For many, leggings are god’s gift to the world: they’re cute, cozy, and can be a base for so many very different outfits.
But for one Catholic mother, it seems, the popular pants are the devil’s work — and she fears they’re giving men unholy thoughts about a woman’s private parts.
Maryann White (of course that’s her name) recently denounced leggings in a letter that was published in the University of Notre Dame’s student paper, the Observer. In it, she called the pants a blasphemous invention by the fashion industry that “has caused women to voluntarily expose their nether regions.”
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The mother-of-four claims that this growing fashion fad has added to her struggle to teach her sons that “women are someone’s daughters and sisters.” Now, she’s had enough of women and girls wear leggings as everyday garb.
She wrote in the letter, aptly titled “The Legging Problem”:
“I was ashamed for the young women at Mass. I thought of all the other men around and behind us who couldn’t help but see their behinds. My sons know better than to ogle a woman’s body — certainly when I’m around (and hopefully, also when I’m not). They didn’t stare, and they didn’t comment afterwards. But you couldn’t help but see those blackly naked rear ends. I didn’t want to see them — but they were unavoidable. How much more difficult for young guys to ignore them.”
Yes, it must be hell for those poor boys to see fitted pants right before their eyes and *somehow* find a way to control their primal urges.
Naturally, Maryanne wants to make it easier for her sons — and all boys — to not sexualize women’s bodies. The way to do this, she notes, is for college women to stop wearing those gosh darn leggings.
Unfortunately, her plea only exacerbated the problem.
Maryanne’s op-ed was met with the type of hilarious response you’d expect in 2019: multiple campus-wide protests that encouraged students to wear their leggings with pride. One Notre Dame student organized a campus “Leggings Day” that told other students to “join in our legging wearing hedonism!”
Notre Dame students protested Maryann White's op-ed in The Observer by wearing leggings today for #leggingsdayND. Here's why Nicole Waddick showed up: pic.twitter.com/t9DCX4aFRc
— The Observer (@NDSMCObserver) March 26, 2019
Another student group, Irish 4 Reproductive Health, also reportedly planned a “Leggings Pride Day,” while one senior wrote a response and created an informal protest, “The Leggings Protest.”
Several men on campus also took issue with Maryann’s sexist logic that women should dress a certain way in order to be treated respectfully by men. Sophomore Steve Ayers told the Observer:
“I was raised to respect women no matter what they are wearing. So, I think women should be able to wear leggings if they want to.”
Freshman Kyle Dorshorst had the same idea, telling the paper:
“In my opinion, I would never tell someone else how they can or cannot dress, because that is a personal choice, and it doesn’t affect me. So, why should I tell other people what to do?”
Sounds like everyone’s on board, save for the Maryann Whites of the world.
But even anti-leggingists like Maryann can evolve their thinking. Maybe one day she’ll try on a pair of leggings herself and realize they are just too cozy not to wear.
Women are wearing the pants now, gurl, and they won’t judge you for what you have on. (Well, they might… but it would be a silent judgment that would stay out of the school paper.)
[Image via WENN]
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