Tag: swimwear

fitness · inclusiveness · swimming

Shifting Currents

Diane Harper1 Comment

I have been interested in the history of swimming for a very long time. During the pandemic, I even recorded a series of videos demonstrating each of the strokes described in Everard Digby’s 1587 book “De Arte Natandi” (The Art of Swimming).

One of the best books around on swimming history is Karen Eva Carr’s “Shifting Currents”, a world history of swimming. It looks at evidence for swimming that dates back thousands of years. It also looks at why Europeans didn’t swim for centuries, and how important swimming was around much of the world.

Yet today, we often think of swimming as very European/North American, while African and Asian swimmers, in particular, seem rare.

When I lifeguarded as a teen, I remember there being exactly one Black man who came for lane swims. I never saw another non-white swimmer; not at lane swims, public swims, or taking lessons.

I have written about swimming as a transgressive activity in the context of women and larger-bodied swimmers. But there is an important history of excluding minorities as well. One of the most powerful moments in the American Civil Rights Movement came on June 18, 1964, when Black and White protesters went into a Whites-only pool in Florida together. A photograph of the owner pouring acid into the pool to force them out helped galvanize the Senate to pass the Civil Rights Act the next day, after an 83-day filibuster.

A black and white photo shows then 17-year old Mimi Jones and two other protesters screaming as James Brock pours acid into the pool. Photo: Bettmann/Corbis

More recently, women wearing modest swimsuits have been targeted. Tracy wrote about it here.

I have really noticed how the currents have shifted in recent years. Most of the people during public swims at my pool are from visible minority communities, and Burkini-clad hijabi women sometimes make up 10% of the patrons. Some pools also offer girls/women-only lessons and swim times.

My swim classes are made up mostly of students who are either immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants. My social media is filled with stories of excited adults (most of whom are Black) who are finally learning to swim.

We’re not where we need to be yet. But I like to think that we may be better n the way to truly inclusive spaces at our swimming pools.

swimming

If you’ve ever held back from swimming because of how you look in a swimsuit you should know…

Diane Harper1 Comment


Nobody is looking at you. Everyone is too busy figuring out their own stroke.
And the water genuinely does not care.
The people who have said something about your body are not in the pool doing the work. You are.

That automatically makes you the athlete in the room. Not them.
Get in the water. You belong there.

These words of wisdom come from Aishwarya Jagdish, an Indian triathlete on Threads.

I came across her post shortly after a particularly busy shift at work. All three pools were packed because it’s March Break in Ontario.

I was scanning for safety but couldn’t help but notice how relaxed people were about wearing what made them happy, instead of what media tells you is “right”. I admired the huge variety of people wearing everything from tiny bikinis to swim dresses, T-shirts and leggings on all different bodies.

I love this image of four women in a variety of swimsuits, which I found in Catherine’s post from five years ago about what women over 50 should wear for swimming.

Most were there to play with their kids rather than swimming in the lap pool, but the principle holds whether you are training for a race or building sandcastles at the beach.

Bodiless Swimsuit Ads Reinforce Body Norms Too
beach body · body image · fashion · feminism · normative bodies

Bodiless Swimsuit Ads Reinforce Body Norms Too

elan.paulson1 Comment

It is summer swim season! I know this because I see on my Facebook feed “beach body” memes and a dramatic uptick in swimsuit advertising.

a cute seal with the words in meme font Beach body ready...for winter
The least repulsive of the repulsive memes about beach bodies. Because cute seal.

I normally don’t pay much attention to swimwear ads because swimsuits are not that important to me. However, I can understand the appeal of shopping online: no store assistants, no dressing rooms, no drama with wrestling with ill-fitting suits.

Swimsuits from a Facebook ad that have no models wearing them.
Swimsuits from a Facebook ad that have no models wearing them. Okay, there’s one person, but the suit looks drawn on!

But this year, I have noticed that a few swimwear ads that feature either 3D-drawn images or the actual suits put on photoshopped-out mannequins. I don’t remember seeing before ads with these hovering bodies that are legless, armless, torsoless.

Tracy has noticed how the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated gives women equal opportunity to be objectified. Obviously that’s not good. If sexified suits objectify women regardless of age, and if a steady diet of these images still perpetuates body ideals, then is no body in the swimsuits our inclusive and evolved solution?

The decision to dis-embody models in these ads is likely far more economic than activist: I’m sure it’s cheaper to use realistic pictures or torso mannequins than to hire real people, and shoppers may have an easier time imagining themselves in the suit without a real body in it for comparison.

And maybe I’m making too much of these ads, but they weird me out. They make me think of Kevin Bacon as the Hollow Man in a tankini. The disembodied swimsuit model–as imperfectly resembling a human being in a way that causes “uneasiness and revulsion”–should be added to the graph visualizing the uncanny valley hypothesis.

The uncanny valley graph portraying how non-human bodies create uncertainty and revulsion the more realistic they become. Added to the image is "disembodied swimsuit ads."
By Smurrayinchester – self-made, based on image by Masahiro Mori and Karl MacDorman at CC BY-SA 3.0. Adapted by a weirded-out me.

From my feminist perspective, the no-body in these ads is not equivalent to everybody: it removes the one thing people need to wear these suits in the first place. These ads may avoid replicating images of so-called ideal bodies, but they also remove the bodies people have–complete with colour, fat, wrinkles, blemishes, scars, and hair. Ironically, the absence of real bodies features the ultimate normative body, one that is stripped of all uniqueness of size, shape, and mobility differences. In the case of the leaky, hysterical cis-female body so feared and scorned by patriarchy, what body is more “perfect” than the one that does not exist at all?

I tried to find answers to my questions (except the last one, which was rhetorical) with more Internet. While many web articles give advice on purchasing swimsuits by size, fit, fabric, style, cost, coverage, quality, versatility, quality, and “features” (like pockets), none described whether I should buy online a suit modelled by a real but photoshopped body or by an invisible but perfect fake body. I did notice that a few articles–such as Teen Vogue and TripSavvy–used these body-less swimsuit images in their feature banners as well.

For the record, in all this web searching I did notice more body-diverse swimwear than I have seen in the past. After staring at row upon row of swim-suited no-bodies, I was comforted and excited by these all-too-human ads.

Then, I realized that online shopping has its own trappings, and I closed my laptop altogether. Maybe going into an actual store to try swimwear on my own body is looking not be so bad after all.