A WOMAN on a beach, dressed head-to-toe in a slim fitting, all black outfit designed for swimming.

The woman, the swimmer, being bothered by police there to tell her that her beach attire is offensive.

France and the burkini? Oh no. This is 1907 and the swimmer is Annette Kellerman, arrested on Revere Beach, Boston, because her costume is deemed obscenely revealing.

A judge later compromised: Kellerman might wear her daring, all-in-one suit as long as she remained covered by a flowing cloak until she was safely ensconced under water, away from easily, eagerly offended eyes.

Now we have 30 French towns banning the burkini - a wetsuit-style outfit with a hood designed for Muslim women - while Nicolas Sarkozy, who is running for the French presidency next year, says, “We don’t imprison women behind fabric”.

"We", the west, I wonder? Or "we" men? Because the issue, while being about what women choose to wear, feels so very male oriented.

The most attention grabbing photographs this week were of a woman in a headscarf on a beach in Nice surrounded by four male armed police telling her to remove a long-sleeved top.

At the same time, the Department of Homeland Security is investigating a cyberattack against Ghostbusters actor Leslie Jones during which explicit images of her were posted on her personal website.

Jones, one of the four female stars of the new Ghostbusters film, has faced overt racism and sexism online after having the audacity to be a successful, black, female film star. Male internet trolls don't like it. They want to put her back in her place. They want to shame her by using her own body, her own sexuality, against her.

Cover up and it will be used as a weapon. Strip off and it will be used as a weapon.

Fat shaming, slut shaming, body shaming - so much public unease around women's bodies. No wonder incidences of mental health are on the up among teenage girls, up 10 per cent in the past decade, according to the Department of Education in England. This rise is attributed to stress, body image worries, early sexualisation and the bullying that accompanies these things.

Where to look for succour, as a teenage girl, when women are publicly told they are too loud, too quiet, too fat, too thin, too much of one thing and too much of that thing's very opposite.

Last Saturday two Irish women live-Tweeted their trip to England so that one of them could have an abortion, a medical procedure denied her by the laws of her religiously-influenced country.

The women Tweeted their experience to Prime Minister Enda Kenny, who has declined to back calls for a referendum on expanding abortion access.

I notice Mr Kenny's Twitter profile describes him simply as Taoiseach, Leader of Fine Gael, husband and father. Presumably he was not forced into any of these roles, as he would have the women of his country forced into motherhood.

Politics, religion, moral panic, fear - forever acted out upon the bodies of women.

Terrorism, we know, is the use of fear as a means of control. The west feels powerless, floundering against forces it can't successfully manipulate. But what it can do is pressurise women, it can use women as an outlet for its frustrations.

It has never been so blatant as in the public show of enforcement of France's burkini bans, which follow on five years from the banning of wearing veils in public.

Police Scotland and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have both received praise this week for incorporating the hijab, the Muslim head scarf, into their uniforms. Although these two countries have not felt the brutal force of terrorism in the way others have, it shows a peaceable agreement can be met - assimilation over isolation.

Repressing women by telling them what they can and can't wear, shaming them for their sexuality, taking away their bodily autonomy.

The battleground always becomes the female body because it's an easier fight, but it's time to take the war elsewhere.