The War on Leggings

There are lots of interesting things going on regarding my favorite apparel item/general topic of conversation (that would be leggings).

BASICALLY lots of schools are banning leggings and yoga pants because they are too revealing and “over-sexualize” teenage girls and boys are distracted by all the revealing leggingness.

There are lots of debates to be had about the nuances involved here which include:

• The general idea of leggings as pants
• The legitimacy and practicality of dress codes at schools where there is no school uniform
• The sexism of said school dress codes
• The rape culture context (and the uncontrollable, unpredictable male sex drive)

There are more. But what I’d rather talk about is how stupid this is:

Needless to say, the sisterhood was not sated. Feminist website Jezebel asked why “the solution is to make girls cover up instead of … teaching boys to not be gross sexist pigs?” This echoed Dockterman’s complaint that “we tell women to cover themselves … but we neglect to tell the boys to look at something else.”

Let’s remember, we are talking about 13-year-old boys. Adult women have transformed children into monsters merely for finding the contours of a girl’s body attractive. The only people being shamed here are the boys. Their crime is being human.

This isn’t the first time pants created controversy. In 2013, Kenilworth Junior High School in Petaluma, Calif., banned “too tight" pants. According to a local news report, a mother wore skinny jeans in solidarity with her daughter declaring, “Boys need to be taught to respect women no matter what they’re wearing.” But a boy noticing a girl in body-hugging pants is not disrespectful. Nor is it something he needs to — or can — unlearn.

"The only people being shamed here are the boys."

These poor teenage boys! They must be suffering so, having their hormonal sexuality bandied about. Their shame must be acute. How embarrassing for them to have the distraction of teenage female bodies at every turn, taunting them, baiting them, with their inappropriately revealing clothing.

Forgive me—it’s been a long time since I was in high school—but I think the missing item here is the heterosexual teenage girl and her developing sexuality. When I was 15, 16, 17, what of the good-looking, sweaty basketball players coming off the court in their sleeveless jerseys? I remember fondly watching members of the baseball team come to class in their uniforms before or after games (“his ass looks good”)—and how dare they? Honestly—distracting me from my studies with their tight pants, quick grins, pinstripe-adorned asses. And then there were the shirt sleeves, wrapped tightly around muscular arms that reached down to pick up the book I dropped. It must have been too much for me to handle. All of these boys—everywhere—wearing things.

So, yes, let’s protect the teenage girls from the prying eyes of the teenage male. Because certainly, almost certainly, she never looks back at him! As women, we keep our heads down, focused on our studies. We are free of distractions, because who are we to objectify the male sex? It’s preposterous. It’s unthinkable.

Almost as unthinkable as a school making arbitrary decisions about a growing female body—saying, for example, that she is more desirable and thus unprotected in leggings than in skinny jeans. So desirable, in fact, that a teacher (perhaps a male teacher) may have to approach her, evaluate just how desirable she may be and then send her somewhere to change into something that makes her less attractive. Let’s protect her, they must say. Let’s ensure that the unpredictable, uncontrollable male does not get distracted from his studies. He will not always have our protection—he may one day actually see a woman in a short skirt, unbelievable!—but for now, we will guard his sexuality for him because our culture says he is unable to do it or learn how to do it himself.

It’s important to help educate teenage boys about sex and their own sexuality, but shielding them from leggings does not seem to be the most productive method of doing so. Instead of pretending that their sex drive does not exist outside of seeing a girl in leggings, why don’t we teach them about wearing condoms? Or why don’t we teach them that women do not exist solely for the pleasure of your sexual advances or interest, regardless of whether you find their clothes attractive or not? And we could take that a step further—that a woman interested in you does not necessarily mean that she is a woman who will have sex with you. And that’s okay. And they can learn to hear “no” without ignoring it, pretending like they didn’t hear it, going ahead with it anyway because she was wearing leggings, and don’t girls with leggings want to have sex? With anyone? With everyone? They might think: “My school said the girls who wore tight pants were the bad girls, the sexy girls. The ones who wanted to have sex. Now I’m older, stronger. There’s no dress code in college or at bars or at the beach. I’m distracted now and no one has educated me on how to behave if I am. So I guess I’ll go for it, right? She looks like she might want it.”