Openly Breaking The Law In Paris.
Breaking the law.
Knowingly breaking the law terrifies me. I am always certain that I will get caught or be seen or some other terrible thing will happen to punish me. It drives my husband crazy. I will not park anywhere that is not marked as authorised parking, I generally drive more slowly than the rest of the people on the road and I won’t even put the sugar lumps from the coffee he bought me into my handbag. In a Japanese restaurant recently my daughter wanted the chopsticks. They were cheap throw away chopsticks. The type that you unwrap and have to snap in two, probably made from bolsa wood. I insisted that she asked before taking them. She gave me that look, the one that says ‘you are so humiliating mum!’ So what would a ‘fraidy cat’ like me be doing openly breaking the law in Paris?
I didn’t know, honest officer.
Apparently ignorance of the law is no excuse. Whilst it can reduce your fine or jail time a law is a law and citizens are expected to acquaint themselves with the law. Neither is the fact that everyone around you is doing the same thing. So here is my gallery of shame. Openly flaunting the law of the land in Paris one cloudy day in 2008. It’s not just me either. Can you see how many people are actually breaking the law here? Even that very smart-looking lady in the red coat is breaking the law.
You will have to excuse the poor quality of these pictures. It was a very dull day, I didn’t have a good camera with me and I didn’t know the pictures would be called in evidence in this way.
A Parisian law dating from November 1800 dictates that “Any woman wishing to dress as a man must present herself at the police station and obtain authorisation” (my translation). If the law is not respected the woman can be arrested and taken into custody. This law still exists despite the equality laws being drawn into the French Constitution in 1946. Another contradiction is the law insisting that Parisian police women wear trousers. The law was slightly changed in 1892 and 1909 to allow women either riding a bicycle or holding the reins of a horse to cover their legs. You will notice that the women in the above pictures, including me, do not have horses or bicycles. I know! I broke the law! (Hangs head in shame.)
There were several calls to repeal this law as it is considered anti constitutional but certainly up to last year it had not been changed. There is a wonderful article in The Sydney Morning Herald called “The politics of pants”. It talks about this law and has some excellent pictures of Maxime de la Falaise, Anne Scott-James, Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn all wearing trousers. It is well worth a look. Although that article calls them pants, I have to point out that I am British, so unless I did this :-
Credit: Huffington Post
no one would ever know if I were wearing pants or not.
There is currently no law banning men from dressing as a woman. In the late 1950s Paris went through a “transgender-outlawed” period under Charles de Gaulle. There was an exhibition of photographs from this period in New York last year.
Have you broken any laws recently?
Are there any outdated laws in your country that people break every day?
Are there laws you think should be repealed?
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Cool! Paris is an amazing place, even on a dull day.Brings to mind a Parisian weather adventure with my wife walking from the Louvre through the Tulleries, it was sunny as we walked away from that pyramid, poured with rain in the middle of the gardens, and sunny again by the time we got to the Place de Concorde). Weird.
More to the point, It’s remarkable how many archaic laws there are around worldwide – forgotten, irrelevant, but still there if anyone cared to enforce them. Here in New Zealand, there was legislation passed in the 1920s prohibiting farmer from putting stock out for tupping anywhere in sight of a public road. I think it’s still in force.
The weather here can be changeable. On the plus side we have a lot of rainbows.
There are many ancient laws and rules all over the world that need to be adjusted. Many of them need to be brought up to date. I wonder how many conflicts would be avoided if all rules and laws were updated tomorrow?
I don’t know about tupping laws but I expect there are some in the UK. If Queen Victoria could introduce laws whereby even pianos were forbidden to show their legs I am sure tupping in public would be illegal also.
I’m another of those folks who obeys all the rules all the time, but I at least I learned a new word, though I suspect I won’t have occasion to use it much.
Glad to hear you are law abiding Joel.
I learned the word ‘tupping’ when I was quite young as we kept animals. It was used particularly with all the older farmers. It wasn’t until a lot later that I knew what it meant.
Now you tell me…. If only I had know this on our many visits to Paris I could have had my old trout arrested and enjoyed myself .. next time maybe
It would be amusing to try. Especially if you tried to get a female police officer to arrest her.
More than likely then it would be me arrested for slaughtering the French language LoL
Ah – that might just be your stumbling block.
How exciting, I’m currently living in Paris and have seemingly broken the law a few times… I suddenly feel extremely bad-ass. Great blog.
Does make you feel a bit naughty doesn’t it? I must have broken the law every time I went to Paris.
Thanks for visiting and commenting.
There’s got to be another book in here somewhere. Amazing all the archaic laws that are still on the books. Good one, Kerry.
Thank you – glad you like it.
expect there are quite a lot of old law on the books in all sorts of countries. Do you know of any in the USA?
Funny you should ask. I just consulted with my in-house attorney, lol. Terry said that there’s a law (not sure if it’s still in effect anywhere) that a car had to be preceded by a walking person carrying lantern. He’s on the computer as we speak and he’s a hot off the press ‘nudder one, “animals are banned from mating publicly within 1500 feet of a tavern, school or place or worship.” While researching my book we came across some laws from the original colonies that I included in Gus’ dialogue that if you didn’t attend church on Sunday it was punishable by death (in Pennsylvania). Now, that’s what I call a really scary law. Maybe your fear is from being in American at that time, lol?
p.s. forgive me for not doing a typo check on that last.
I don’t think I was in Pennsylvania back then. Still it was a long time ago and you know what my memory is like. That is a scary law though.
It would be amusing if someone had to walk in front of the cars. Put a stop to speeding anyway. Did you know that the word chauffeur came from the person who had to light the cars headlights and stoke the engine? They usually drove the car as well.
The one about not letting your animals mate in public is similar to the one in Australia that Matthew Wright mentioned earlier. I’ll bet there are rules like that all over if we look.
We should write that book! It could be interesting.
Terry said he thought it was Pennsylvania because of William Penn being a Quaker. I’d have to fact check that one though. Cracked me up, “Put a stop to speeding…” I’ll do that book with you but you’ll hafta do the comedy translation. Maybe we should talk about that… We already have our in house research attorney. I couldn’t get him to stop after he found those first two…
I think this could be interesting for a joint work – a few blog posts if not a book. Do you know that I don’t actually mean to be funny. When I try it doesn’t work.
I agree it’d be interesting. I think I understand what you’re saying about when you try it doesn’t work. It’s interesting because I feel you do have a gift and I wonder how that would be cultivated if you were to do stand up comedy or write for a sit com. Not suggesting you do just looking at how the gift gets cultivated. Laughter and humor have always fascinated me, what some think is funny that others are offended by, what makes a sit comm work, etc.?
That is worth looking into. You are not the only person that finds me funny when I don’t mean to be. I get laughed at a lot! It would be interesting to cultivate it to see how could do it on purpose.
Interesting. My father was like that. He was English and had that silly but very funny Brit humor without trying. It just came out of him. And, his parents were droll and serious religious people. I had a friend who was the lead comedy writer for Andy Williams when he was on the air and he used to tell us about the writers all sitting around a table writing the jokes, without cracking a smile they would read something and say, “oh that’s funny” or “now that’s hilarious” and it would go into the show but none of them laughed while doing the writing. Look at Woody Allen, if you like his humor, and his personality is so neurotic and serious, not saying yours is, just rambling about humor. Then what’s up with the funny comedian that makes people laugh who struggles with depression or alcoholism, etc. Gifts, talents, are a mystery-others can enjoy things about us that we have no clue about…
Okay, enough from me. I have work to do but it is really interesting.
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