A ZARA client unleashes a gender storm when she is surprised half-naked in the fitting rooms by "two men"

The journalist Charlotte Griffiths has unleashed a gender debate with ZARA as the protagonist, and from which the Spanish firm does not come out well, after having published her latest experience in one of its London stores in the digital version of 'The Daily Mail' , the famous English medium.

The editor went to the ZARA store closest to her work in the English capital, the one located on High Street Kensington, to make the typical emergency purchase when you feel like you have nothing to wear for the company Christmas dinner . She says that she is far from being a novice at said establishment, which she usually visits on her "lunch breaks" and claims to know "like the back of her hand", a fundamental detail to know that the changing rooms on the ground floor are those of women. Logical, since it is only dedicated to women's fashion (men's fashion is in the basement and children's fashion is on the first floor, along with 'casual' fashion).

Charlotte goes into detail to leave no room for doubt about what she was going to narrate.

She confesses that she didn't take long to choose a top for dinner and went to the dressing rooms to see it put on: "there is no queue and immediately they assign me one of the six booths arranged in a circle around a shared area and a communal mirror".

But the moment came that really concerns us and that has generated controversy in England: "Once I had finished with my cubicle, an employee accompanied two very tall men to the fitting room, as if it were the most normal thing in the world."

The journalist's surprise is capitalized, that she feels "uncomfortable, not to say offended" when seeing two men "in what she thought she was the women's changing room." She confesses that "like the vast majority of women, she expects women's changing rooms to be exclusively for women."

She then describes the crux of the matter as seeing that these two men were each wearing "a stack of clothes, with various items to try on, one of them the same sequined top" that she had just tried on.

Her immediate reaction does not escape logic. Charlotte asked a ZARA employee if they let men into the women's fitting rooms. She seemed not to, since she excused herself that the girl in charge of the changing rooms was "new" and "she would have probably made a mistake", so she promised to go and fix it.

Meanwhile, the journalist continued her search for the ideal top for such a special occasion. When she found it, she went back to the changing rooms, but since all the booths were taken, she found a discreet alcove where she could change in the common area of ​​mirrors. It is a women's changing room and the misunderstanding with those two men seemed resolved, so she felt in a "safe space".

However, taking off her shirt, these two men left two booths while she was still in her underwear, "talking over her head, as if she were invisible." But, in her own words, she did not feel "invisible", but "exposed in a bra". She says that she covered herself as best she could, "crossing her arms over her chest", without looking up from the ground, wanting the ground to swallow her.

She quickly asked the employee for an explanation, and her response, with a shrug, was, "What can we do if this is how they classify themselves?"

After giving up on the employees, she decided to talk to the store manager, who clarified that they did not have any kind of instructions in this regard detailed by central: "In some stores we receive complaints when we let men into the changing rooms on the women's floor, and in others we receive complaints when we don't. We have to be very careful, it's a very delicate matter and it's very easy to offend people. We try not to bother and deal with it on a case-by-case basis. As a general rule, if the people wear women's clothes to try on, so you can use the women's changing rooms.

To confirm the latter, Charlotte asked another employee and got an identical response. Thus, she asks herself in her article: How does the thing work then if there are women from more conservative cultures in the changing rooms?

The ZARA manager tells him that "this is a problem in some stores, like the one in Marble Arch", a London neighborhood with a large Arab community. And he adds: "Our decisions also have to depend on the ethnic profile of customers using fitting rooms at the same time."

The experience narrated by Charlotte has unleashed a storm divided into several different storms. The most notorious is the criticism with ZARA:

- "What can we do? ZARA says. Send them to the men's locker room! It's literally no problem trying on the clothes they like there. But it's a power play, it's about breaking women's boundaries." captures one of the most accepted comments on the controversy on Twitter.

- "The thing that never happens happening again", sentences another of the voices in protest.

- "Since it is well known that women are at a higher risk of harm in mixed-gender changing rooms (and the men there do mixed-sex), I hope that ZARA's insurers are ready for lawsuits, as they are putting the women in danger without their knowledge", reads another of the opinions with more depth in the network.

- "It would be interesting to see their civil liability insurance. I don't doubt that they would claim that we enter the changing rooms at our own risk, but then there would be a reasonable expectation that the female changing rooms actually mean what they say," says another user.

- "Example of male power play, 'what are you going to do?' Seriously embarrassing women in a semi-naked state and loving every minute of it," read another comment with much acceptance.

- "Has it happened that ZARA says 'no'? To men? For the benefit of women?" another user complained about it.

- "It's strange how we never hear of women trying to access the men's locker room. Why? I never thought that misogyny was as big a problem as reported. The evidence is overwhelming and I have had to change my opinion. I am ashamed to my complacency", confesses a regretful user of his past thought.

- "What can ZARA do? Apply the Equality Law of 2010!", claims a user of the network.

- "What can we do? How about having the courage to offend male customers and protect female ones?", exposes another of the views on the matter.

- "Zara's policy is that any man who picks up a handful of women's clothing can enter the women's locker room, whether his motives are to harass, expose himself or simply watch women and girls undress. Women and girls do not they are safe in ZARA", alleges another user in the network.

- "Why does ZARA make its employees complicit in a policy that constitutes 1. a charter for voyeurs, exhibitionists and other perverts (just when skirt lifting and spy cameras in public facilities are on the rise) and 2. a barrier extra for women from strongly patriarchal communities to buy?", raises the voice of Cátia Freitas, from the editorial team of 'Radical Notion' and 'Woman's Place'.

- "Hello ZARA, are you aware that women and girls are forced to share your changing rooms with unknown men? How is that acceptable? UK equality legislation allows for single-sex spaces where people may reasonably object to the presence of members of the opposite sex," clarifies another Twitter user.

Criticisms in this regard are endless in this sense, but the most media has been left by the writer and feminist activist Jean Hatchet: "Oh, ZARA. Why do you let men pass women's fitting rooms? One in five women have been raped by men. One in four have been abused by men. That's a lot of women who don't feel safe around men when they're vulnerable and undressing. Disgusting."

Another media scourge following Charlotte's article has fallen on ZARA from the Women's Rights Network (WRN). Transcribing the words of the journalist, "like the vast majority of women, I hope that women's changing rooms are just that, for women", they add: "we are disappointed, why are you ignoring the needs of women?".

On the other hand, an opinion that differs from the previous one, of a marked feminist nature, although referring to the gender debate, has opened a gap in the center of the controversy, also counting on great support (and that does not leave ZARA in very good place in your conclusion):

"Went to read this and can only emphasize how rubbish it really is. Too long, didn't read. Woman late for Christmas party, needs new clothes, goes to Zara, full fitting rooms, changes in hallway, gets upset when men see her because she is in a community space.

Let's tear this apart. First of all, nowhere in the article, or in her conversations with ZARA staff, do we get confirmation that Zara has gendered wardrobes. The closest we've come is her taking it on.

Then she goes and puts on a different top, and since all the booths are full she decides it's best to take her shirt off in a common area, and she gets upset when she notices that the men were in it. it should be noted that these people also ignore it.

I mean, not only is this person wrong, but, emphasizing again that this is a common area, I've been shopping with my friends in those aisles when they want my opinion. I have seen children, parents and husband waiting in these corridors for them to change.

To me, this statement reads more like 'ZARA as a company doesn't have a policy on whether or not they have gender fitting rooms,' rather than 'Oh, those evil trans people are making life difficult for us cis people.'" .

A gender storm has been unleashed that is splashing the image of ZARA, which is not going to have an easy time developing a policy -if it sets out to do so- that satisfies all groups.

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