When Aheda Zanetti was designing the burkini, she took a prototype out for a swim at the public pool.  

Zanetti was relieved that her design passed the test – the headband stayed in place – but she also reveled in her newfound feeling of freedom and empowerment. It was the first time for the Lebanese-born Australian designer to swim in public.

“I felt like I owned the pool. I walked to the end of that pool with my shoulders back,” Zanetti writes in The Guardian.

Nobody could tell that under her burkini, Zanetti was wearing a bikini. “I’ve got the best of both worlds,” she writes.

The best of both worlds

That’s all Zanetti ever wanted, for Muslim women to enjoy every day activities like playing sports and going to the beach and still have the choice to be modest.

(She designed the burkini for her teenage niece after seeing that it was physically uncomfortable and unfeasible for her to play netball in their hometown in Australia.)

It must be the same feeling many Muslim women felt when they bought the burkini and wore it to the beach. They could enjoy the sun and sea while still being true to her personal beliefs.

A number of French towns tried to take away that right by banning the burkini. Pictures of armed police officers forcing a woman at a beach in Nice to remove some of her clothing made the rounds in social media sparking outrage in some netizens – and support in others.

French courts ruled that authorities in Villeneuve-Loubet, in the French Riveria, do not have the right to ban the burkini, setting a legal precedent for other 26 towns where there is a burkini ban.

But even so, some local authorities in Nice, Frejus and the Corsican village of Sisco have reportedly said they will continue to enforce the ban.

Women’s Equality Day

The ruling comes on the heels of Women’s Equality Day which commemorated the passage of the 19^th Amendment which granted American women the right to vote.

At a day and age when women can check off civil liberties like the right to vote, to education, to work, people are still trying to tell women what they can and cannot wear.

And nowhere is this more obvious and most ridiculous than at the beach where, well, just about anything goes and you can expect to find people in various states of dress and undress.

You have sun worshippers, who slicked in sunscreen, will choose to be topless to avoid annoying tan lines. You have those who want to be in the sun but not under it and will choose stay under a big umbrella and a floppy hat. If you live in a colder part of the world, you will understand why jeans and sweaters are perfectly acceptable to wear on a beach picnic.

And then, of course, for those who prefer to go au naturel, you have the nude beaches.

In the Philippines, we should not forget that 5 girls from the St Theresa’s College in Cebu were banned from marching at their graduation because they posted pictures of themselves at the beach wearing bikinis. (READ: Catholic school punishes student for ‘bikini’ pic on Facebook)

The school’s computer teacher downloaded the photos from the students’ Facebook page and showed them to school officials who labeled the pictures as “lewd, obscene, and immoral.” The girls were at the beach. It’s not as if the girls showed up in class in a two-piece.

And most recently, Senator Leila de Lima was splashed on the front page of a newspaper wearing her own version of swimwear.

Fight for equality

The conversation on social media was polarized. Some called the newspaper out for its lack of journalism ethics, but many others called de Lima out for “not being ashamed of her body.”

Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, women are celebrated for being proud of their bodies, whatever state it is in.

Some suggested wearing a rashguard and board shorts next time, some said that the paper was right to run the photo because it proved she was immoral, and by correlation, made the allegations about an illicit affair true.

If the same accusations were hurled at a male public servant then we should have seen half of our male legislators (including our beloved President) splattered on the front page in all their shirtless glory.

At any age, women continue to be policed and told what she can and cannot wear.

It is 2016. Women can vote, women can work, women can even be heads of state, but the fight for equality still includes having to fight for their right to wear what they want at the beach. – Rappler.com

Ana P. Santos, Rappler’s sex and gender columnist, attended the Women Deliver 2016 conference in Copenhagen, Denmark as a media scholar. Women Deliver is the largest gathering of health experts and advocates working to advance the sexual reproductive health rights of women and girls.