Jersey City's prohibition on women going topless will remain after a plan to reverse the ban was nipped from the latest update to the city's old obscenity law.

The new anti-obscenity proposal, up for initial OK by the City Council today, would not allow women to expose any part of their body "below the point immediately above the top of the areola down to the bottom of the areola" in public.

An older version of the obscenity law rewrite would have allowed women to doff all clothing above the waist, but too many council members were uncomfortable with that so it had to go, according to Councilman James Solomon, the bill's sponsor. The rest of the initial proposal remains the same.

"The original bill had three really good things," Solomon told The Jersey Journal. "It had free speech protections, it had removal of restrictions on people's private sex lives and it had gender-neutral, trans-friendly language. This bill has two of those three things."

Solomon pushed to rewrite the city's obscenity law, which dates to the 1980s, after the city cited it in an attempt to shut down a show by local burlesque performer Lillian Bustle. The law includes a ban on anyone owning more than six sex toys and prohibits women from appearing topless in public.

When the initial plan to rewrite the law was presented to the council in May, some members blanched at the idea of allowing women to walk around topless like men do. During that discussion, one councilman would not say the word breasts.

Solomon, who argued that allowing women to appear topless in public would be a trans-inclusive policy, pulled the bill from consideration before its scheduled final vote.

The council will consider the latest version today at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 280 Grove St.