WHILE browsing in a charity shop, I noticed a burly man sift through a basket of women’s underwear, select a rather fetching lace basque and to my amazement ask the elderly female assistant if he could try it on. She agreed, and he vanished into the changing room, clutching the garment. I said something like “Is he trying that on?”’ She smilingly said “Yes” and assured me that he was a regular. Was she right to permit this?
Do you really have an ethical objection, or are you simply jealous that he beat you to the basque, (which, for lingerie tyros, is a woman’s tight-fitting bodice)?
Assuming that the burly customer wasn’t intending to use that bit of lace to strangle a cat, there’s no reason for the shop assistant to vet his purchase or to enforce the ordinary norms of gender or fashion.
Indeed, I admire her sang froid. She rightly saw her role as assisting the customers, not in patrolling the aisles as some sort of underwear police. She showed exemplary tact and tolerance in not embarrassing this fellow in what could be an uncomfortable encounter.
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I suppose that you might invoke health concerns. In many cities, it is against the law to try on underwear. But those restrictions are often limited to clothes worn below the waist, and even then seem overly fastidious in an era of abundant soap and hot water, a vestige of a less-well-scrubbed age. Such proscriptions are not so much a requirement of hygiene as an urging of psychology. What’s more, because this was a charity shop, the garments are likely to have been previously worn, all the more reason for the assistant to behave with such admirable restraint.
Can you suggest solutions to this ethical dilemma? Or do you have dilemmas of your own? Write to: The Ethicist, Times Features, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1TT. E-mail: ethicist@thetimes.co.uk. Readers’ solutions will be published on Friday.
The Ethicist originates from The New York Times Magazine.