Oh Mon Dieu! No Pants in Paris?
The Telegraph revealed that an archaic Parisian law, banning women from wearing trousers without express permission from their local police headquarters, will finally be repealed. First initiated in 1799, the law was eventually reformed to allow for the growing trend of women wearing pants whilst en vélo (on those old-timey bone-shaker bicycles) in 1909.
Though the law has been on the books for nearly two centuries, it’s obviously not heavily enforced (otherwise fashion week would be a frenzy of police beat-downs… models being tasered, feathers flying, Lagerfeld biting an officer). Women won equal legal status to men in France in 1946, thus the no-pants legislation has technically been invalid ever since. None the less, French MP’s are now calling for the law’s removal.
The Telegraph article points out that ironically the law ”makes the laissez-faire French capital theoretically more hardline than Islamic states like Sudan in the fashion stakes.” Well the key word here is theoretically. Women in the west have fought a long and hard battle against gender discrimination- and we’re still not done.
Outmoded sans culottes laws may make us giggle nowadays, but I doubt women forced to dress according to male-dominated governmental mandate in countries like Saudi and Sudan find the matter laughable. It’s a reminder that patriarchal control must still be fought, even today.
