A young woman from Valencia denounces that she is not allowed on a bus for wearing a lingerie top
«I have been banned from a Valencia bus for being low-cut and offending other passengers. It's not a bikini, it's a top and I'm not showing anything. I have felt discriminated against." With these words, the young Cristina Durán denounced on August 7 on her Twitter account the altercation she experienced when trying to get on a bus of the Municipal Transport Company of Valencia (EMT Valencia) dressed in a white lingerie top. Accompanying her complaint, the Valencian woman posted a photo of the outfit she was wearing at the moment the driver prohibited her from entering the bus. «In two other buses I have been able to access. Regulations or discrimination?», he wondered.
The tweet, which soon went viral and has accumulated more than a thousand retweets and almost three thousand likes at the time of writing this article, has opened a debate on the social network. From the communication address of EMT Valencia they confirm to S Moda that "they have immediately contacted Cristina to ask her for more information about what happened" and that "they will internally analyze what happened."
Meanwhile, hundreds of users are discussing in the Twitter courtyard about whether what Cristina Durán was wearing was actually a bra or a top and whether, whatever it was, it is the driver who should label a garment or prohibit the entry to a passenger for their clothing. In accordance with the Regulations for the Provision and Use of Urban Transport in buses for the City of Valencia, approved by the City Council and applicable since November 15, 2019 and available on the company's website, there is no specific regulation on the dress code that must be followed on buses in the Valencian capital.
Among the prohibitions included in the regulation –smoking, consuming alcohol or drugs, getting on the bus when it is full or getting off through the front door, among many others– there is no specific reference to access wearing certain clothes. «There is no rule that stipulates that I cannot access like this. And if there is, it should be visible to all users who are going to access the bus. And the only ones there are, are inside, and you have to access them first to read them, ”the protagonist of the story herself replied to one of the many comments received on her Twitter account. Many Twitter users have supported their position, indicating that they themselves have traveled on company buses in swimsuits, bikinis or with a bare torso without any restrictions. "Then I go up without a shirt and in flip-flops coming from the beach and they don't tell me anything, anyway," wrote the tweeter @Danisconnected.
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The debate on the social network has also focused on discerning whether what the young woman is wearing can be considered a 'top' and, therefore, a garment designed to be worn on the street, or if, on the contrary, it is It's about a bra. On the market it is possible to find bras very similar to the piece that Durán is wearing –without underwire and with lace under the bust–, but there are also microtops with very similar characteristics and dimensions. The line that separates both garments is as fine as the one that can make the difference between a combination and a slip dress. "Today, the combination is also used as a dress, as is the case with bras, which have become an outer garment similar to bras," Cristina Soto, an expert in clothing history, clarified in a recent article. Posted in S Fashion. Perhaps the most appropriate term to define the garment of discord is 'bralette', a concept that refers to a kind of bra designed to be worn on view (in whole or in part). Celebrities like the model Kendall Jenner managed to make it fashionable a few years ago, wearing it on the street or at festivals like Coachella.
Whether it is a bra or not, in Valencia there is no municipal ordinance that prohibits walking through the streets without a shirt, as is the case in other cities of our geography such as Barcelona or Valladolid, where citizens can be fined. As explained by the former councilor in charge of the Valencia Local Police, Anaïs Menguzzato, in an interview with La SER, "according to the rules and ordinances, you could walk around without a shirt or in a bikini, although the police can encourage citizens to dress to go through the center of the city, but do not fine them ». Although the Supreme Court has endorsed the ordinance that prohibits going naked on the street on several occasions, it annuls it in the case of going "almost naked" or "with clothing similar to a swimsuit", considering them "excessively vague and indeterminate". This would be the case of the controversial top-bra.
This is not the first time that a woman has been prevented from entering public transport because of her clothes. It happened, for example, when the airline Vueling prohibited access to the plane to a young woman who was dressed in a bodysuit that was classified as a "swimsuit" by the airline. Despite covering herself with a scarf as requested by the two flight attendants who initially blocked her way, the passenger, Laura C. from Granada, ended up staying on the ground. The video in which you could hear how the flight attendants prevented him from passing in the face of the protests of the other passengers soon went viral and the Facua-Consumidores en Acción association filed a complaint against Vueling for what they called “sexist denigration”. Just a month earlier, a British woman had reported that she was kicked off an EasyJet flight for wearing a low-cut, sheer top.
It is enough to look at the newspaper library to see how other similar cases are repeated in the form of headlines in different countries and for different styles, all of them accused of being "provocative", "too sexy" or "inadequate". The story of a girl who was kicked off a bus in Germany for "distracting the driver with her pronounced cleavage" or that of two young men who could not fly on United Airlines for wearing leggings are just a few more examples that add to the complaint by Cristina Durán.
Tags: Feminism|Bra|Valencia
