Muslim swimwear
labels Burqini and Splashgear liberate Muslim women to go swimming, diving, and
to volunteer as lifeguards. A special focus on Australia.
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| Muslim swimwear labels Burqini and Splashgear liberate Muslim women to go swimming, diving, and to volunteer as lifeguards. |
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From the pages of Foreign Policy
All Hail the Burqini Recently, Foreign Policy highlighted
the achievements of Australia's first Muslim lifeguard contingent and
the ability of Muslim women to participate in this lifesaving program
thanks to the "burqini" -- a
two-piece, full-body, lightweight swimsuit designed by Sydney's Aheda
Zanetti, a fashion entrepreneur. Now the burqini, and "Splashgear," another brand offering full-length swim gear, has made it to Time's fashion page along with an interesting report about the growing popularity of the swimsuit.
It is not just Muslim women who have taken to the burqini, Time
reports. Conservative Christians, cancer patients, the elderly and
others have found the burqini liberating, and demand for the product
has grown in places as distant as Malaysia, South Africa, and the
United States. But with its growing popularity, the burqini has also
attracted its fair share of critics. Conservative Muslims have
denounced the swimsuit as un-Islamic (for revealing curves), while some
feminists have decried it as dehumanizing, just like the traditional
burqa.
"Clearly you're not considered a full human being if you're mandated
to cover yourself head to toe in this tent," says Taina Bien-Aime, the
executive director of the women's rights organization Equality Now.
In spite of these condemnations, the burqini has succeeded in filling a gap in the market, and has been lauded an "export success" (pdf) by Austrade, Australia's international trade promotion body. As Zanetti puts it, "I'm a very small business with a product the whole world wants."
Correction on Muslim swimwear: "Splashgear" was mistakenly referred to
as the "scuba equivalent" of the burqini. It is actually a
loose-fitting, nylon/lycra surfer rash guard shirt coupled with a
polyester swim bottom that are a pants version of the popular men's
board shorts. While some Splashgear wearers like to use it for
snorkeling, it can also be used for regular swimming in pools and the
ocean. Apologies for the error.
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| Mecca Laa Laa dons the Burqini Muslim swimwear on her first surf lifesaving patrol at North Cronulla Beach in Sydney, Australia. |
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The New Swimsuit Issue
By Laura Fitzpatrick
Move over, Tankini. Since the full-coverage swimsuit dubbed the
Burqini (as in burqa plus bikini) hit the international market in
January, devout Muslim women have been snapping them up. The polyester
suits were designed to accord with Islamic laws that require women to
dress modestly and to eliminate the risk of drowning when the yards of
fabric used in traditional burqas get soaked. Now, however, non-Muslim
beachgoers are getting into the full-covered swim. Whether women are
worried about health, weight or the tolls of age, the Burqini offers a
comfortable alternative to a skimpy two-piece or clingy maillot.
The
demure suits, pioneered by two Muslim women on opposite sides of the
globe, are like lightweight, loose, hooded wet suits and hide
everything but the face, hands and feet. Australian retailer Aheda
Zanetti, 38, says she was inspired to design her Burqini after watching
young Muslim girls struggle to play netball in bulky layers. Her
competitor, California microbiologist Shereen Sabet, 36, came up with
her full-coverage Splashgear suits after searching in vain for
Islam-appropriate scuba gear. The UV-resistant, stretchy swimsuits
start at $90 and have found upwards of 6,000 buyers--most of them
online--in locations as varied as Malaysia, South Africa, Mexico,
Ireland and the U.S. "I'm a very small business with a product the
whole world wants," says Zanetti.
Conservative Christians,
cancer patients, burn victims and senior citizens, among others, have
shown surprising interest. Joanne Martinez, 37, of San Clemente,
Calif., bought a Hawaiian-print ensemble to stave off chills during
late-night dips. Her mother Norma Suarez, 69, got a suit because her
medications make her skin sun-sensitive. "We're both hooked," says
Martinez. Meanwhile, Kathleen Petroff, 59, of Helendale, Calif., bought
her Splashgear suit for a snorkeling trip, after weight gain from
multiple-sclerosis treatment made her old suit unappealing. If not for
Sabet's design, she says, "I would have missed swimming with the
dolphins."
Anne Cole, the designer whose 1997 invention of the
tankini was a landmark for conservative swimwear, lauds the reasoning
behind the modest suits. "A woman should, above all, find a suit she
can feel comfortable and be herself in," she says. But the new
swimsuits have drawn criticism from both East and West. "This is like
playing a game with Allah," asserted a poster on the website ShiaChat,
complaining that the stretchy fabric reveals curves. Zanetti's design
has also brought out anti-Muslim sentiment since she's become a
high-profile member of the Islamic community. She has been called a
terrorist online; she says she has even received a death threat.
