Funmurphys: the Blog

A Different Kind of Jobs Program

Yesterday, Opinion Journal's Best of the Web linked to this article about Saudi Arabia replacing male clerks with female clerks at lingerie shops with a remark about Maureen Dowd.

Maureen Dowd!?! I'm thinking "Lingerie Shops in Saudia Arabia!?!" Isn't that like a liquor store at a Baptist convention? Or Karaoke night at the Trappist monastery?

This move isn't a response to Saudi men around women in scanty dress, but a jobs program for women. Next women sales clerks will take over other clothing stores. The government hopes to create 200,000 jobs for women. There must be a lot of lingerie stores to support those kinds of numbers.

Since the female form is so absolutely lust inducing to men that women must go covered head to toe, where exactly do they keep purveyors of lust enhancing clothing? I'd assumed carefully guarded locations, but nope, according to the article, they are "along the streets, central markets and major shopping centers." They must have the mirrors inside the changing rooms. Or as the song says, Arabian nights, like Arabian days, are hotter than hot, just in much different ways. Know we know the answer to the question, "what comes between me and my Burqa?" isn't nothing.

Along similar lines, when I was in Pakistan, you could tell the hotel employees who regularly got to work in the pool area where the European stewardesses hung out in their European swimwear from those who didn't -- they were the ones who could actually do what they were there to do. The two guys who came out the change a light bulb one day - they just pretty much stopped and stared and ogled. Finally one of the waiters had to say something to them - it only took half and hour to change a light bulb.