US1 min(s) read
Published 16:40 19 Aug 2020 GMT
When it comes to beachwear, the line between acceptable and unacceptable clothing can be a fine one, and people can find themselves in trouble when the rules around it aren't crystal clear.
Case in point, this woman, who was detained by police at Myrtle Beach after wearing a thong bikini - an incident which was caught on camera and has since inspired her to try and change the law.
Watch the woman as she is removed from the beach below:
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In the 20-minute video above, which has now been viewed over 1.6 billion times, acrobat Sam Panda and the police can be seen arguing over the ordinance which she was said to have violated.
"A woman called the cops on me because of my bikini. That's how this all started," Panda captioned the now-viral clip.
After removing Panda and her friend from the beach, the police read the following ordinance from a binder: "[It] shall be unlawful for any person to appear in the nude at any public beach."
In Horry County and Myrtle Beach, wearing a thong is considered a form of indecent exposure.
Police told Fox 8 that they were alerted to two women "dancing and soliciting videos on the beach" while wearing thong bikini bottoms and one was dressed in a see-through bikini.
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When officers arrived, "one of the women attempted to walk away from officers and was detained," Fox 8 reported, and in the video, the officers explained that they arrested Panda for "how she was acting."
Panda was ultimately released without arrested after being escorted from the beach.
WPDE reported on Monday that Panda is now assembling a legal team to challenge the thong ban.
The ordinance states that the intentional exposure of a person's anatomical parts, dressed or undressed, is unlawful.
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Panda said that the current ordinance is discriminatory and unfair to beachgoers.
"These types of laws, I think they're archaic, I think they're dehumanizing," she told WPDE. "I think they basically make people into objects by saying your body is something that other people can look at and say 'This is right,' or 'This is wrong.'"
While Panda wishes that in a "perfect world" the law would be abolished completely, she is now hoping that the ordinance is made more "quantifiable" for the greater good of the public and the police.
"We need to be able to say, 'OK, if we're going to wear thongs, the strap on the thong needs to be an inch or two inches all the way around,'" she explained. "Something that's measurable, something that's easily defined, something that people can go 'OK, I know this is what I'm allowed to wear and this is what I'm not allowed to wear.'"