Some
feminists charge that burqas in any form are offensive to women.
"Clearly you're not considered a full human being if you're mandated to
cover yourself head to toe in this tent," says Taina Bien-Aime,
executive director of Equality Now, the international women's-rights
watchdog. Sabet responds that Muslim men too have a dress code: the
Koran forbids them to wear saffron or silk or expose skin from navel to
knee. But Imam Mohamed Magid, who heads a moderate mosque in Sterling,
Va., calls debate over Islamic clothing misdirected. "I wish there was
more talk about women as leaders rather than talk about whether nail
polish is acceptable in Islam," he says. "We need to move forward."
Still,
in this bare-it-all age of the string bikini, when young girls take
wardrobe cues from Paris Hilton and body-image pressure is intense, the
Burqini swimsuit is making a statement. And that's the point, the
designers say: the suits allow women, Muslim or not, to choose comfort
over conformity. "I know it sounds like an oxymoron," says Sabet. "But
this is really about freedom."
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From the pages of Foreign Policy
The First Aussie Muslim Lifeguards
Australia’s first Muslim lifeguards -- female
and male -- strike a blow for social harmony, national integration, and gender equality.
It's not just Germany that's getting creative in trying to integrate its Muslim population. The Australian state of New South Wales has launched a training initiative called "On The Same Wave"
designed to integrate Australians of different ethnic backgrounds into
its iconic Surf Live Saving program. Seventeen young Muslim men and
women have graduated, after a rigorous, eight-week training course, to
become Australia's first Muslim lifeguards. Women were encouraged to participate, and could wear the Islamic Council of Australia-approved "burqini,"
a full-body swimsuit that covers the hair. The suit was designed by a
local fashion entrepreneur, Aheda Zanetti, and over 9,000 have been
sold. Her label, Ahiida, offers "dynamic swimwear and sportswear for today's Muslim female.
It's heartening to think that Cronulla beach (south of central Sydney), the site of Australia's deeply disturbing race riots in December 2005, will be host to the first successful contingent of Australian Muslim lifesavers.
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| Mecca Laalaa, center, wearing full body Islamic swimwear known as a burqini, on a rescue surfboard with other Muslim lifeguards on duty at a beach in Sydney. (Anoek De Groot/AFP) |
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From the pages of the International Herald Tribune
For Some Australian Muslims, Surf's Up
By Raymond Bonner
CRONULLA, Australia:
As a teenager growing up in a Sydney suburb, Mecca Laalaa never felt
anything but Australian, even though she was for the most part unable
to engage in the most quintessential of Australian pastimes: swimming
at the beach. "Restricted by my clothing," Laalaa explained.
She is a Muslim and has voluntarily worn the burqa, the traditional
head-to-toe covering for Islamic women, since she was 14 years old.
It is hard to swim, she said, if your body is swathed in cotton, which is heavy when wet.
Now, in what few Australians could have imagined a year ago, Laalaa,
a vivacious 20-year-old, is a Surf Life Saver, as volunteer lifeguards
here are known, lured to the beach by a new outreach program for
Australia's Muslims, her clothing quandary solved by a novel fashion,
the burqini.
The program, "On the Same Wave," was started a year ago by the
nonprofit group that organizes the volunteers, Surf Life Saving
Australia, along with the Federal Ministry of Immigration and the local
council.
The outreach was the response to an ugly episode of riots on
Cronulla Beach, some 32 kilometers, or 20 miles, south of central
Sydney, in December 2005, when skinheads and neo-Nazis, many drunk and
with racial epithets painted on their bodies and T-shirts, bashed
Lebanese men.
Since this occurred after similar riots in Britain, many here and
abroad wondered if Australia was next in line for a wave of unrest in
its Muslim community. Among Australia's population of more than 20
million, there are fewer than half a million Muslims, most of them in
Sydney and Melbourne.
At home, the riots set off a round of soul searching and left many
asking if the violence reflected an underlying racism in their society.
"On the Same Wave" was intended to promote cultural understanding in
Australia, introduce people from minority groups -- Chinese, Somalis,
Sudanese -- to beach culture and safety and, above all, to increase and
diversify the membership of Surf Life Saving, said Vanessa Brown,
director of membership for Surf Life.
It has also challenged the public perception of a virtually sacred
Australian icon --the Surf Life Saver -- as someone who is always
blonde, blue- eyed and sun-bronzed.
"It's a stereotype that's accurate," said Suzie Stollznow, diversity manager for Surf Life Saving New South Wales.
Under the program, 22 young men and women, from 14 to 40 years old
and including a woman with three small children, signed up to become
Surf Life Savers.
