Скачать или смотреть Burkinis and belonging: 'It's this feeling the beach and hijab don't mix'

Burkinis and belonging: 'It's this feeling the beach and hijab don't mix'
hen I was 13, I started wearing hijab. I had always loved swimming but had to give it up until my mother bought some Lycra fabric from Lincraft and sewed me a fluorescent pink-and-blue two-piece wetsuit with a matching swimming cap. The local pools refused to admit me wearing the suit but I was free to go to the beach. So go to the beach I did.


Why we wear the burkini: five women on dressing modestly at the beach
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And yet the feeling that I belonged at the beach, that it was a public space in which I was “in place”, sometimes eluded me.

The belief that the beach is open to all runs deep in Australia. Wendy Garden, the curator of last year’s art exhibition On the Beach, wrote that beaches occupied “a privileged place in the national psyche”.