The Riveter | Would You Marry A Girl Who Practiced Sports?
In mid-April, Saudi Arabia’s liberal-leaning newspaper Al-Watan published a satirical article about a hot topic in the country entitled, “Would You Marry a Girl Who Practiced Sports?”
The article was published shortly after Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Education was called upon by the country’s Shoura Council, the consultative assembly to the king, to conduct a study about introducing girls’ physical education (PE) classes in the nation’s public schools. PE was officially permitted for girls in Saudi Arabia’s private schools just last year, to the chagrin of several outspoken conservatives in the country who condemned it as another grade on the slippery slope to irreversible westernization.
What the measure is, in actuality, is an attempt to fight soaring rates of obesity and diabetes in the country and to, at long last, participate in the tidal wave of sports development overcoming the Middle East during the past 10 years.