First there was sweatergate

Wonder Boy and I are still churning our way through Six Feet Under (christened Six Feet Down Under, or simply, The Aussies, after a verbal blunder I made a while back). I love the show and find myself relating to a little too much of it. Last, during an episode of season 5, we watched as one character named Claire got a job through a temp agency in a very corporate office. A departure from her normal days as an artist, she feels stifled by the corporate ridiculousness and her character has some fabulous lines. My favorites are repeated comparisons if pantyhose sausage casings.

I love most deriding comments made about workplace dress codes. They are 100% ridiculous you know. I am watching this little rebellion taking place at my own place of employment as people slowly and quietly disrespect the “no open-toes shoes” portion of our dress policy. As a few people have proven this bending of rules to be okay with peep-toed shoes, the girls have flocked to shoe boutiques and warehouses, showing up at work with their feet beautiful and their toes peeking out.

The mere fact that so many smart women are excited about showing off a third of their big toe and maybe of their index toe (if that’s what you call the second toe) is incredibly sad. It’s not even a very attractive part of the human form! (Some fetishists may disagree.)

This weekend I read the newest issue of Time Magazine, which featured an article about the newest fashion item to be hitting the Muslim fashion scene –The Burquina, by Ahiida® and Splashgear^TM. It’s a two-piece burqa for women to wear at the beach and in the water. I find the swimsuits goofy and an odd way to get around religious stipulations about female dress. The women wearing the suits are THRILLED. And I guess they should be. After all, a girl could drown trying to go in the ocean in her burqa. Seriously.

Several years ago my friend Delicious and I visited Tangier, Morocco. Near the end of a trip that challenged just about every social norm I knew, we sat on the beach waiting for our ship back into Spain. Men and boys were in the water and playing soccer all along the beach. A few mothers sat quietly while their young children played. There were always a good distance back from any of the men and they were always fully covered. One woman dared to go into the water with her children, both of whom were much too small to have gone into the ocean unaccompanied. Delicious and I both noticed her, in her modest black American lifeguard style swimsuit. While we noted her bare arms and legs as something of a novelty in the conservative country, we didn’t think much of it. We were the only ones. Every man and boy on the beach quickly exited the water and lines up along the shore to gawk at the woman. They way they were looking was not sexual – it was condemning. What she was doing, exposing herself in that way, was sinful to them.

I find the idea of a Burqini so repulsive and offensive. But I find the idea of a mother not being able to get into the water with her young children worse. And the religious ban on showing skin is SO, SO, SO much different than the stupid workplace dress codes I laugh at. But, if I am to offer understanding for the woman I work with and their excitement for the trivial accomplishment of showing their toes, then certainly I can try to understand the woman who writes in on the SplashgearTM web site with ” It isn’t just a swim suit–it is freedom, exercise, and a lesson for my kids and everyone else that hijab isn’t limiting, it is liberating. JazakAllah!” And on the Ahiida® site: “After 7 years of not being able to get into the water – I was in there on Sunday! It was great – alhumduallah!”