 |
| Trust me. You will look great in that bra! |
The first thing Dalya does when entering a lingerie shop in Saudi Arabia is scan the area for men after an embarrassing encounter a year ago.
With colourful lace, cotton and sheer bras on display, the 26-year-old vividly remembers when she randomly picked one up to examine it only to be surprised by a male voice saying: "That bra is not your size, you need one two sizes bigger".
Fatima Qaroob said the campaign had also been launched on Facebook and initial results were very encouraging as many men have also voiced support for the drive on the grounds their wives or female relatives face an embarrassing situation when they shop for clothes.
“We have received massive support from both women and men because it has become unbearable and the situation has become shameful…...we hear shameful and embarrassing stories almost every day about our women when they go shopping for underwear…these stories make you either cry or laugh,” she said in a statement carried by the Arabic language daily Alyoum.
Qaroob sarcastically summed up the situation when women shop for underwear, saying:”the salesman comes forward and says feminishly ‘what is your measurement and what is your colour my lady…I think this colour does not suit your skin so I will choose the right colour for you….I know what you are looking for and I am sure you will later thank me for my choice……
“Salesmen have other expressions for the customers…they become softer and say ‘I think this one is attractive and seductive..…take it and I am sure you will pray for me…this one is very comfortable and cozy especially in bed and it is favoured by most wives…this one is perfect for your body…..”
Qaroob said many Saudi women have started to shop abroad to avert embarrassment, adding that lingerie shops in most other countries are run by women. “Why can’t we just be like them or even ahead of them.”
She said the employment of young Saudi men at lingerie shops poses a threat to them as this “will give rise to the emergence of a state of a third sex gender.”
Qaroob said the idea of the new campaign emerged after she and other Saudi women were “shocked at the way the salesmen talk to female customers.”
“They have no reservation or decency in the way they talk or deal with the female customers at lingerie shops…after we passed through this ourselves, we decided to launch this campaign after Ramadan…so far, we have received strong support from many women and men, including Islamic clerics and officials.”
Asmaa Al Mohammed, a writer in the mass circulation Saudi Arabic language daily Okaz, said she often had to travel abroad to buy her underwear from saleswomen because all underwear dealers in Saudi Arabia are men.
“We had enough because we feel embarrassed and humiliated when we buy our underwear from men…it is time that the government put an end to the embarrassment caused to Saudi women when they buy their underwear from salesmen,” she said in an article published by Okaz newspaper.
“I have become so embarrassed to buy my underwear from salesmen that I started to travel abroad to get my needs…I fully support the ‘enough embarrassment’ campaign against allowing men to sell ladies’ underwear.”
Had a visual of a Saudi man buying a jock strap and the female sales clerk telling him....that's 2 sizes larger than what you need.
Btw, as there were no bra stores or bra's at the time of Muhammad, these gawd guys don't even have a hadith to justify this stupidity.
Saudi women fight for their marital fate
By AFP
 |
| Because the Quran gave women too many rights... we prefer Bukhari and hadith... and tribal law is cool, too |
A blend of conservative traditions gives Saudi men absolute control over their daughters until they wed.
Women in Saudi Arabia are fighting back against tribal traditions that make them hostage to the whims of their fathers and male guardians who alone can decide who their future husbands will be.
Faced with a lifetime of being forced to remain single, an increasing number of Saudi women, many of them university graduates with good jobs, are going to court to dispute their fathers' refusal to sign off on their marriages.
In July, a Medina court rejected a 42-year-old doctor's petition to override her father and brothers' refusal to allow her marriage to a surgeon she works with, because he did not belong to their tribe.
The court ruled that the father was justified, and that she was not being obedient by trying to marry someone outside the clan.
"Unfortunately we have a strange paradox in society, where young girls only 10 years old can be married, but an adult woman can be prevented from marrying for illogical reasons," Suhaila Zainal Abidin of the National Society for Human Rights told AFP.
University professor Amal Saleh agreed. "In pre-Islamic times they would just kill an unwanted daughter. Now it is killing her as an adult," she said.Islamic teachings say that a father must agree to his daughter's marriage if the potential husband is moral and a devout Muslim. But in Saudi Arabia, a blend of Islamic sharia law and deeply conservative tribal traditions gives men absolute control over their daughters until they wed.
The most common reason is the tribal issue: the fathers insist their daughters marry someone inside their clan, the key social fabric of the kingdom from which derives significant political and economic power.
Sometimes a daughter is not allowed to marry a man she likes on the basis of having been pledged since childhood to someone else, perhaps a cousin.
"We want to eliminate this phenomenon of ignorance," said Saleh who has a Facebook campaign supporting Saudi women's marriage rights.
I think we should support her cause. I really don't know why Allah/God thought all men should be in charge of all women. Obviously there are a lot of stupid men.
Saudi divorces wife over cheese sambosa
The unidentified husband returned home from work in Riyadh and asked his wife to make meat sambosa for his iftar (Ramdan evening meal), the paper said.
"Instead of putting meat in the pie, she stuffed it with cheese...when her husband tasted it, he was mad...he beat her up, divorced her and kicked her out."
I'm thinking that was her plan all along.
Underwear that protects privacy at airport
Invention gets you through airport screeners with your dignity intact
Jeff Buske says his invention uses a powdered metal that protects people's privacy when undergoing medical or security screenings.
Buske of Las Vegas, Nev.-Rocky Flats Gear says the underwear's inserts are thin and conform to the body's contours, making it difficult to hide anything beneath them. The mix of tungsten and other metals do not set off metal detectors.
The men's design has the fig leaf, while the one for women comes in the shape of clasped hands.
lol
It's unclear whether it would lead to an automatic, more intrusive pat down by federal Transportation Security Administration officials.
Hmm..looking at these undies, gotta wonder if he thinks the area around the belly button is his...dignity.