#Trending : A Mother Walked Up To A Woman On The Beach, Suggests She Cover Up Because Her Sons Were Staring. So, We Refuse To Teach Our Sons Better?
I come from a decently liberal, yet selectively conservative Indian family, one where I may not be judged for having male friends and going out to party late at night, but will definitely reprimanded for wearing a bikini to the beach. My mother, who earlier used to offer me long cover ups over my swimsuits at the pool or during family vacations at the beach under the pretext of saving myself from getting tanned, now does it by simply saying she wants to save me from the male gaze. And while I understand how she is just being protective of me, it puts the onus of protecting myself from ‘males’. And when this happens enough, it becomes the prime reason why the boys get a free card when they cross lines, simply by saying they felt ‘provoked’.
A dynamic in my family, that I am constantly trying to overturn simply by suggesting how it is the men who need to be taught to behave better, instead of telling women what they can wear. And if you’d think things are different out west, think again because this incident of a mother walking up to a woman on a beach in New York, suggesting that she cover herself up, is proof that women are always seen as the problem and never the men.
The incident took place during a weekend at upstate New York’s Freedom Lake, when a mother of two boys walked up to a bikini clad woman, and while overstepping her bounds also asked her to “get her a** covered.” A scene that was recorded by the one sporting a bikini on tik tok, goes on to show how the mother said, “See those two little boys over there? Those are my boys and they’re staring at your a**, which is hanging out.”
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https://www.instagram.com/p/CCmTpL0By19/?utm_source=ig_embed
She then continued to say to Aurea, the woman in the bikini, how she is carrying an extra pair of shorts and can wear that if need be, to which Aurea asked her if it was a rule, to which the mother says, “Yeah, there is. You can’t be nude on a beach, or like this, it’s a public place.” Aurea then asked her to go ask the park employees at this point, and the mother heads over.
However, Aurea later confirmed with the authorities that there was no such rule that deemed her bathing suit unacceptable, just ones about not wearing a face mask, which the mother who came to confront her, wasn’t wearing. Talk about setting a good example.
Later, Aurea took to her Instagram to share her picture in the same bathing suit with a caption on body positivity, that was much needed. Meanwhile, her video on tik tok garnered over 3 million views, where the users commented on how it was shameful to see the mother blame the woman for her own sons staring. One user wrote, “Tell her to control her boys! Why does no one tell them to raise their boys better,” while another added, “Why is it always the girls fault? Teach the boys some respect,” all of them making complete sense.
Hopefully the mother, along with several hundred others out there in the world, realise the need to school their sons to be better human beings, than shaming daughters and their bodies.
