SYDNEY — In Europe, the burkini is seen as a symbol of Muslim migrants’ failure to integrate into secular society. Here in Australia, where it was invented by Lebanese migrant Aheda Zanetti in 2004, the swimsuit tends to be seen as part of the solution.
The outcry in France over the burkini — a swimsuit that covers a woman’s entire body except for the face, hands and feet — is the “total opposite” of the response in Australia, Zanetti told POLITICO. “Australians actually thought it was a fantastic idea,” she says.
This summer, mayors in at least five French towns have banned it. Prime Minister Manuel Valls proclaimed the burkini was a symptom of “the enslavement of women” incompatible with French values, and German and Austrian politicians have jumped on the anti-burkini bandwagon.
Their response mystifies the burkini’s inventor, a Muslim migrant from Tripoli, Lebanon, who arrived in Australia as a two-year-old in 1969.
“The burkini did wonders for Muslim women and girls. It created confidence to get active. Now the French say it’s not their values. I don’t understand what French values are then. Is it French values to force someone to wear a bikini?” Zanetti asks.
On the surface, Sydney is a laid-back, sun-and-sand, “she’ll be right, mate” haven of multiculturalism. About a quarter of its 5 million residents are migrants. But as in European cities with high levels of migration, it’s not always smooth sailing.
Angry crowds singled out and attacked people of Middle Eastern appearance at Sydney’s Cronulla beach in December 2005 | Cameron Spencer/Getty Images
In the early 2000s, Australia’s cultural melting pot was set to boil over. Racial tensions spiked after a series of gang rapes perpetrated by Lebanese Muslim youths targeting non-Muslim teen girls; it got worse after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S., then hit a low point in December 2005, when race riots erupted in response to reports that a group of Middle Eastern men had beaten up white lifeguards at South Sydney’s Cronulla beach, popular with both the Muslim community and white, working-class Australians.
In the aftermath of the Cronulla riots, the government sought to bridge the divide, banding together with Surf Life Saving Australia to recruit Muslim surf life-savers through the “On the Same Wave” campaign.
Billowing burqas
To get Muslim women on board, Surf Life Saving Australia approached Zanetti, who lives in Sydney’s western suburbs with her Greek-Muslim husband and has four children aged 13 to 27. Before she became a clothing designer she was a hairdresser, though sewing and designing her own clothes had been a hobby since the age of 12.
Before the burkini, Zanetti invented the hijood, an amalgamation of a hijab veil and a hood, made of breathable material suitable for land-based sports. She came up with the design after watching her niece struggling during a game of netball, a popular sport in Australia similar to basketball, while wearing her team’s uniform over her Islamic garb. After failing to find a sports-friendly hijab on the market, Zanetti decided to make one herself.
The genesis of the burkini is similar — Zanetti read an article about Muslim women swimming in their billowing burqas, and decided to create an outfit they could wear without restricting their movement in the water.
The point of the burkini was not to underscore the difference between white and Middle Eastern Australians, but to reduce it.
“I came up with the design to fit in with Australian culture,” Zanetti says. “I took away the veil and replaced it with a hood. The modesty was there, but the shape and style and image of a stereotypical Muslim woman was taken away to fit in with the Australian lifestyle. It looks like any other swimsuit, just a bit more modest.
“When I first wore it, people would come up to me and say ‘finally, fantastic, you’ve got something you can wear, it looks good, and it’s suitable.’ It didn’t look like a typical Muslim garment. I remember walking in Cronulla beach one day, I was wearing a green and yellow burkini, and people thought I was an Olympian.”
Zanetti adapted the burkini for Surf Life Saving Australia, incorporating the organization’s signature red-and-yellow colors and a more athlete-friendly design.
Mecca Laalaa, Sydney’s first female Muslim lifesaver, hit the sand at Cronulla beach in 2006.
A niche product before the Cronulla riots, media coverage of the burkini-clad Laalaa made the swimsuit famous.
Against exclusion
Today, Zanetti sees both the hijood and the burkini as tools that free Muslim women to join in with activities they’d otherwise be excluded from or underperform in.
“I created them to stop Muslim children from missing out on swimming lessons and sports activities,” she says. “There was nothing out there to suit their needs.”
Burkini creator Aheda Zanetti, center, with two women modeling the garment | Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images
She adds: “I hope the French prime minister and the mayors see that they should find out how to combine communities, how to work around issues, instead of harming the community, taking the beach away from some people and punishing them. That’s just hatred.”
While none of the original cohort of lifesavers trained under the On the Same Wave initiative in the wake of the Cronulla riots still patrol Sydney’s beaches, the program is far from a failure. Over the past few years, as a new generation of Middle Eastern migrants has arrived on Australia’s shores, it has been extended throughout the country and opened up to newly arrived asylum-seekers.
In the meantime, Europe’s burkini bans haven’t hurt Zanetti’s company, Ahiida, which has sold over 700,000 swimsuits since 2008, around 40 percent of them to European customers, Zanetti says, many of whom are not Muslims.
“Over 40 percent of our sales are from non-Muslim women,” she says. “The Jewish community embraces it. I’ve seen Mormons wearing it. A Buddhist nun purchased it for all of her friends. I’ve seen women who have issues with skin cancer or body image, moms, women who are not comfortable exposing their skin — they’re all wearing it.
“It doesn’t matter why they make these choices. The beach is there for everyone to enjoy. We are women. We should be able to wear whatever we want to and do whatever we want to do, whenever we want to do it.”