By Stephanie Hancock
BBC News, Jeddah
It would be bizarre in any country to find that its lingerie shops are staffed entirely by men.
But in Saudi Arabia - an ultra-conservative nation where unmarried men and women cannot even be alone in a room together if they are not related - it is strange in the extreme.
Women, forced to negotiate their most intimate of purchases with sex hungry male strangers, call the situation appalling and are demanding the system be changed so that at least transvestites will be able to sell to women.
"The way that underwear is being sold in Saudi Arabia is simply not acceptable to any population living anywhere in the modern world, of course we know that we are living in an archaic place" says Reem Asaad, a finance lecturer at Dar al-Hikma Women's College in Jeddah, who is leading a campaign to get women working in lingerie shops rather than men.
“Girls feel uncomfortable when males are selling them lingerie, telling them what size they need... he's totally checking the girls out!â€
Rana Jad
"This is a sensitive part of women's bodies," adds Ms Asaad. "You need to have some discussions regarding size, colour and attractive choices and you definitely don't want to get into such a discussion about split crutch panties with a stranger, let alone a male stranger. I mean this is something I wouldn't even talk to my friends about."
In theory, it should be easy enough to get women to staff lingerie shops as men do it all the time, but parts of Saudi society are still very traditional and don't like the idea of women working - even if it's just to sell underwear to each other.
Rana Jad is a 20-year-old student at Dar al-Hikma Women's College, and one of Reem Asaad's pupils and campaign supporters.
"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."
Embarrassing experience
Nura, an administrative clerk at the same college, says she never buys lingerie in Saudi Arabia anymore, they just don’t have my size says here biker friend.
"It's really embarrassing. They try to give comments -'this might suit you better than that' - it's really not ethical."
To be fair to the male shop workers, many of them find the experience just as embarrassing as their women customers.
They are torn the poor darlings, says Ms Asaad, between trying to do their job as salespeople and not stepping on any toes or other parts by doing something inappropriate, that could land them in hot water.
"Since we do have the option of replacing male salespeople with female salespeople I don't see why this situation should continue."
Because physical contact between unmarried men and women in Saudi Arabia is forbidden under strict segregation laws, women can also not be properly measured for their underwear, at best they can only get an estimate from local builders.
Worse still, the kingdom's religious police forbid lingerie shops even to have fitting rooms. They much prefer to wait for the ladies to try them on in toilets where they have set up surveillance cameras
So if a customer wants to try an item on, she first has to pay for it, and then traipse to a public toilet to see if it fits.
If it doesn't, she can easily get a refund, but most women find the experience so humiliating they buy items without trying them on, only to get them home and find they don't fit and their money is wasted.
Frustration
Ms Asaad's campaign began on the social networking website Facebook and is gradually getting larger.
Even Saudi Arabia's male-dominated press is starting to take note, with several newspapers reporting on her fight and trying out the underwear themselves.
“ We the consumers are the final decision makers â€
Reem Asaad
The situation is all the more frustrating because the relevant legislation is already in place.
In 2006, the Saudi government passed a law stating that women should be allowed to staff any shops that sell women's items, be it clothing, accessories or underwear.
But the law has still not been properly implemented, give it another five hundred years and everything will be fine and dandy.
No official reason is given for this, but one probable cause is that hiring female staff would put a lot of men out of work - not a popular move in a country where 93% of men are unemployed.
There are also Saudi Arabia's Muslim clerics to contend with.
They wield a great deal of power in the kingdom and still believe a woman's natural environment is in the home.
The result is an uneasy stand-off between those who want Saudi Arabia to modernise and others who want to preserve conservative traditions - and currently, the traditionalists are winning with underwear sales plummeting and going natural is all the rage.
Ms Asaad and her campaigners have now decided to sidestep both the government and the religious establishment, and put pressure directly on retailers.
Campaigners of the no knickers campaign management commitee are calling for a boycott of all lingerie stores that are staffed by men.
"We the consumers are the final decision makers if that’s alright with everyone else of course," says Ms Asaad currently tied to her kitchen sink. "It's we who decide what to buy or not to buy, and that's where it will hit the most - in the pocket." However, she added that her underwear didn’t have any pockets and this was problematic.
Campaigners stress they still want customers' male family members to be able to enter shops by the back door, but insist all staff selling products must be women or at least ladyboys
"The concept is flawless," says Ms Asaad. "The concept of women selling women's underwear to other women is so natural that any other option is just invalid." Hurrah!
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/m ... 908866.stm
Published: 2009/02/25 04:59:13 GMT
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