With all the daily horrors of dealing with Donald Trump as our so-called president, one could argue we needed this moment whereby the very serious and important NY Times takes the time and effort to devote space to trolling yoga pants with a piece titled “Why Yoga Pants Are Bad for Women.”
The editorial was written by Honor Jones, who argues that women are being forced into yoga pants because they’re sexy, an extension of appearance-based pressures placed on women on dates and at work.
“We felt we had to look hot on dates–a given. We felt we had to look hot at the office–problematic. But now we’ve internalized the idea that we have to look hot at the gym? Give me a break,” writes Jones.
In the piece, Jones wonders what happened to working out in sweatpants, a far more comfortable option. “Remember sweatpants?” she asks. “Women used to wear them, not so long ago. You probably still have a pair, in velour or terry cloth, with the name of a college or sports team emblazoned down the leg.”
We find this query about sweatpants kind of hilarious because the silhouette (also known as trackpants and joggers) literally is everywhere from your favorite fast fashion purveyor to the toniest of runways. There’s even hashtags for the sweatpants look: #teamcozy #cozystyle. Popular singer/songwriter SZA is a known torchbearer for the look though lots of virtually all celebs have embraced sweatpants as a style statement as well.
This is the thing, people can and do wear sweatpants at the gym, but not as much they might because they lack the functionality of yoga pants. We put this question to our followers on Instagram (below) and they all said the same thing, if you’re serious about your workout, sweat is a real issue best managed by wearing yoga pants. At the same time, commenters also fully supported someone choosing to wear sweatpants if they so desire.
In a way though this piece is kind of cool. It reminds us of simpler, pre-Trumpian days when a opinion piece like this was capable of taking over Twitter for the day and spurring multiple throw-away think pieces.
Nowadays news veers between frightening on the worst days and utterly heartbreaking on the best. One can only dream of brighter days when fluffy editorials like this don’t seem jarringly out of place.
Illustration above is via Eleni Kalorkoti for the NY Times.
