Spoons Hidden in Underwear Could Save Teens from Arranged Marriages

A British charity is advising children being forced into arranged marriages to fight back — with metal spoons. In their underwear.

Here’s the logic behind that odd-sounding recommendation: Forced child marriages don’t often happen within the UK; teens (girls 72% of the time, according to statistics kept by the Foreign Office’s Forced Marriage Unit) who are being compelled by their families to marry a stranger are usually flown to another country where the union can occur, according to Raw Story. And thanks to heightened security measures in our innocence-shattered post-9/11 world, when teens of a certain age try to pass through airport security and are discovered to have metal objects hidden under their clothing, they’re taken away to a private screening area, where they’d ostensibly have the chance to tell an authority figure if they were being shipped abroad to marry a stranger.

Raw Story explain’s the push’s origins:

The spoon trick is the brainchild of the Karma Nirvana charity, which supports victims and survivors of forced marriage and honour-based abuse.

Based in Derby, central England, it fields 6,500 calls per year from around Britain but has almost reached that point so far in 2013 as awareness of the issue grows.

So the next time you’re quietly steaming your brain with impotent travel rage over having to take your shoes off to go through security, remember that overzealous security might be saving kids from forced marriages. And feel like an asshole.