Wear what you want, but think about covering up a little

I confess that I wear yoga pants.
Since I am a 20-something-year-old female college student, this statement is probably not a surprising one. After all, when you step outside of your residence hall in the morning, you see more yoga pants than blue jeans, khakis, jeggings or dresses. Yoga pants might just be the most important and widely used garment in a young girl’s closet. But things weren’t always that way, especially not for me.
I grew up watching “What Not to Wear” with a mother who needed two walk-in closets for her entire wardrobe. With the style advice of Stacy London and Clinton Kelly in one ear and my mother’s drive to impress everyone on the first meeting, I was the kid who was always wearing the most trendy outfits in school. Fashion was my life. It got to the point that I started to plan out a future in fashion design at SCAD — until reality hit, of course. Today, fashion still means the world to me. As my friends say, I never leave the room without “being dressed as a person.” I can’t leave the room wearing just sweatpants or just a plain shirt or even just blue jeans. I have to jazz it up with a nice jacket, a snazzy pair of shoes, or something more. Fashion is an expression of your personality and your identity, but it is also a matter of comfort.
To be honest, I didn’t know what yoga pants were until my freshman year of college. It was then that I discovered that almost every girl on campus adored them. Even one of my close friends loved them to the point that they were a staple of her wardrobe, and she had more yoga pants than jeans. I didn’t see what the appeal was at the time. I knew what I didn’t like about them. I hated that they didn’t cover what pants needed to cover. They were see-through and sometimes did all the wrong things to a girl’s butt by making it misshapen or way too cheeky. Instead of a girl covering this flaw with a tunic-style shirt or a dress, she would often just wear a regular shirt with it and not care what her butt looked like. It irritated me to the point where I pledged to never wear yoga pants if I could help it.
Then, my friend took me to Target and had me try on a pair.
They were the most comfortable piece of clothing I had ever worn.
So, to make a long story short, I now own like four pairs of them, and I wear them often. But I never let my butt show. I always wear a dress that’s maybe too short to wear on its own or a long shirt that covers everything the way it is supposed to. The problem that everyone has with yoga pants is that they seem immodest and too sexy for young women. People automatically place them in the wrong category with leggings, jeggings and tights. The thing about all of those things is that they are a beautiful element of fashion when worn the right way.
Your butt has to be covered.
Ladies, it just has to be covered.
The material used to make things like yoga pants or leggings is see-through, meaning that you might as well be wearing a sheer dress and brilliant color underwear. Look, we can’t tell guys to stop objectifying women when we practically invite them to it. I’m not saying that guys should objectify, but we can’t walk both lines here either. Leave things to the imagination. It’s classier.
Yoga pants aren’t a sin against humanity. They are comfortable. They make women feel good. And men do like women in them, which is just a bonus. Regardless of that, though, women have the right to choose what they want to wear. No man can take that from them. That shouldn’t even be a question. Clothing is freedom. Fashion is liberty and expression. It is options and choice. It is just like voting. No one should be able to stop us from doing it.
Yoga pants are nice. I do agree that they are worn incorrectly, but that’s my opinion. Girls and women have the right to choose how they want to dress. But there are ways to dress yoga pants up to take them from ass to class. We just have to accept that there are a bits of fashion that need to be dressed up like everything else in our wardrobe.