Parisian women can now wear pants without fear of arrest, with the Jan. 31 repeal of an archaic 1799 by-law that forbade women from wearing trousers in the city.
According to the law, in order for women to "dress as men" in Paris, they had to ask for special permission, or risk being taken into custody, The Telegraph reported.
The law was meant to separate women from the male revolutionaries who wore knee-length "culottes," which became a symbol of the French Revolution, Agence France-Presse reported. A century later, the law was amended to allow women to wear "pantaloons," or trousers, only if they were riding a bicycle or a horse, according to the Agence France-Presse story.
The law has met with resistance over the past 214 years, especially from Green Party lawmakers back in 2010, who began a campaign to get the law -- archived in the Paris Prefecture and technically still on the books -- permanently removed.
But the prefecture initially refused, the Agence France Presse reported, asserting that it wasn't worth it to try to remove "a piece of judicial archaeology," referring to the effort as a "waste of time."
A member of parliament for the opposition Union for a Popular Movement Party made a new application for the decree's removal in 2012, and this time, their request met with success. The law is now null and void.
Najat Vallaud-Belkacem told AFP that the outdated law was "incompatible with the principles of equality between men and women that are written into the constitution, as well as in France's European engagements."
"Because of this incompatibility, this by-law is implicitly repealed," Vallaud-Belkacem continued. "It has absolutely no legal effect. The document is nothing but a museum piece."
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