Opinion: Despite fashion critiques, yoga pants are timeless

Eileen McClory
Thu, 16 Apr 2015 05:01:22 +0000
Campus, fashion, leggings, sweatpants, yoga pants

I recently ripped a pair of jeans. When my mom asked me if I had enough pairs now, I looked at her like she was crazy.

I don’t wear jeans. They don’t fit me well. I have that problem where the legs are too tight and my waist gaps in the back. Even the Levi’s Supreme Curve jeans don’t fix that problem.

But yoga pants do fix it.

That’s exactly why it’s so unfair that they’re going out of style, or so says The Washington Post.

Sarah Halzack, a retail reporter for the Post, wrote an article last week proclaiming yoga pants were going out of style, partly because it’s becoming common for children to wear leggings and yoga pants.

Excuse me?

There is a picture of me in 1997, when I was 3 years old, and I am wearing bright red leggings. Children wearing leggings isn’t a new trend.

The reason leggings and yoga pants are so good for little kids — the reason I like them so much today — is that they’re easy to move around in when you’re wearing them. Unlike my jeans, my leggings have never ripped when I bend over.

Unlike sweatpants, leggings aren’t heavy, so it’s easy to run in them. Sweatpants are also harder to dress up when you want to leave your house and look human.

Sure, yoga pants are fairly revealing and they don’t look professional. If anything, that’s why they would go out of fashion: They’re meant to be worn with a long shirt so they cover all the parts that aren’t acceptable to be on display. That doesn’t actually happen all that often, but it’s good to pretend.

But I don’t see a reason why college students shouldn’t keep wearing yoga pants and leggings to class, to study and to hang out with their friends. The choice is no longer between jeans and sweatpants, but something in between.

?Click here to see a column on the opposing view.