http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090812/ap_on_re_eu/eu_france_burquini_banned
So this 'Carole', a convert to Islam, wanted to go for a swim, but also wanted to remain modest. So she bought a burquini, a burqa-bikini portmanteau, and tried to go swimming. But French laws about wearing 'possible street clothes' while swimming prohibited her.
This seems to me typical French ideological overreaction, combined with the usual legislative blindness and resistance to future complications. Any gym or pool I have ever entered has hygienic requirements, usually mandating that one bring a change of clothes and shower both before and after using the pool. The problem here could easily be solved by Carole and other similarly inclined women changing from their non-revealing street clothes to their non-revealing burquini, which presumably has a design intended for la plage et la piscine (although, if I were a woman, I'd hesitate to wear it in a known undertow area). If you've seen photos of 19th century bathing suits, the burquini design doesn't seem at all outrageous, and has an absence of hideous carny stripes to recommend it. After all, the bad on nude swimmers is at its heart a matter of modesty rather than hygiene – swimming trunks or a bikini aren't going to keep a filthy person from polluting the pool, as various “accidents” in our client associations' pools have demonstrated this summer.
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