During the French Revolution, Parisian women had requested the right to wear trousers and working-class revolutionaries became known as "sans-culottes" for wearing trousers instead of the silk-knee breeches preferred by the bourgeoisie.
It is not for nothing that Leila Trabelsi has come to symbolize for the Tunisian protesters everything that Marie-Antoinette did for the sans-culottes, and that it is sympathy for her and her family that colors the lament from French allies of the regime.