French are very upset that Muslim women cover too much and must not be permitted to do so. A woman wearing Burqini was banned from a swimming pool because she was all covered up except her face. Excuse being that she scares the children and Burqini is unhygienic. Watch out Michael Phelps how you dress in a pool when you're in France.
In US some Americans complain that Michelle Obama bares too much. First her arms and now when sightseeing in Grand Canyon she was wearing shorts. Oh my. Too much for the religious right especially. Maybe she should have worn Burqini while touring the Grand Canyon.
The thing about France is that it is a unitary state. It's not only a unitary state in terms of the political system of the central government being supreme with the subordinate levels being creatures of the central government; it's a cultural unitary state-of-mind.
ReplyDeleteBack in 1789 when the French Revolution was taking place and people were cutting their credit cards and heads with the guillotines, the majority of French citizens did not speak French. Most spoke languages that were related to French. The only holdouts are a few people who speak Catalan, Breton, and Alsace-German. Oh, I did forget the Corsican speakers.
It took two centuries to eradicate the non-French langues. In France today, there are no official statistics about different ethnic groups--either historical or recent migrants after WWII.
Today's French Republic is a state that allows very few exceptions to the legal rules and regulations. It is a state where everyone is theoretically equal. In reality, some people are more equal than others. There are rules for what men and women must wear in the French public piscines. There are rules for the French language that are written by the Academie Française. At the same time, the French love to flout the rules. They may bitch about a Muslim woman wearing a burguini. At the same time, they let their bitchy poodles poo-poo on the sidewalks and they won't pick-up their poodles' excrement. Some French have no shame in hopping the weird turnstyles into the Paris metro. They'll piss on the edge of the subway platform. Yet, their pools must be kept "clean" by enforcing the ban against burquinis for women and boardshorts for men.
Vive la France!
SD, thank you for your detailed comment. It is sad isn’t. As long as there is such hypocrisy in the world there will be no peace.
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