The Saudi Government Has Threatened in July to Shut Any Lingerie Shops Still Employing Male Clerks

Photo credit: Arabian Business.com

Saudi Begins Goodbye to Male Lingerie Salesmen

When Saudi student Sarah Abdul- Mohsen asked the salesman for a nude, 32C padded bra, she didn’t expect an argument about her cup size.

After all, Abdul-Mohsen was wearing the mandatory black cloak and veil that disguise her shape, in a kingdom where custom forbids men from looking intimately at women.

“He told me, ‘No, you’re not a C,’” Abdul-Mohsen, who was buying the bra for a cousin, said in an interview at a Ramadan meal for women in Riyadh. “I felt disgusted. It felt very degrading.”

Abdul-Mohsen, like many women in oil-rich Saudi Arabia, is hoping that decades of embarrassing exchanges with salesmen about lingerie will soon come to an end. She may get her wish as stores begin implementing a July Labour Ministry directive to push male salesmen aside and hire women after a failed effort in 2006.

Managers representing three boutiques said this month their stores will soon be staffed by women, though the transition won’t be easy. Male guards may be stationed outside to keep men shoppers away, while storeowners are considering posting signs saying the establishments are for “Families Only” and hanging heavy curtains to shield store windows so that men won’t look in and see women working.

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Unbelievable for a country where women are forbidden to drive, are subjected to arranged marriages with cousins and covered from head to toe in case they excite a man. Yet only a male salesman was allowed to sell them lingerie? Can we say WTF!?!