On Friday May 28, 2021, at the municipal swimming pool in Besançon, a young woman of 27 was arrested by a lifeguard. According to him, his swimsuit was “too low cut.” Sexist remarks that do not pass.
On Friday May 28, 2021, Tara Paillard, 27, went to the municipal swimming pool of Port-Joint, in Besançon at the end of the day after her working day. When she left the pool, a lifeguard stopped her, judging her outfit to be inappropriate: “On Friday, I got out of my work and decided to go do laps. I swam 45 minutes doing my laps then I got out of the pool to go get my things and change.”, she explains in an interview with Eastern Republican, before recounting his exchanges with the lifeguard: “He said to me: ‘Listen miss, I’m sorry to tell you that, your swimsuit does not conform. It is too high cut.” I told him it was a thong and not with a thong as prohibited by the rules he opposed me. ‘We let you do your laps, but next time you will be prohibited from entering the pool.’ “
A humiliation and a rise in stress
For Tara Paillard, the lifeguard’s remark was, neither more nor less, a humiliation: “I felt humiliation and a rise in stress. All the well-being I had felt during my laps evaporated. I felt like a 14 year old kid who is told she is in pain. dressed and that its outfit is not appropriate. However, at 27 years old, it is a swimsuit that I have been using for a year and that I put on in Switzerland no later than last week, and which has has always been compliant. This is the first time that I have been told that it is not suitable. (…) I was simply there in a sporting context, to do lengths and clear my head after the job.”
A man who goes to the pool, we are not going to tell him that his swimsuit is too tight or too tight
Tara Paillard reminds us: her swimsuit was not a thong, forbidden in the pool, and she was therefore not at odds with the regulations. She therefore decided to write to the town hall of the City of Besançon to report the facts. She hopes so “awareness” because this situation questions the way in which the bodies of women are considered: “A man who goes to the pool, we are not going to tell him that his swimsuit is too tight or too tight. But immediately, a woman if she has a too plunging neckline or if it is a little low-cut, there, it’s debated “, she says.
Indeed, would a man suffer such a situation? The systemic hypersexualization of women’s bodies shows a difference in sexist treatment: “It revolts me, what is the degree of indentation tolerated? It is according to his morphology? Would a man undergo the same reflection? I do not consider myself as a feminist and I am sometimes tired of useless debates, but I hate injustices and I have the feeling of having been the victim of it as a woman “, she concludes.