This absurd concept of not having female fitting rooms in shopping malls is mainly due to male staff in retail stores
Females especially don’t get a chance to try out their dresses on spot as there are no female try rooms available for them. As the kingdom is changing old practices and are growing as a nation. Change in this issue is also seen but the change is minor.
Females however are still frustrated on this issue as they have to try out a dress in order to purchase it. In this case they take their purchase home , try it out and will have to come back in order to exchange or return. Now in this whole process it is not only a sexist approach as men get their fitting rooms but it is also time consuming.
Females over twitter expressed how they how they felt about this situation;
Sexist approach:
https://twitter.com/manal_alsharif/status/820341592418648064?ref_src=twcamp%5Eshare%7Ctwsrc%5Em5%7Ctwgr%5Eemail%7Ctwcon%5E7046%7Ctwterm%5E3
In a place where women are seen and treated differently such things trigger the frustration even more as around the world women enjoy shopping which obviously plays a huge part in the economy but in the kingdom women due to such restrictions try to avoid shopping as much as they can.
“I avoided buying clothes here as much as I could and resorted to online stores. I more or less know my size and used size charts to keep track of things. It worked most of the time. However, now that more retailers seem to be open to the idea of providing us with fitting rooms, I can say things are starting to get easier.”- Said Nouf 27 year old illustrator
Women around the kingdom are frustrated as friendly and calming shopping sprees are supposed to be stress busters not “stress a level up”.
Having a conversation with Stepfeed , Lara a Lebanese expat living in Jeddah stated:
“It’s truly one of the most frustrating things I’ve ever encountered. Imagine going into a store, having to actually buy clothes without even trying them on. In what world does this make sense? It’s not enough to just have fitting rooms in stores run by women, they should be in every outlet regardless of who works there. A changing room is a private, closed space, so what does it matter anyways?”
https://twitter.com/khayraB/status/852419640672354304?ref_src=twcamp%5Eshare%7Ctwsrc%5Em5%7Ctwgr%5Eemail%7Ctwcon%5E7046%7Ctwterm%5E3
This time consuming and sexist error must be removed for the ease of females. A lot of the females are hopeful with change wave in the kingdom they will get to have their own personal try rooms where they can try their liked items and be sure about it before buying. Saudi Women’s rights are now being addressed which will make things a lot more easy for everyone.
