JAUNDICED EYE
A modest Aussie cozzie causes a French kerfuffle
France normally comes to a virtual standstill during the long summer months, as everyone who is able exits the stifling cities and heads for the coast. This year, however, there was no seaside idyll.
Instead there’s been bitterness and division, with a dividing line scratched into the beach sand between opposing forces. At times the enmity turned violent. In one incident, hundreds of men laid into one another in a pitched battle on a Corsican beach, leaving four of them hospitalised.
And the reason? A novel beachwear called the burkini. That’s a portmanteau neologism for a new kind of swimming costume for women, cobbled from burka — the head-to-toe Islamic dress — and bikini — of “itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, yellow polka dot” fame.
Unlike the burka, which is banned in France because it hides the identity of the wearer, the burkini exposes the face, hands and feet. It looks somewhat like a body-hugging wetsuit with a nifty built-in hood.