#bukini

I've started swimming recently at the Wilson Aquatic Center. Doing laps for the first time in years was exhausting. This is a gorgeous recreational space free for DC residents, bonus it has an awesome hot tub.  If you live in the District, I highly recommend you pay a visit!

You ask how I went swimming as a hijabi? With my fancy bathing suit of course.  A few months ago I purchased a Burkini from Ahiida.com.  It's an Austrailian company and cost me close to $150, the suit was around $100 and shipping & handling came to $50!  Crazy expensive, but I figured it is an investment in my health and brings me one step closer to my goal of doing a triathalon.  Yea, not so much.

Most of the reviews on the site are not on the functionality of the burkini but on its aesthetic appeal. The comments just touch upon how happy women were by getting it in the mail and how great the "feel" of the cloth is. There are no reviews of substance detailing how effective or ineffective the suit is in the water. Many of the commenters seem to be mothers who are looking for something that allows them to play in the water with their children, that is a perfectly legitimate thing to be happy about and I am glad that this burkini allows many mothers to be in water with their children.  If you are interested in just playing around in a pool/beach or just lounging around, it's great; but if you want to do serious swimming-continuous laps for a few hours-it's not the best.

Let me start with the Pros:

It got me into the water after a long time.

The head covering fits really well, almost like a swim cap.

It is quick drying.

Cons:

I recognize that I am a petit woman to begin with, but the style I bought was huge on me and it was a small which is fine except that when I would get in the water, I could feel the weight of the suit as it absorbed water which made it difficult to do laps.  On the website it says that it has "low water absorbency," I don't agree with that. How can that much cloth not absorb water and be "light in weight?" I guess when it is completely dry, it's "light."

Sometimes when I would get in the water air would get trapped in my shirt causing it to balloon and making me look like a macho woman which is cool but annoying because on numerous accounts I had to push the air out of my suit.

The hijab part of the suit will stay put unless you like diving, in that case becareful because the force of hitting the water will cause it to slide back - yes that happened to me and I realized underwater and scrambled to fix it as I came back up to the surface.

As with anything that gets wet, it clings to the body. When I would get out of the pool the suit would stick to my body, defeating the purpose of wearing it.  Since it is fast drying that only lasted a few minutes, but it was enough to make me feel uncomfortable everytime I got out of the pool.  

The cost: $150 and that was a sale price. It's really expensive!!

In summary: The burkini is good for splashing around but I wouldn't recommend it to people who want to do laps especially not for this price.  I will have to figure out something else for my triathalon prep..