In France if you suffer from hair loss as a teenage girl and cannot afford a real hair wig the school will try and force you to go to class bald. The school will make you buy a chemotherapy turban, you will buy two different so that the school can choose which one they prefer and you will prove that they are chemotherapy turban and not hijab but once you wear it they will change their mind and say it looks too much like a hijab and insist on you going bald or buying a real hair wig that you cannot afford.
If your doctor makes multiple documents confirming that you suffer from alopecia because of stress and the medicine you have to take for your epilepsy and that wearing a bonnet or something is recommended for your mental health as you’re not ready to go out bald in high school as a teenage girl, instead of admitting they are wrong the school will accuse the doctor of lying and report him to the Ordre des Médecins (equivalent of the General Medical council). Your doctor will find himself asking you for a document stating that you are not Muslim in order to defend himself and prove that no he wasn’t colluding with you so you could wear a substitute for hijab.
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In France if you are a North African nurse at a public hospital and wear a fabric surgical cap they will try to make you remove it because apparently it’s a hidden hijab. They will accuse you of going against secularism and when you’ll argue that they are discriminating you by assuming you’re Muslim for a surgical cap on your head they will change their angle and claim that you should wear nothing on your hair because you wear the same surgical cap in multiple bedroom which is unhygienic apparently (which is a bullshit argument cause you wear the same scrub/uniform in different bedrooms as well). They will go as far as claiming that disposable scrub caps (you know the thin papery ones?) are not okay to wear in a hospital even if you change it regularly. And then they will fire you for a lack of hygiene because you wear a surgical cap.
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All of that will be done in the name of secularism and women’s right despite having nothing do with either quite the opposite.
The teenage girl’s story is also not just about racism and Islamophobia it’s also about ableism as the girl is convinced that the real reason the school is trying to push her out is because she had an epilepsy crisis in class and nobody knew what to do and the school nurse was absent. It could have ended badly had her best friend not known what to do to help. Apparently it was bad enough to cancel class for the rest of the day and the teacher was shocked to the point of ending on sick leave.
oh and don't forget that many parts of France mandate by law how much skin women must show in swimsuits, which they claim is about not getting street dirt in public pools but which is disproportionately enforced on Muslim or even just Middle Eastern/North African women
(and of course is also some forced nudity misogynistic bullshit in general, to boot)
The rule for loose shorts for men has been a thing for decades and it’s because some men wear them outside as well and because men would use actual shorts as swimsuits.
As for the rules not being about banning Muslim women from swimming I don’t know your age but I’m old enough to remember when going to a public swimming pool with a hijab on to keep an eye on your kids and without getting in the water was okay. I’m old enough to remember when wearing a short and T-shirt over your swimsuit at the border of the water when you weren’t swimming was perfectly okay as well. I remember when swimsuits with skirts or shorts attached to them were allowed.
All the extra rules you mentioned started being put in place AFTER the “burkini” ban when they realized that the majority of Muslim women who were going in public swimming pools were not hijabi but still liked to be more modest and wear swimming skirts or shorts and stuff like that.
Y’all don’t realize the actual level of France’s Islamophobia and anti Algerian racism and how it color everyday laws and rules that seems to have nothing to do with Muslims and/or Algerian.
