Not so teenie burqini brings beach shift

By Rob Taylor

SYDNEY, Jan 15 (Reuters Life!) - In a lycra revolution, a cover-all swimming costume is bringing Muslim women on to Australian beaches as lifeguards, unzipping racial tensions which divided parts of Sydney little over a year ago.

The two-piece "burqini," popular in the Middle East, is proving key to a reshaping surf lifesaving Down Under -- once a bastion of white Australian culture and still a heartland of the country's sun-bronzed, heroic self-myth.

"I am Australian so I always have the Australian life style, but now with the burqini it just allowed me to participate in it more. We used to always go to the beach, but now that I have the burqini I can actually swim," Mecca Laalaa, 22, told Reuters.

Laalaa is one of 24 young Australians of Arab heritage who recently signed up to a 10-week training course run by Surf Life Saving Australia aimed at widening the racial mix on beaches.

The shift follows race riots between ethnic Lebanese Australians and white Australian youths at Cronulla Beach in Sydney's south in the lead-up to Christmas in 2005.

Cars, shops and churches were damaged in the violence, which followed an attack on a pair of beach lifeguards.

Laalaa, whose ethnic background is Lebanese-Australian, is relying on a home-grown burqini -- a compromise between a burqa and a bikini -- to keep her covered on Cronulla's sands.

The full-length lycra suit with hijab head-covering is not too figure hugging to embarrass, but is tight enough to allow its wearer to swim freely. It will soon be manufactured in the iconic red and yellow of Australia's surf life saving movement.