Now that Spring is sprung in Sydney, I can’t wait to get to the beach and check out my theory that we’ll be seeing not only lots of Muslim women, but more and more people of all sects and sexes sporting burkinis in preference to bikinis at the seaside this season.

Not just because its designer and owner of the Burkini and Burqini trademarks, Aleda Zanetti, is Australian.

But because, as I briefly blogged last week on this topic, the beauty of the burkini/burqini is that it not only liberates Muslim women to go swimming or surfing with as much modesty as they could possibly desire or their male minders could possibly demand, but also affords the majority of us, Islamists and infidels alike, a fashionable means of sparing each other the sight of our fleshly imperfections.

Let’s face it, there are so relatively few of us swimmers, surfers and sunbathers of any religious, racial or sexual persuasion who look our best in bikinis, let alone such even more revealing variations on the theme as monokinis, microkinis and pubikinis or any of their male equivalents, as to make the burkini a most attractive proposition.

And not only for beach wear, as I further remarked in my recent blog, but for work and leisure wear, too. With a wealth of such extensions to the burkini/burqini concept as the beerkini for oversized drinkers and blubberkini for all those, drinkers and non-drinkers alike, afflicted with huge pot bellies and big, blubbery butts.

Like, for example, as long as I’m writing here and now for Malaysiakini (though of course the ‘kini’ in its name bears no relation whatever to the bikini or burkini), the alleged First Lady of Malaysia (Flom).

Anyone who comes up with an extension of the burkini concept for her and similar other big-wig Malay Muslim wives, an item of designer beachwear called, say, the binikini, would surely be on a winner.

As would a designer who could craft a bibirkini to cover the lips of Flom’s husband and his gang of accomplices and apologists in politics and the mainstream media, the better to protect the Malaysian people from their barefaced lies.

In fact, come to think of it, as long as everything to do with the ruling Umno/BN regime is carefully covered up, it is a wonder that its propaganda machine hasn’t designed and manufactured, at public expense, of course, a range of BNkinis to give away free of charge to supporters and swinging voters as part of one of their traditional election-buying packages.

In this case, people of other races and religions could be attracted to such non-BN burkini look-alikes as babikinis, buddhikinis and Bersihkinis.

But not to so borekini you to death as I am with this absolutely endless debate between the advocates of wearing on the one hand and baring on the other.

Conveying its explosive sexiness

I was born (naked, naturally, like everybody else) before the now-familiar skimpy two-piece swimsuit was even invented, in 1946 by French engineer Louis Réard, according to Wikipedia, and named the ‘bikini’, presumably to convey its explosive sexiness, after the atoll in the Marshall Islands where the US was testing nuclear weapons at the time.

At the Catholic schools I attended, the nuns wore so-called ‘habits’ and veils that uncannily resembled the strict Islamic female attire of today, and the priests wore Arab-style long garments called cassocks.

Female attendees at Mass were obliged to cover their hair, Muslim style, with scarves or hats.

And woman who dared appear in public wearing bikinis were routinely harassed and frequently issued fines and ordered to cover up by teams of so-called ‘beach inspectors’.

Today, after many long, dreary decades of struggle against such ridiculous regulations, we Australians can go to the beach dressed - or undressed - pretty much as we please.

Though women are still discouraged from appearing ‘topless’ or in other words clad in only the bottom half of their bikinis on some ‘family’ beaches, and Sydney’s six or so ‘nude’ beaches are very secluded so as to spare the sensitivities of the easily-scandalised.

Nude beaches must also be a bit of a worry for religionists. Females without identifying costumes could be of any or no faith, and though many males wearing no swimwear clearly don’t make the cut as either Muslim or Jewish, adherents of these two rival religions are visually indistinguishable from each other when stripped down to the bare essentials.

There’s no law against wearing clothes on a nude beach, however, and in light of some of the physiques I’ve seen there, some could well look a whole lot better in the kind of garment that I suppose you could call a barekini.

DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he coaches and mentors writers and authors and practises as a writing therapist. Published books of his columns for Malaysiakini include ‘Mad about Malaysia', ‘Even Madder about Malaysia', ‘Missing Malaysia', ‘1Malaysia.con’ and ‘Malaysia Mania’.