Penalizing women for covering too little, then too much

PARIS — The policeman in the photo is nattily attired and appears to have a slight smirk as he writes out a ticket for the woman standing before him awkwardly in her offending swimwear; perhaps he enjoys making her feel uncomfortable.

No, she is not wearing a burkini.

The photo dates from 1957. The woman is wearing a bikini on the beach at Rimini on Italy’s Adriatic coast.

At the time, Italy prohibited the revealing bathing suit; it was too immodest to be worn in public.

In the midst of France’s fight over banning the burkini, the bikini is celebrating its 70th anniversary, and photographs chronicling its debut and early history in the 1940s, '50s and '60s are on display in one of Paris’ chic galleries, prompting parallels to the uproar over the burkini today.

What is it about women’s swimwear and more generally women’s attire that over and over in history has attracted controversy and impelled societies to legislate or regulate women’s choices?

Historians, sociologists and anthropologists have argued about it for decades, but the seemingly simplistic statement that women’s bodies are a battleground has some truth to it.

Formally or informally, men (primarily) have been making rules about women’s attire for a very long time.

“Can’t we decide what we want to wear in 2016?” wondered Sarah Fekih, 23, from Lyon, France, in a comment she wrote to The New York Times. “If one wishes to dress skimpily or to be almost nude or to be covered from head to toe, isn’t that a personal choice that cannot be dictated by law?”

Of course, the burkini debate is not only about feminism.

It is foremost a debate about the visibility and presence of Islam in France, and it comes in the context of the most recent act of terror to traumatize the country, this one in Nice, on the Mediterranean coast.

On July 14, a man drove a cargo truck into crowds of people there, killing 86 and wounding 300.

The Islamic State group later called him one of its “soldiers.”

Less than a month later, the first of at least 30 bans on “inappropriate” clothing on beaches — meant to target Muslim attire — was enacted in Cannes, about 20 miles from Nice.

Although France’s highest administrative court, the Council of State, struck down one town’s burkini ban on Friday — and clearly would do the same for other towns if lawsuits were brought — the fight is far from over.

The parliament could enact a ban, and some of France’s 2017 presidential candidates on the right and far right have pledged to enact measures that run from banning the Muslim veil in universities and businesses to banning almost all religious attire in public.

As the debate continues, much that is important will be said about France and racism and Islam, but it is worth pondering that it is women’s clothes that are at issue.

Throughout history, a combination of legislation, local regulation and social pressure has influenced the way women have dressed — corsets and décolleté, hoop skirts and bustles, the controversial advent of pants.

France is now a society demanding that women undress, but in many ways this debate is part of the same narrative.

In the case of both the bikini and the burkini, “people in positions of power say, ‘We’re putting these rules in place for the woman’s good,'” said Deirdre Clemente, a history professor at the University of Nevada who has studied dress codes for women. “The implication is that women are unable to regulate their appearance themselves.”

As recently as the 1980s, a number of large U.S. corporations had extensive dress codes for women. “There would be four pages on what a woman could wear to work, and four sentences for men,” Ms. Clemente said.

When it came to the bikini, not only was it forbidden in some countries, with women forced to pay fines and leave many beaches if they wore one.

It was also seen as subversive and a sign of moral weakness.

Italy, Spain and some beaches on the Atlantic coast of France prohibited wearing the swimsuit in the first few years after it went on the market, said Ghislaine Rayer, a coauthor of “Bikini: La Légende,” a history of the mini-swimsuit.