Saudi Arabian Women to Protest Lingerie Stores

Saudi Arabian Lingerie Shopping BoycottSaudi Arabian women are currently organizing an unusual protest; the women would like to boycott Saudi Arabian lingerie stores. Their reason is simple. In a country that is so conservative that men and women are not allowed to intermingle, most lingerie stores have only male salesclerks. In other words, women are assisted in their most personal shopping by men.

Female sales clerks are only permissible in all-female malls, thus the high number of male sales clerks, including stores where bras and panties. and other lingerie are sold. According to the BBC, women can’t even be measured for their underwear, which makes it necessary for the salesman to “guesstimate” a woman’s size, also made difficult because of clothing restrictions.

Can you even imagine the embarrassment a Muslim woman must feel having their size guessed by a man? I am not Muslim and consider myself fairly liberal, but would definitely feel humiliated to shop in that manner.

The 2-week boycott was organized by a female economics professor on her Facebook page and will come just in time for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s visit to Saudi Arabia.

Apparently, there is a law stating that women can work in lingerie stores on the books, but it is “ambiguous” and not enforced, which is the main criticism of the professor. 

Protests like this are illegal in Saudi Arabia, which is why the professor chose to use Facebook.

Last year, a training company organized specific training for 26 Saudi Arabian women to show them how to sell, size, and stock lingerie in the hopes that women will be allowed to sell bras. There was another protest last year regarding the same issue, but as far as I can see, little resolution in the way of an enforceable solution by the Religious Police.

Now that the women have been trained, and the laws are on the books, there should be no impediment stopping Saudi Arabian women from being able to buy bras and other undergarments from female salesclerks.

This is not the only bizarre story relating to undergarments in the Middle East. Last year, Somalian women were actually forced to shake their breasts to show that they were not wearing bras, which their rulers consider “unnatural”. Of course, as a woman, I consider that law more than unnatural, I consider it inhumane.