Ode To Pants

This post is brought to you by my own personal amusement, and also by the current controversy surrounding a topic that, despite the fact that it cannot adequately be described as even remotely controversial, not by any stretch, is still dividing women as if it were the Red Sea, or Marcia Brady’s side part.

—

I have endured many disagreements regarding the state of the yoga pants: Can they be worn as actual pants? Do they border too closely to leggings? Are patterned yoga pants more tolerable? What about the top; must the top cover the nether regions? And is it ethical to wear yoga pants when you do not, in fact, attend yoga classes? What’s to say of modesty? Of truth? Of the women who came before us in pearls and furs and corsets?

To all of this, I say: Let’s just call the whole thing off.

Let it go. Wear what you’d like. End of post.

(But of course there is more.)

Fashion is a polarizing concept. We embrace the idea of personal style, but only when our personal style is closely matched to another’s, only when what we wear meticulously represents the category we feel mostly understood in.

I have had a number of phases in my waltz with personal style. There was a portion of the 90’s I can only accurately describe as Mickey Mouse Club: The Co-Ed Years, and of this time period, I remember technicolor and acid wash, and also the raging headaches we all suffered from dozens of tiny butterfly clips in our straightened hair.

There was the Official Guess Jeans Phase, titled as such because, if you were brandished with the inquisitive triangle on your back right pocket, it didn’t matter what you wore anywhere else.

In college, I had a brief love affair with bohemian peasant blouses and patchwork jeans, with hair gel and plaid shirts from the men’s department at Elder Beerman.

To follow was the cheeky tee time period (“Virgina is For Lovers”), the mock turtleneck Twiggy phase, the pencil skirt Career Woman era complete with a Franklin Covey day planner which held no true version of note-taking. There was a brief time period in which my only requirement for fashion was that it coordinated with my Birkenstocks. (I am thrilled to see this one has returned for another run.)

And now, here we are in our black yoga pants, coming up with reasons why we cannot collectively wear them to the grocery store.

Ladies, we have worn far worse in the grand scheme of things, Amen?

I take yoga classes daily, and so, I am most likely seen in yoga pants. I do, indeed, wear them to the grocery store and also to the post office, the bank. I wear my yoga pants to Target to buy another pair of yoga pants.

They are a very large part of my wardrobe. I say this to admit my particular stake in the issue, to fully disclose my close, personal relationship with activewear.

So yes, I am biased. But what I will also say of yoga pants is that, if you’d like for them to be, they can become the most comfortable workhorse you will own.

For further proof, I present to you: 5 Ways I Wear My Yoga Pants

To the BMV? Yoga pants. To the park? Yoga pants. To the concert? Yoga pants. To church? Yoga pants. Yoga pants, yoga pants, yoga pants.

I suppose what I am truly getting at is this: Wear what you’d like. Creativity abounds; we are more than our yoga pants. We are more than the sum of our shoes and our hair and our underwire, and hey, I’ll downward dog to that any day of the week.

(Namaste.)