Most were ethnic Lebanese, but there were also a Palestinian, a Syrian and a Libyan.
"But all proudly Australian," said one, Suheil Damouny. "It's important to mention that."
Like most Muslim immigrants here, Damouny, a 20-year-old
sportswriter at The Torch, a weekly newspaper, does not like to be
referred to by ethnicity.
His grandparents fled from Palestine in 1948 and moved to Lebanon,
then to the United Arab Emirates, where he lived until he moved to
Australia seven years ago. He considers himself Australian.
Damouny said his friends could not understand why he wanted to be a
Life Saver, especially in Cronulla. And they did not think he could
pass the rigorous eight-week course. "But I did," he said proudly.
Seventeen finished; one woman dropped out after making the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, and coming back in full burqa.
"The hardest was getting used to that big, ugly thing," said
Damouny, nodding to where a yellow surfboard with the red letters "Surf
Rescue" waited to be paddled out in an emergency. "It is quite heavy."
One requirement was to be able to pull an unconscious swimmer onto
the surfboard and then get him to shore, "through massive waves,"
Damouny continued.
Laalaa fractured her nose when she was trying to paddle out through
the crashing surf and the board reared up and kicked back into her. She
also twisted both ankles, she said.
"I have black and blue bruises all over my body," she said. "But I'd do it all over again," she said exuberantly.
She admits that she was an unlikely candidate. "I'm a girly-girl," she said. "I like to walk on the street in high heels."
But Laalaa said one reason she joined the program was to educate Australians about Muslims.
"They don't think Muslim women swim," she said. "Or do anything," she quickly added with a laugh.
When people see women wearing the veil, she continued, they think
they are oppressed. "I am not oppressed," she said. "I do have my own
mouth. I am educated. I do make my own decisions."
For her and the other women, the biggest obstacle, she explained,
was what they would wear. That was solved by a local fashion
entrepreneur, Aheda Zanetti, who designs "dynamic swimwear and
sportswear for today's Muslim female."
For Surf Life Savers, Zanetti, whose label is Ahiida, came up with a two-pice outfit made of spandex, form fitting but fully covering,
even the hair.
Laalaa pulls her hair back into a bun and hides it under a bright red hood that is an extension of the long-sleeved yellow top.
Laalaa said her father, a welder, was completely supportive, as were her mother, a housewife, and her three brothers and sister.
She said her family was not that different from other Muslims in Australia. Most are moderate, she said.
Experts here agree. It is the radicals who grab the headlines, they say.
Laalaa said Muslims felt fully integrated into Australian life until
the attacks on the United States of Sept. 11, 2001. That is when
tensions mounted, when many Australians began looking at Muslims with
suspicion.
"Before 9/11, they didn't know us," said Shayma Almoty, a friend of Laalaa's. "Now they've become afraid and fearful of us."
Ronya Chami, a 21-year-old accountant, chimed in: "Which is
ridiculous." The message to other young Muslims, Chami said, is "Get
out there and be part of Australia."
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From the pages of The Independent
Burqini babes go on patrol on Sydney's beaches
By Kathy Marks in Sydney
A few years
ago, Cronulla Beach in Sydney was the scene of ugly race riots in which
young white men, many of them surfers, attacked anyone who looked
vaguely Middle Eastern.
The violence was reportedly
sparked by an attack on two surf lifesavers - symbols of white
Anglo-Saxon culture - by a group of Lebanese youths.
Many
predicted heightened racial tensions at Sydney's beaches. Instead,
Cronulla has become the scene of reconciliation, with 17 young men and
women training there to become Australia's first Muslim lifeguards.
Last weekend they received the bronze medallions that qualify them to
patrol beaches and rescue swimmers from the surf.
Among them were
a number of women wearing a newly designed head-to-toe swimsuit, dubbed
the burqini. The two-piece outfit - featuring leggings, a loose top and
a head covering - enables them to carry out their tasks while
conforming to the Islamic dress code.
Mecca Laa Laa, 20, one of
the newly graduated lifeguards, said it would give Australian Muslim
women the freedom to enjoy the beach while fulfilling their religious
obligations. "The point is to get women active in the water, to
encourage them to participate in sporting activities ... and wearing
the burqini allows them to do that," she said.
Ms Laa Laa and
other members of the group - of Lebanese, Syrian, Palestinian and
Libyan backgrounds - have been training the past four months, learning
about the undertows and rip currents that claim lives every year.
The
lifeguards were trained as part of a programme called On The Same Wave,
introduced by Surf Life Saving Australia after the Cronulla riots. The
organisation worked with female trainees to design the uniform. But the
burqini has been embraced by Muslim women generally. About 9,000 women
in Sydney have bought the swimsuits, which are endorsed by the
Australian Islamic Council.
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