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Pants No Longer Technically Illegal For Women in Paris

Pants No Longer Technically Illegal For Women in Paris

 

Women with a love of trousers can breathe a sigh of relief this week after the French National Assembly revoked a decree making it illegal for women to wear pants within the city limits of Paris.  The law, passed by the Paris chief of police in 1799, remained on the books for 214 years before being taken away.

Of course, no women in Paris have been prosecuted for wearing pants in a very long time.  When the law was initially passed, it wasn't because Parisian officials simply didn't like how pants looked on women.  At that time, pants were more than just a fashion symbol, and more than just menswear.  They had become a very specific symbol of the French Revolution, symbolizing commonality with the common man and a unity of purpose.  Keeping women out of the Revolution was considered a top priority by police in Paris in the 18th century.

While Paris changed and evolved, the law stayed there.  It sat on the books throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.  Yet it wasn't completely static.  At the beginning of the 20th century, the law was modified to allow women to wear pants during horseback riding or while riding bicycles.  These modifications were intended to protect womens' modesty at a time when showing a little extra exposed skin could cause a life-changing scandal.

France gave equal rights to men and women in 1946, just after World War II came to an end.  However, some laws remained on the books even if they didn't respect that equality.  While women in Paris were, by 1946, definitely wearing pants without fearing arrest or reprisals, the law stayed just where it had for over a century.

Finally, in 2010, France's Green Party drafted a bill to eliminate both the law against women wearing pants in Paris and other relic laws that no longer had the force of the courts behind them.  However, at that time, the French National Assembly rejected calls to repeal the bill—after all, they said, it was no longer enforced and certainly could never be without being laughed out of court.

However, after France's Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, minister of women's rights, heard of the trouser ban, she was livid.  The law “injured our modern sensibilities,” she said.  As a response to the embarrassingly outmoded law, Vallaud-Belkacem spearheaded a successful charge to have the pants ban erased from the books.

Sources: Time.com, TheAtlantic.com