"I don’t know what my underwear size is!!" I replied to a nice lady selling in a lingerie shop here at one of the shops in Frederiksbarg in Denmark. I saw the surprise in her face and that made me escape from the shop.
Suddenly!! I found out that I didn’t’ know my size, because my mother got used to buy our underwear either for me and for my sisters,- In Saudi Arabia, where I have grow up since my birth,- and that cause by the men whom selling lingerie at the shops, while it's not allowed for women to work in there.
Was very hard for me to go and get it by myself, in many points I felt a bit shame to buy it for myself from a male seller. I never thought this fact will cause me to face this situa-tion, which is the “ignorance” about my own size,
Even with this strange experience, was good feeling to be at that shop in Copenhagen where a female is a seller, while I refused when I was a little girl, - back home- to go to the same shops in Saudi Arabia.
Once, I have been at one of the shop, has made me feel uncomfortable when the male sel-ler was following me and asking me "do you need any help" and then saying” this bra is perfect for you" I have no idea how he knew is perfect!!!
Moreover, a friend has told me that a male seller was looking at her body in order to help her to find a good size.
I remembered all this stories, when BBC has published the other days, news about group of women in Saudi Arabia, have urged women there to begin a two-week boycott of lin-gerie shops with male staff.
The situation, I had at the lingerie shop in Denmark, brought me to call my Mom- after l left the shop- to ask her my size!! She couldn't stop laughing about me inquire. She didn't expect that, and I didn't either, never imagine one that day I’ll need to get back and ask her this question, was funny to found out the answer about my size for the first time, while I am at the age of 22 years.
The religious clerics in Saudi Arabia doesn’t want women to work at the lingerie shops and they effectively uphold a ban on sales women because requires absolute separation of unrelated members of the opposite sex. That makes me wonder, what is the worse?, Women should have to give their underwear sizes to a man that they do not know, wom-en also cannot be properly measured for their underwear. Or to be Ignorant about their own size!
Because of the strict segregation laws barring physical contact between the sexes, which is one of all other problems in our communities, I think absolutely, we all need a Lingerie Revolution like the Rose Revolution to make a change.
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