with this. Teenage boys and twenty and thirty something males are particularly deplorable with the sexting and the trading of images of undressed girlfriends and hookups, the incredible accessibility of pornography on the internet and the absolute male intransigence about not changing some of the most fundamentally destructive attitudes so many men still have towards women.
Even though topless women and topless men can look equally sexy there is still a lot of social, cultural and ancestral baggage around women's breasts that I am not sure if it would be comfortable or safe for a lot of women were they to go habitually topless in public. Or maybe it would be okay. With naked breasts always in their face men would have to simply get over it, get used to it and get on with their lives. If only...
We also need to factor in the historical subjugation of women that has led to this fetishizing of breasts. I have to admit that even progressive little old me can still feel a bit squeamish around a woman who is breastfeeding, especially if nothing is left to the imagination. I remember how distinctly uncomfortable I felt a few years ago when at a work Christmas party I saw my supervisor serenely breastfeeding her baby while carrying on a conversation with me about work. I also tend to wonder if we have a primal sense of breasts as being sacred. They are our first source of life and nourishment while we are vulnerable infants. I sometimes wonder if there must be some kind of creepy archetypal Oedipal instinct in our collective unconscious that leads many of us to sexualize the breast as a symbol of the Great Mother.
And let me repeat, Gentle Reader, even though there were a few women last Sunday exposing their breasts in public, it was the dumbass men who came to gawk who are the Real Boobs.
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