Can we talk about how France banned burkinis on their beaches in 2016 and nobody blinked?

I was reading through some old news archives from 2016 and stumbled across this. France banned burkinis on like 30 beaches that summer. The whole argument was about secularism and public order. But isn't that just picking on one group's clothing while everyone else wears whatever they want? Has anyone else looked into how this played out with actual fines issued?

2 comments

2 Comments

umabailey3d ago

Dig into the court records from that summer. The fines were real, I saw a few where women got hit with like 38 euros just for sitting on the beach in a long-sleeve shirt and leggings. What kills me is how local mayors wrote these bans on the fly, no legal basis, and cops just enforced them anyway. If you want the full picture, pull up the case of a woman in Cannes who ended up getting her ticket thrown out months later, but that didn't help her when she was already marched off the sand.

joseph_coleman3d ago

I read an article last year that talked about how many of those bans specifically targeted women in burkinis while men could swim shirtless right next to them without a problem. One town in the south actually tried to justify it as a "public order" issue, but the local judge shut that down pretty fast when a group of women sued. The whole thing felt less about safety and more about telling certain people they didn't belong on the beach.