Monday, January 21, 2008

Swimwear for today's muslim female


Swimwear for today's Muslim female.

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really thought it was a joke... now, I'm wondering if this is funny or depressing??

What a wonderful world, isn't it?

Anonymous said...

I love your sense of humour, Eolake. And I was surprised to see the link to the actual website. I thought, like Bert, that it was a joke, at first.

- Ray.

Anonymous said...

So, it means that you do agree with the idea of the new swimwear for today's Muslim female? Well, I don't agree with it.

Anonymous said...

"it means that you do agree with the idea"

No, we don't. But we do respect the right of the rest of the world to be as nuts as they please to.

Anonymous said...

And this is different from this in what way?

Anonymous said...

NSFW! NSFW! NSFW! NSFW! NSFW! NSFW!

MY EYES! THEY ARE BURNING!

I knew you were badly twisted, Mr Stobblehouse, but this... this is just *S*I*C*K*.

Your infidel soul will roast in Gehenna for this pornography. I'll see you there, point and laugh along with Allah.
You're even worse than these suggestive people here. (A little safer for work, thank Allah for small mercies.)

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

Who needs exaggerating islamophobes to give muslims a bad rep of backwardness?
:-(

Especially when they are so elegantly dressed to do the backstroke.
:-/

Alex said...

After reading "Reading Lolita in Tehran" I actually see these swimsuits as a step forward. No veil. Pretty colors. And permission to go swimming!

Mind you compared to the Med, Adriatic and Aegean Seas dress code, this does seem very restrictive.

Anonymous said...

Pascal said:
Who needs exaggerating islamophobes to give muslims a bad rep of backwardness?

Especially when they are so elegantly dressed to do the backstroke.

SO, does Pascal supports the new trend of Modest swimwear?

Alex said...

So just thinking on. What was American and European swim wear like 80-100 years ago? How recent is the micro bikini? There are some areas where size of bikini is "enforced" in the US.

The other thing is the labeling of the product families "slim" or "modest". We all know how powerful words can be.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

I once knew a Brazilian girl. She was horrified at the thought of nude beaches. On the other hand she was astounded to see the big amount of fabric often included in a bikini in Denmark.

Which may indicate that when something is sufficiently taboo, something else will compensate. No nudity means tiny bikinis.

Anonymous said...

Maybe one of you guys will remember, even if it was many years ago...

A Spanish township had passed a bill permitting women to go topless on the nearby beach, but that applied only for those who would contribute positively to the collective sight (or something along those lines)...

Now, how's that for a controversial position on nudity?! :-)

P.S. I've searched the web for more info, but my memory being what it is, I don't have enough to start with.

I would have expected feminist groups to have kept the issue alive much longer, though...

Anonymous said...

So, Eolake, you seem to go against microkinis? I see.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Anurag, please stop interpreting things I say as coming out "for" or "against" things.

I think viewing the world as factions opposed to one another is an untrue view which only breeds trouble and ulcers.

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

Absolutely. The world is divided into two categories of people: those who divide people into categories, and those who don't.
I'm the latter kind. ;-)

Anurag, that was irony. Again. You really need to get used to the concept. When someone you trust seems to approve of an extremely ridiculous idea with a lot of enthusiasm, expect it to be irony: a way to mean the exact opposite, through the literary use of ridicule.
And, to be perfectly clear here, I find uptight people so ridiculous that I love to treat them with irony. That way, I smile while venting off.

Besides, that fanatism about "modest attire" in muslim countries is very recent, and totally artificial. Less than 50 years ago, women wearing a head scarf in the streets of Egypt were the exception. Today, under the pressure of the fundamentalist and radical groups influencing Society and the laws, they have become the norm. That's not religion: it's tradition, a culture of narrow-mindedness, and I believe with absolutely no irony that it is very stupid.
I hope this sets your mind to rest?

As for "micro-bikinis", check out R.A.F.'s link, and tell me in your opinion whether you think they are more modest than total nudity, or deliberately more suggestive. Sexy lingerie is similarly designed to be more erotic than simple nudity, to convey specially enhanced sexual codes.

Alex said...

There is a good study at the bikini science website.

I find the Japanese micro one piece fascinating.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Where is that one?

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

Hangar,
There is a huge difference between "muslim modesty" and the Naked Rambler. Stephen Gough follows a purely individual choice. Women "modesty" is a transparent excuse to reinforce in them the daily feeling of shame for merely being a woman, a tool for smothering their liberties, and the propaganda of people bent on dominating them.

I would fully respect the individual right of any woman to be shy. But see what is happening in France: islamist preachers are gaining more and more audience in the underprivileged suburbs with a muslim immigrant population; "modest" attire is spreading, notoriously after a phase where many women are PAID to display it and influence others; and in the end, young women who don't yield to that artificial social pressure are being intimidated into it, insulted daily, and sometimes get gang-raped to "teach them to dress like whores". In 21st century Europe.

In India, there's a group of people, I believe they are called "Naga" (is it the correct name, Anurag?), who possess nothing, live an ascetic naked life, and in that very prude country they are revered as holy men.

