While it’s on my mind
I wanted to know:
When did “being comfortable with your own body” become synonymous with “displaying as much of it as possible at every given opportunity”? I see many feminists who support near universal wear of extremely skimpy clothing as proof that women are more comfortable with their bodies than ever before, or who seem to suggest that freedom for women goes hand in hand with wearing next to nothing.
I’m not saying the old practice of declaring a woman’s ankle to be an erogenous zone she should be arrested for showing was a good standard. “Bloomers”, an early American version of women’s pants, was invented for just the reasons of mobility and safety for women doing outdoors chores as bikini defenders claim their suits promote for swimming.
But the argument that a bikini is intended for ease and mobility in swimming is disingenuous at best. I haven’t heard anyone say men’s swim trunks which fit loosely and come to just above the knee inhibit swimming. I’ve won swim competeitions wearing a bathing suit that, by today’s standards, is almost embarassingly modest, being in one piece and cut in such a way that half my pubis wasn’t revealed. I now swim just fine against ocean currents wearing one piece swimsuits with the little built-in skirts. In fact, being a woman who is built large up top, I find the way one pieces hold me in place pretty firmly assists, rather than inhibits, swimming.
Bikinis were made for one reason only – to expose the maximum amount of female skin at the beach for male viewing, without crossing the legal lines of what is allowable. This is evidenced when, in between protestations of the “freedom of movement” bikinis offer come statements that suits that cover the stomach and upper thighs are “just plain ugly”, but the writer will allow exceptions for people with “good reasons” to not wear them, such as skin that burns easily or some sort of unsightliness to which they just don’t want to be exposed.
Please keep in mind I come from the land of Mardi Gras, where good friends of mine, and yes, even me, have, for the sake of fun once a year, gone out with outfits skirting public nudity laws as finely as possible. (It’s also worth noting men do this during Mardi Gras too, although it is not as celebrated as when women do it.) I am not saying showing skin is a bad thing.
But I am annoyed by the compulsory nature of female exposure amongst those claiming to champion women’s freedom to wear what they wish. This is evidenced by constant mockery of any woman who doesn’t want to wear thongs bikinis, miniskirts, and halter tops, in a sort of reverse slut-shaming of the kind conservative Christians engage in. I fail to see how going from a world where women are shamed for showing too much skin to a world where women are mocked for not wanting to take it all off is in any way liberating. When I go shopping for a bathing suit (or any clothing at all) I have difficulty finding one that isn’t a thong these days, and it is virtually impossible to find one that has even a little skirt on it like I like to wear. Is this “choice” in clothing? Apart from the obviously sexist and right-wing overtones of the Wholesome Wear company (they don’t sell modest suits for men), they do offer a choice in swimwear most women don’t have anymore. I want a “choice” to not wear a bikini too, and I want to stand by my right not to be harassed for being modest just as bikini-wearing women want the right not to be sexually harassed for showing “too much” skin.
The almost unanimous mocking of the Wholesome Wear bathing suits by feminists is a case in point. While the motives of the designer are far from feminist (and because of this I do not promote buying from this company), the suits in and of themselves are not bad, and from any rational perspective should offer no problems to any non-competetive female swimmer. They are not even as restrictive as suits worn 100 years ago by female swimmers, and in fact seem to cover about as much as suits worn by male swimmers of that time used to wear. (Yes, men used to wear more clothing at the beach too.) No I do not want to go back to a time where everyone was expected or required to wear that much clothing at the beach. However, I find it troubling when feminist blogs posts such statements as this or allow such comments to go unchallenged:
“To be fair, I can understand the attraction for wetsuits and coverups for fat people.” (That freedom to expose one’s flesh in public is limited to pretty people only. Fatties take note.)
“…someone strong enough to swim with the extra layers probably long ago lost any inhibitions about being seen in a swim suit.” (Because athletic ability is synonomous with maximum exposure of the female form, and anything less than a bikini makes someone “inhibited”. Right.)
“I sent the Wholesome Wear link to a friend of mine and he came back with this, ‘If I ever see someone with that on, I’m gonna holla at ‘em on full mack daddy mode. I love irony.’” (Once again, “irony” used by a supposedly progressive male as a catch-all phrase to excuse misogyny.)
“Smirking because you’re wearing an ugly bathing suit…” (Because a woman must always make looking “beautiful” her first concern, or if she isn’t wearing something “pretty” she must be smug and self-righteous if she’s smiling.)
The arguments and excuses some women offered in response almost sounded to me like women who are mainly anti-abortion pleading for a few compassionate exceptions for rape victims, since after all, it isn’t really their fault they had sex. “Please don’t judge us as prudish for not conforming to the maximum exposure of female flesh required by society, I’m allergic to sunscreen/have scars/ am fat.” Why should women have to have any excuse for simply not wanting to wear a thong?
Besides, if wearing a bikini is supposed to show a woman’s natural self-confidence in her body and sexuality, why do the bikini enthusiasts rapidly lose their fervor when one mentions to them fat women, women who don’t shave ANYTHING, or older women? Suddenly for all but the die hards they begin to agree there can be “good reasons” to want to cover up. It’s funny how the women who say the bikini is a measure of their self-confidence are almost universally young, thin, remove most of their body hair, and argue in favor of wearing makeup. Apparently “self-confidence” is a code word that means “confidence that I fit reasonably well into the acceptable category set by modern beauty standards.”)
But – and again and again I have to come back to this – why must confidence in and caring about one’s body be publicly displayed by wearing a bathing suit? The arguments I read circled again and again to the same thing – an overfocus on “sexuality” and “sexual self confidence” and “beauty”. If you don’t think of yourself as “beautiful” and “sexy”, apparently, you hate your body and have no confidence in it.
Here is a newsflash: I do not have a beautiful body by any American standard of beauty. Far from encouraging me to wear a bikini, most people would prefer I wear jeans and a loose tshirt at the beach, or preferably, not go at all. In fact, from what I can discern of public treatment of me on the street and on the few internet pictures of myself that exist, the average American would prefer I wear a nun’s habit, a burka, or simply stay inside where they don’t have to be tortured by seeing me at all. I’m in my late thirties, I’m fat, and I don’t shave. I cannot find a picture anywhere in the mass media of anyone who looks remotely like me that isn’t deliberately designed to mock and shame people like me (I dare you to do a quick google image search). So I have no delusions that I am “beautiful” or “sexy” by any popular useage of the word.
However, I do have a certain amount of affection for and confidence/pride in my body, despite my stubborn refusal to “liberate” myself by wearing an uncomfortable bathing suit to the beach where I will be loudly ridiculed by every young male who walks by, because my body has done some awesome things that have nothing to do with beauty standards.
My body has carried my through 36 years of life with a reasonable amount of health and mobility. I am able to walk, see, hear, and talk. My body has created and birthed a healthy child. My breasts did their job by creating, from my body, his sole source of nutrition for six months. My body has survived through starvation, prolonged malnutrition, beatings, a violent rape, a systemic post-surgical infection, and appendicitis. My body allows me to swim in strong ocean currents, climb mountains, ride a bike, chop wood. I, the essential *me*, would not exist without it. Why must I also wear a bikini to “prove” I have “pride” in my body? Why must I open even more of my body to the male gaze for approval or rejection to prove how tough or uncaring I am?
