The mayor of Castellammare di Stabia, south of Naples, Italy, has ordered police in the beach town to fine women who wear "very short" miniskirts or who show too much cleavage.
Luigi Bobbio, who was elected on Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party ticket, won the vote to ban clothing considered "very short", like miniskirts that do not fully cover the underwear.
According to the Corriere del Mezzogiorno, Bobbio said he had faith in officers making snap decisions, and that they now have the power to hand out 300-euro fines to offenders on the spot.
"They won't need to carry out checks up close. One glance will be enough to judge," the Guardian quoted Bobbio as saying.
But the new rule, which had been approved by the town council, has drawn outrage from local centre-left politicians, who mounted a sit-in outside the town hall and called the Bobbio administration male chauvinist.
"By equating women's clothing with urban decorum, this measure implies women are no more than benches or hedges," councillor Angela Cortese said.
The miniskirt ban is one of 41 new decorum measures introduced by Bobbio.