The Naked Rambler isn't trying to pressure, much less intimidate, anybody into doing the same as he. He just wants the freedom to be the opposite of very shy. Unlike exhibitionists, he's not trying to invade the freedom of others by seeking to shock them, either. Only asking for the freedom to be himself.
And yet he is treated the same as dangerous criminals and thrown in jail. The same as the most dangerous and hardened criminals, in solitary confinement, which is generally considered a form of torture.

I still haven't understood what UK law justifies sticking him in jail every few days. In Saudi Arabia, there's a law forbidding christians from even gathering privately in the house of one of them to discretely pray. Because the other "pious muslims" consider it as "shocking blasphemy against the One True religion". In a majority of muslim countries, converting from Islam to another religion is equivalent to the "crime of apostasy", and punishable by death. Even if you were forced to become a muslim in the first place!

You cannot renounce your rights every time there appears somebody complaining these rights "hurt their sensitivities". That's the antithesis of true freedom, of "live and let live". Mutual tolerance of everybody as they freely choose to be is the rule of thumb.

P.S.: Veiled muslim women do not freely choose to become so: they are brainwashed until an equivalent of the Stockholm Syndrome has them convinced that submissiveness is their choice, instead of a mental survival reaction to deprivation of freedom.

I would never THINK of criticizing a woman who's gone bald from chemo and covers her head because she understandably feels shy. But Bin Laden's "holy army" that's stormed the world during the last century with their own twisted notion of muslim religion? They're definitely not free to pressure me into following their ways, they're twisting the very notion of freedom into "solely free to follow what I present as the will and command of God". It's an openly violent and terrorist cult trying to get the whole world to yield in a very un-free manner.
And those women? They simply make me fell sorry. But if they weren't prisoners of their immense ignorance (most of them can't even read!), I'd merely consider them as free to be stupid.

I once saw a documentary about the daily life of a "very pious" muslim immigrant family in Marseille, France. I lived there for two years, saw the casual topless women on the beaches, and everybody behaving in a very civilised manner. In that documentary, two women covered with enough fabric to turn them into the visual equivalent of a pair of shapeless potato sacks, went to the seaside to swim in the hot summer.
They went in the water fully dressed with their countless layers. They went to swim in a secluded place, out of eye reach from the nearby ordinary beach. And how did they go swimming? In turn: one would enter the water, while the other one would stay guard to make sure there were no pervert men ogling them!!! Men so perverted, they would find that scene more interesting, apparently, than the closeby beach full of young beauties in a monikini!
I wish I were just making this up, but I swear, I saw it. :-(

This is not the kind of world I want to live in. I want to be sure that a harmless naked rambler crackpot remains free to be himself. Because, if we consent into prohibiting the 1% most extreme harmless freedom, then the 1% slightly less extreme there remains after that one... a day will come where praying with my friends in the privacy of our home can earn us the death penalty.
Not that I'm fond of praying. But it should forever remain my full free choice, not the State's!
In Sudan, nobody has the right to drink any alcohol, under islamic law. But if a Christian is tried for that "crime", he'll get sentenced to 20 lashes, "only instead of 40, because he is not a muslim". Hugely magnanimous, eh?
That's what "modest attire" ultimately aims at promoting. The pretense of arbitrary virtue is a weapon of conquest.

This process is being sneakily pushed in Lebanon since 1964, through the political marginalisation of Christians, and some more or less violent fundamentalist actions. The pressure is constant.
Eolake knew this "trick" and told about it in 2005.

These women aren't JUST pathetic, alas. They're plain scaring me by what this trend reveals underneath: the progress of morality-justified straight-jackets, both literally and symbolically.

If one day some regime wants to outlaw the wearing of all clothes, I'll also be very wary of the decision and its underlying intentions. So far, 99,99% of the time, the Law is not meant to help the citizens, but to favor the power of those in place. With a bit of luck, they might do it by giving the people the things the people believe they need, and at times it will even be a positive thing. By some miracle, the world manages to somehow progress that way.

"Dude, this freezing weather is madness. The streets are so slippery, that every time I took one step forward, I went three steps back!
- Oh yeah? Then how come you managed to arrive here?
- That's because finally I gave up and headed home..."

Anonymous said...

You might have guessed it, but graphs and tables, especially where they seem out of place, usually catch my eye. And I'm glad they do, because it allows me to find some amusing ones at times, like this one.

According to this, the muslims are simply suffering from a quantum leap backwards in time... ;-)

Anonymous said...

Bert, does that means that biki would be considered to be ugly in the future?

Anonymous said...

"Bert, does that means that biki would be considered to be ugly in the future?"

Anything that is "in" at any point in time, including one season's bikinis for instance, will eventually become out of fashion (and to fashion aficionados, the past is notoriously ugly). That's all the chart says in that regard, but it can be fun to extrapolate on the meaning and apply the whole thing out of context.

Anonymous said...

Well, i will always find a bikini ona beautiful lady to be beautiful. :-)

Alex said...

Tardy reply again.

Girl wearing very delicate one piece

The page is titled Japanese Wildlife Chopstick Maillots

Anonymous said...

"Girl wearing very delicate one piece"

That one has to come with a roll of two-sided adhesive tape!! 8-))

Posmena Sales said...

The Burqini is available to buy online from:
- modestswimsuits.co.uk