Last week's heavy-handed crackdown on women wearing 'burkini' swimwear on French beaches provoked international condemnation.
Photos emerged online of armed French policemen surrounding a woman on a Nice beach last Wednesday, forcibly making her remove her swimwear. She wasn't harming anyone and she wasn't disturbing the peace. Her crime was lying on the sand with too much of her body covered up, according to the state.
France's State Council later ruled that the burkini ban was illegal and ordered the practice to be suspended - but the row is ongoing.
https://twitter.com/Herdotie/status/769171749946658816
In the midst of this controversy,
one letter to the editor in the Guardian newspaper has raised a brilliant point about the whole affair.
In the letter, writer Henry Stewart points out how it's actually "men wearing suits" who are the real danger to the modern world.
https://twitter.com/JesskaOpal/status/770723854092238848
It reads:
"No woman in a burqa (or a hijab or a burkini) has ever done me any harm. But I was sacked (without explanation) by a man in a suit. Men in suits mis-sold me pensions and endowments, costing me thousands of pounds. A man in a suit led me us on a disastrous and illegal war. Men in suits led the banks and crashed the world economy. Other men in suits then increased the misery to millions through austerity. If we are to start telling people what to wear, maybe we should ban suits."
https://twitter.com/specificisland/status/770789771853475840
That screengrab of the letter - shared on Twitter by user Jesska Opal - has since been retweeted over 12,000 times, meaning it's really struck a chord.
