Yoga pants are a privilege not a right.
Perhaps a prime example was Justine Sacco, who after tweeting an ambiguous, clearly satirical message about AIDS that some people interpreted as racist, found herself the subject of an internet hunt — all while she was on an airplane to Africa. By the time she landed, she had been fired from her job, and people tracked her airplane and confronted her at the airport when she landed. The writer for Gawker who started the whole thing apologized years later.
Certainly there have been many other such examples, but the Sacco incident stands out.
I don’t know if it will reach Sacco proportions, but there is an internet “outrage” gaining momentum against a guy in Barrington, RI, who wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper complaining about older women who wear yoga pants:
To the editor:
The absolute worst thing to ever happen in women fashion is the recent development of yoga pants as daily wear outside the yoga studio.
Not since the mini-skirt has there been something worn by so many women who should never have it on in the first place.
From casual to formal, weddings, funerals, shopping, and even for the workplace, yoga pants are everywhere on women of all ages, usually paired with a blousy top and a pony tail hairdo. What a disaster!
Like the mini-skirt, yoga pants can be adorable on children and young women who have the benefit of nature’s blessing of youth. However, on mature, adult women there is something bizarre and disturbing about the appearance they make in public. Maybe it’s the unforgiving perspective they provide, inappropriate for general consumption, TMI, or the spector of someone coping poorly with their weight or advancing age that makes yoga pants so weird in public.
A nice pair of tailored slacks, jeans, or anything else would be better than those stinky, tacky, ridiculous looking yoga pants. They do nothing to compliment a women over 20 years old. In fact, the look is bad. Do yourself a favor, grow up and stop wearing them in public.
Besides, why would you want to wear something that’s seen on dozens of other women every day, everywhere? I thought women didn’t like doing that for obvious reasons. Yoga pants belong in the yoga studio. What’s next? Wearing a “Speedo” to the supermarket? Imagine if men did that. Yuck!
To all yoga pant wearers, I struggle with my own physicality as I age. I don’t want to struggle with yours. Thanks,
Alan Sorrentino
Barrington
The letter received numerous negative comments, and additional critical letters to the editor in response. All of which seems a perfectly appropriate way to disagree.