Tragically Pure

I started talking to another teacher about the bikini bottoms and how revealing they were and the topic moved onto more feminist ideas. And I argued that they were a form of oppression because they were so revealing. As the conversation continued my colleague asked "what if the girls are confident in what they are wearing?" I always get a little thrown when I am asked this. I responded with "who benefits and who designed these bikinis." She conceded the point.

But I keep coming back to it in my mind "what if these girls feel confident?" And you know what, who cares. Who cares if these girls feel confident in these revealing bikinis? Oppression isn't individual, it's collective. I feel like the argument always comes back to this. Women's confidence. Not all the girls who were wearing these bikinis were confident. I saw several of them swap shirts with boys or wear a towel around their waist to hide them. I also saw several girls having to adjust them because they kept getting wedgies.

"What if she feels confident?" Women and girls feeling confident in their bikinis is great and all but it doesn't stop them from being a form of objectification. It doesn't stop making their bodies more available for men to view. It doesn't erase the fact that many girls feel pressured into wearing these bikinis because that is what is advertised to them. Sometimes these bikinis are the only ones available, so girls and women just have to settle for them.

Know what the boys were wearing? Boardshorts down to the knees. That was the main type of swimmers they boys wore at the carnival. The second type were the swim bottoms. But these are not comparable because the two pairs I saw both covered the boys' butts. It was interesting because the teacher asked me why wearing budgie smugglers was seen as less acceptable than what the girls were wearing. At the time I didn't have an answer but now I do. It's less acceptable because we are so desensitised to the objectification of women and girls bodies. We are constantly bombarded with images of women's naked or half naked forms. We are used to it by now. Men simply don't get the same treatment therefore when they do wear budgie smugglers it's something to gawk at or make a statement of.

Women and girls' confidence doesn't negate oppression. Oppression and misogyny doesn't happen on an individual scale, it's something that women as a class experience. Some women would have been content with not having the vote. Didn't stop it from being a systemic way to prevent women from participating in politics and how countries are run. Some women would have been confident being housewives. But, that didn't negate the fact that they were deterred from higher education and the workforce to do their so called duty to their husband and children. Something which is still going on to this day. As sad as this is, some women feel confident that thier husband's and boyfriends love them. This doesn't negate the fact that 1 in 6 Australian women will experience Domestic Violence. That 2 out of 5 female murder victims were killed by thier intimate partner. Some women feel confident in revealing clothes. This confidence doesn't stop them from simultaneously being objectified by men and also being shamed for being a slut or whore. Feeling confident while wearing makeup doesn't erase the fact that a woman is more likely to get a job if she is wearing makeup.