The wisdom of Taj Hargey

“How can you swim properly if you wear a hijab?” - in the Sun

Comments

[Sohaib]

Since when did hijab get promoted to being a full robe?

And how does someone from some institute get the honorific title of "Muslim spokesman"?

And how on earth can you swim with long hair? All women should be made to go bald. Anything else is PC gone barmy.

[.]

I'm about to post on this myself, so if anyone could clear up exactly what she was wearing (someone on BlairWatch suggests it was a chador) as it certainly wasn't just a hijab as the Scum suggests, I'd be grateful.

[Sohaib]

It's impossible to tell just from the report. These things tend to be exaggerated, as someone could wear quite a normal loose-fitting garment (male or female), and they would be described by some as "long flowing traditional robes".

[Mustafa Arif]

I don't know about this. But more pools should enforce prior showering, and wearing of swimming caps.

[joe90]

Has anyone ever seen photographs of the bathing and swimming attire of Victorian and Edwardian Britian?

I'll try and locate some images but we're talking about huge flouncy dresses, bustles and all.

We are talking about people who used to cover up the legs of their pianos because it was considered rude and might give the men-folk strange ideas and urges !

[George Carty]

One of my favourite quotes on Victorian hypocrisy:

"It is ironic, actually, that Victorian Orientalists, in their tightly laced & disfiguring corsets would label the flowing veils of Islam to be oppressive. And that their male counter-parts would claim that the Muslim male was oppressing their women folk. For back in the Victorian world of Europe and America, their own women folk were closed behind the doors of the home, with no political voice, right to divorce or right to inheritance."

[joe90]

Here are some images and info of yesteryear's swimming and bathing apparal - really quite cute!

Capitola Museum - a "not so revealing" look at Swimwear
In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking
Now, Heaven knows,
Anything goes.
Cole Porter 'Anything Goes' 1934

Photo of Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset 1909
'Edwardian children paddle in the sea. Bathing huts are parked further up the beach.'

Victorian Bathing Costume or Seaside Dress, ca. 1870s-1880s
'Rare Victorian bathing costume / seaside dress or swimsuit originally made for a woman or young lady, dating to the 1870s-1880s.'

To think of the kind of clothes Racist Murdoch prefers his readership to see women dressed in. Maybe that is what he is really objecting to.

I enjoyed looking this stuff up.
All the best!

[Saracen]

When I was young we used to swim bare arsed. True freedom.

[aineliva]

When I was young (not that long ago) we swam in the sea, and there was a women's swimming area, and a men's swimming area; then the village got affluent and built a swimming-pool. That's when all the problems began.

[joe90]

I thought some of you might be interested in this blog-article from lenin today, which shows him at his usual best -
Ruth Kelly promoting 'tolerance' within Muslim community.

It's about some weird Opus Dei fanatic who uses all sorts of weird devices in public, but uses ordinary everyday clothes to disguise them - and about her fanatical fundamentalist christian leader who is in charge a militant firebrand sect who has wasted billions of taxpayers' money in order to murder 100s of 1000s of innocent people (to date and still counting), and whose sect is now intent on building a vast expensive arsenal of nuclear WMD, even though the general taxpaying public doesn't want that either!

[M. Landers]

Lessons from the North African coast: no matter what spandex makers might have convinced people of otherwise over the years, long and relatively loose fabrics, once introduced into water, do not in fact morph into scary sea monster tentacles bent upon dragging us all under.