WELL, whoop-de-do! – women in this oil-rich but sanity-starved theocracy are finally being permitted to sell … bras!
This breathtaking climb towards the hitherto unscaled twin peaks of permissiveness and liberality occurred when 26 women began the first course of its kind on how to flog undies for females. It took place in Jeddah, off the shores of the Red Sea.
According to this report, the move is considered a real breakthrough – and follows protests organised by groups of women who have simply had enough of buying their underwear from men.
Selling lingerie has been a sore point for a while. In 2006, the backward Islamic kingdom enacted a law prohibiting men from selling women’s underwear. But its implementation was restrained as a result of pressure exerted by Muslim nutters, who did not want women working in shopping malls.
Ah, but will female lingerie shop assistants be permitted to sell bras to men? Apparently man-bras are the in-thing in Japan. Too many lard-arsed Saudi dudes have tits bigger their mums - from pigging out on halal pies and burgers, we guess - and could well do with some support for their man-boobs.
In general, most of the stores in Saudi Arabia are manned by men, most of whom are immigrants from eastern Asian countries. Only a small number of “women’s only” malls have saleswomen.
According to Arab website Elaph, the course instructors’ main problem was how to overcome the women’s embarrassment in regards to fitting the bras to customers, and presenting the store’s merchandise in an attractive manner.
One of the course’s participants was quoted as saying:
It was a wonderful experience. But the thing which sent me into a state of shock was the bra sizes. Before the course we did not know how to measure.
It should be noted that the sale of lingerie is a divisive matter not only in Saudi Arabia. The government of the al-Sharqa emirate recently distributed a memo to all shopping malls and stands, stating as of January 1, 2010, the sale of lingerie will be restricted to women only.
Stores which continue employing men to do this job could face for heavy penalties, the memo warned.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:30 pm
I wonder whether they might even start paying some attention to Human Rights. Charles Windsor, that supporter of all the faiths and all sorts of crazy new age health nonsense, (wants it on the NHS), blocked a building he didn't like by phoning one of his contacts in Saudi Arabia who was funding the development. I thought he might do better by contacting his contacts about the Human Rights abuses which so concern Amnesty International. No way. Too busy interfering with rational people and whining about his concern to "represent his people" – that's us.
July 25th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
I'm sure England's comic opera Clown Prince is not using his status as an unelected powerbroker to further pseudoscience, pseudomedicine, and pseudo-reality, for the purpose of speeding up the fulfilment of J. Messelier's dream of seeing the last king strangled with the guts of the last priest. That could be just the way it turns out.