Women in Saudi Arabia Fight To Buy Their Own Lingerie

It seems illogical — perhaps a bit preposterous to Smart Sensuality women — that Saudi Arabia, a country so concerned about the chastity of its women, forces them to buy their lingerie in consultation with strange men.

Let’s set the psychological stage.

It’s Hajj 2008, a time when Saudi men engage in Stoning of the Devil, as a repudiation of evil and unchaste behavior. As a woman, your own chastity is of supreme importance to both your government and the religious leaders monitoring your behavior in shopping malls.

Now you want to purchase lingerie in Saudi Arabia, an dreaded event that can’t be described as a pleasurable, uplifting experience in any way. You enter a lingerie shop, without a woman in sight.

In 2006, the Saudi government changed the law, forbidding women from selling lingerie to other women.

Trend Updates summarizes the problem: Employers argue that bureaucracy is the reason but everyone knows that it is because of the pressure exerted by the clergy of Shia Wahhabi, one of the most radical implementations of Islam. The existence of religious police, the ‘Mutawa’ah,’ is palpable as they patrol the malls and make sure that there is no contact between the sexes. Sharia Law believes that the only appropriate place for women is the home.

The BBC reports that Reem Asaad, a finance lecturer at Dar al-Hikma Women’s College in Jeddah, is leading a campaign to make buying lingerie a less onerous experience.

A young Saudi woman supporting Asaad’s campaign — now on Facebook — expresses her frustration: “Girls don’t feel very comfortable when males are selling them lingerie, telling them what size they need, and saying ‘I think this is small on you, I think this is large on you’,” she says.

“He’s totally checking the girls out! It’s just not appropriate, especially here in our culture.”

What’s My Size?

Saudi women can’t try on the lingerie or be measured, because the male shop workers can’t touch their bodies. Only “eyeballing” is allowed.

A woman must buy the lingerie, then take it to a public toilet nearby, try it on, and then return it for a refund, if it doesn’t fit. The BBC reports that most women don’t return ill-fitting products, because the experience is too humiliating.

Smart Pocketbooks

Demanding their rights to buy lingerie in a woman-friendly store, Saudi women — led by Ms. Asaad —  are boycotting shops with no female assistants.

“We the consumers are the final decision makers,” says Ms Asaad. “It’s we who decide what to buy or not to buy, and that’s where it will hit the most - in the pocket.”

Assad, a Smart Sensuality woman, uses Western logic in her demand for changes in the selling of lingerie to Saudi women.

This featured Trend Updates photo must be some kind of support group in Paris, and not actually women in the Middle East.

I can’t imagine Saudi women would last for long with this degree of immodest protest in their own country.

Whatever the source, it’s irresistable as a Redtracker visual supporting this campaign to promote a Saudi woman’s lingerie shopping experience, on terms Western women take for granted. Anne