I Cover Up at the Beach. Here's Why It Shouldn't Matter.

Earlier this summer, Yahoo Style wrote about Beyoncé making a splash in the Caribbean — dressed in the following curiously long-sleeved swimsuit:

And while it may have inspired some confused looks and tittering among some of my peers, who couldn’t understand the logic in covering up so heavily at the beach, I immediately went out and bought my own version.

To me — a fair-skinned redhead who spends summers dodging UV rays through a careful juggling of rash guards, hats, beach umbrellas, and sunscreen — the easy, zip-on coverage seemed too good to be true. So does my never-questioned freedom to purchase and wear such an item, as I’m now acutely aware.

I’m referring, of course, to the controversial burkini ban in 30 French cities — an anti-Muslim measure that’s played out in chilling ways, with police fining burkini wearers and even forcing women to remove the offending items in front of gawking beachgoer crowds. Critics note that it’s all made one thing clear: that the bans have effectively perpetuated the same oppression that they claim to be fighting — and have lent credence to the sexist idea that no matter how much or how little a woman chooses to wear in public, she’s wrong.

“Women’s rights imply the right for a woman to cover up,” Rim-Sarah Alouane, a French Muslim and religious freedom expert at the University of Toulouse, told the Associated Press. The burkini, she said, “was created by Western Muslim women who wanted to conciliate their faith and desire to dress modestly with recreational activities. What is more French than sitting on a beach in the sand? We are telling Muslims that no matter what you do … we don’t want you here.”

Some, including Asma Uddin, director of strategy at the Center for Islam and Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C., are questioning the enforceability of the measure. That, she told KQED radio, is “because there are other women who are wearing modest-wear, or wearing similar types of clothing for other purposes, such as wanting to prevent a sunburn, and [officials] are really having a difficult time trying to draw those lines.” It only emphasizes “the discriminatory aspect of this law,” Uddin said, “and the fact that of all these different reasons why people might be wearing something more modest than a typical swimsuit, the only ones that are being zeroed in on and penalized are those with Muslim religion as a motivation.”

Tanisha Ford, associate professor of history and Africana studies at the University of Delaware and an expert in feminism and style, tells Yahoo Beauty it’s imperative to keep in mind the history of colonialism and anti-Muslim sentiment in France. The attacks on burkini wearers, she says, are “about the French government believing it has the right to police the bodies of women of color in that context. The burkini is just the topic of the day because of the season.”

Still, Ford notes, even beyond the French and religious context, what women wear on the beach has always been a topic of scrutiny — it’s just that the discussion has typically focused on the idea of too little material. “Now, for a whole host of reasons, we have women choosing more coverage,” she says. “And women most certainly should have the right to choose swimwear that suits their personal needs.”

The battle over women’s swimwear has indeed traditionally focused on concerns about too much skin showing (with the fight to go topless while sunbathing raging on, most recently with a series of fierce protests on Go Topless Day earlier this month). Now the pendulum has swung the other way. But the demand for high-coverage swimwear only seems to be growing — motivated not only by religion, as Uddin pointed out, but a desire to avoid melanoma. And who’s to say that one reason is more acceptable than another?

Aheda Zanetti, creator of the burkini, told NPR that she came up with the concept after a childhood of missing out on team sports because she felt uncomfortable in the required uniforms. “I just want to go swimming,” she said, adding that her first burkini customers were not Muslim women but Australians who wanted protection from the strong UV rays there.

For Sarah Buxton, creator of the wetsuit-like SPF 50 active wear Tutu Blue, which made an appearance on Shark Tank last year, her inspiration came from a brush with skin cancer. “I was struck one day with this idea to make a suit where I could enjoy the outdoors on my terms,” she notes on the company website. “I didn’t want to hide in the shade and I couldn’t rely on sunscreens which are greasy and continually need to be re-applied.”

Plenty of celebrities besides Beyoncé have followed suit — including Nina Dobrev, Serena Williams, and designer Angela Simmons. And while the styles and patterns of long-sleeved, long-legged swimwear may still leave much to be desired and the concept is still relatively new in our relentlessly sun-worshiping culture, there’s more choice than one might realize. A few striking examples: this Donald one-piece with a playful pattern ($199); the Mara Hoffman Rashguard Surf Suit ($83); the Seea Playsuit ($105); and my beloved Body Glove one piece (on sale now for $60).

Still, when Nigella Lawson was photographed in a full-on burkini while frolicking on a sun-drenched Australian beach back in 2011, it made collective social-media heads explode, as no one could figure out why she would possibly want to be so covered up (she later explained, to the disappointment of many, that it was because her husband preferred her pale).

“At the heart of both stories is an obsession with women’s bodies and how they should or shouldn’t be displayed – and the fierce patrolling of different social conventions governing them,” wrote Madeleine Bunting in the Guardian at the time, referring both to Lawson’s photo and France’s newly passed burka ban. “On a beach, a woman is expected to expose her body, and it’s that refusal which has captured attention.” And so it goes. Still.

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