The subject of women's clothing in France became a worldwide topic of discussion last month after images of a Muslim woman being forced to remove her burkini at a beach by armed police officers spread online. The images focused attention not only on the recent bans on the full-body burkinis in some French cities, but also the nationwide ban on full-face Islamic veils in public spaces, implemented in This week, a dispute about how women should dress has again erupted in France — but this time, the circumstances were notably different.
According to initial reports published in the French press this week, two women wearing shorts were verbally assaulted as they made their way through an eastern neighborhood in the southern city of Toulon on Sunday afternoon.
Local prosecutor Bernard Marchal told reporters a group of about 10 young men began insulting the women, who were out biking and rollerblading with their families, calling them "whores" and making other vulgar insults for their choice of clothing. When the women's spouses confronted the men, a brawl broke out. The husbands and a male friend were severely beaten. The fighting, which was witnessed by children in the group, left one man with severe facial fractures and another with a broken nose, Marchal told Agence France-Presse.
Two suspects, ages 17 and 19, were apprehended Tuesday; an investigation is underway to find the others. The idea that the women had been harassed simply because they wore shorts led some to dub it the "affaire des shorts. We were in sportswear," the woman, named as Marie, told the Nice Matin newspaper. Part of the reason the incident spread so quickly was that it followed a previous attack on a woman wearing shorts. In early June, an year-old girl named Maude Vallet said she was insulted, threatened and spat on by a group of girls while on a bus in Toulon — all because she was wearing denim shorts.
Vallet posted a picture of her outfit on Facebook afterward, arguing that men can walk around the city with their shirts off and not face the harassment she faced. After that incident, about women wearing shorts gathered in Toulon for a "short walk. So far, there is little information about the motivations of the attackers in either instances — details such as their religious or ethnic backgrounds have not been publicly released.
