WHEREAS liberal Iranians sense that their new government, under President Hassan Rohani, may widen social freedoms, hardliners from the old school have been calling for standards in women’s attire to be upheld. In particular, they are fretting about leggings.

Although summer coats have become shorter and tighter in recent years, many women have recently been opting for baggier versions to satisfy Tehran’s morality police. But when opened they reveal a spandexed lower leg. Facebook groups showing shiny leggings have attracted thousands of fans. The trend has aroused a fierce debate in the media about their Islamic virtues and vices.

Conservative websites have poured scorn on this latest “cultural onslaught” from the West. One warns against a “lustful atmosphere” infecting society. Leggings, it is said, have led to a “violation of the mental and physiological peace” of Iran’s youth. “Under these circumstances I do not think that even old men can maintain their moral health.” Another site calls on “revolutionary youths” to form groups to “cleanse neighbourhoods of such models”, since the leggings plague has caused a rise in sexual assaults. Some conservatives say members of the baseej, a voluntary paramilitary organisation, should be encouraged to arrest anyone in leggings.

“Leggings are good for the heat in summer and Iranian women know they are very popular outside [Iran], so we want to do what other women in the world are doing,” says Niloofar, a student in Tehran. “I don’t understand the fuss. We wear dark colours and [the conservatives] are still dissatisfied. If more than ten women do something in this country, it suddenly becomes an offence and they start looking for ways to stop it.”

Arguments over how to define and enforce Islamic laws on women’s dress code have persisted since the Islamic Republic’s birth in 1979. “Good hijab”, as modest dress is called, has never been more laxly enforced than it is today. Yet women deemed to dress too freely can still be picked up by the morality police and taken to their station for a lecture lasting several hours. But at least the days have gone when baseejis, in the first 15 years or so of the revolution, would sometimes beat women for wearing “inappropriate” dress—or even for riding bicycles. Spandex, it seems, is here to stay.