Fan(girl) Friday: Yoga Pant Love

Yes, yes, all these things Irving has addressed so far during Yoga Week are important: self-reflection, life lessons, gender, self-care, community.  Real nice things.  But let’s be real for a second.  You want to talk about a major part of yoga?  Deal.  I’ve stolen Fanboy Friday so we can talk yoga pant love. It only seems fair, at this point, to make it dead clear that I am a yoga pant addict.  Specifically the wunder under.  I adore wunder unders.  I honestly do not know where my life would be without wunder unders – and that is so not an overstatement.  It’s entirely accurate to say that I wear wunder unders every single day.  With pride.  I am a wunder under lover.  Dare me to say wunder under one more time in this paragraph?  Wunder under.  Ha.

Now, being a proud every day yoga pant wearer, I am well aware that yoga pants can be a controversial topic, as they are often tragically confused with the extremely different lower-half clothing items of ‘tights’ or ‘leggings’.  Tights and leggings are not yoga pants.  I repeat: yoga pants are a different pant breed than tights and leggings.

To help us understand the distinction between these three clothing items more clearly (and better the world for yoga pant wearers everywhere), I have created the following diagram:

Clearly, yoga pants emerge as the superior choice.  What else could you possibly want in a pant?  Bum coverage, stretchiness, comfort, pretty colors, and they are socially acceptable.

Pretending to be the experienced blogger that I often pretend to be, I decided to dig deeper into this debate about the appropriateness of yoga pants.  I mean, this is a crucial question for yoga pant wearers everywhere.  What do both sides of the yoga-pants-in-public debate have to say?

First, Kristina Matisic gets pretty angry about tight pant varieties.  She calls out tight pant wearers and demands that we follow a few of her rules if we wish to wear such pants in public.  A lovely girl named Rachel has written us yoga pant wearers an open letter where she also gives some criteria about socially sanctioned yoga pants.  She also calls yoga pants “glorified sweatpants”.  Debate that amongst yourselves.  To conclude the negatory-on-yoga-pants side, I read a descriptive post by Judgy Bitch, and well, you know.  You can probably guess what she had to say.

Happily, now we move on to the yoga pant approvers.  Which, for the record, does not include the nine trillion blog and forum posts from boys about how much they like yoga pant clad female bums.  Dear these boys: get a life please.  As Julie Gillis brilliantly blogs, “I am not wearing yoga pants to oppress your sexuality or tempt you into sin. You, the general you, are not much on my mind. When I dress to seduce, I do not tend to choose yoga pants.  I wear yoga pants because they increase my feelings of flexibility and health and dance and that makes me happy”.  Like, really.

The ultimate in yoga-pants-every-day love comes from Lex McDonald, and her Wunder Year project – 365 days of wunder unders.  She talks about her life, love, scarves, challenges, successes, workouts, all while completely rocking wunder unders.  I want Lex to be my best friend.  She is brilliant.

After this little exploration of the internet world and yoga pants, my yoga pant love is more intact than ever.  But I’ve learned, there are some major suggestions with yoga pants that should be obeyed for yoga pant harmony while in public.  You know, in an effort to keep the grumpy bugs happy and promote world peace (or ignore these suggestions and keep them grumpy.  I support both options):

• Yoga pants worn in public should be clean.
• Fly your yoga-pant-love flag high. And proudly. You go, you fellow yoga pant lover.
• One’s crotch area must be accounted for. This can be done by well-fitting yoga pants, or, most commonly, by suitably long shirts. My personal favorite is the extremely bulky après-ski sweater. Even in May.
• Own your yoga pants like no other. Rock those legs, tightly clad in stretchy opaque material. Be confident in them and their appropriateness as everyday legwear. Wear them every single day if your little heart so desires. And be happy.

Thanks, Yoga Week.  Thanks, yoga pants.  Thanks, wunder unders.  Thanks, my cat on my lap who just typed a bunch of letters.  It’s been fun.  Go spread some yoga pant comfort and love and happiness.

It’s Like I Have ESPN or Something – Irving

If our posts were songs at the beginning of this one, there would’ve been, “It’s the remix baby.”  I let Nicole take of over FBF and she takes the time to invent an advanced metric for pants.  Look at that Venn Diagram, it’s about two steps away from looking like a Kirk Goldsberry shot chart.  I had no idea she cared this much about them.  Do all girls have such an in depth breakdown of their clothing choices?  Wait, I don’t need to know.

I know Nicole loves yoga pants, I’m sure during 90% of our hang out time she is wearing them.  For the other 10% she asked me beforehand if she needs to wear real pants.  My answer to this question is almost always, “Yes.”  She visited me last semester and we went out for dinner at House Guest and went out for drinks after.  We got our picture taken and the first comment on it was, “[The] first thing I notice in this picture, [Nicole is] wearing real pants.”  People are shocked when she is wearing real pants and she has the last three times she has visited.  I’m still waiting for someone to ask me how I get her to do so.

Irving Chong (@Irving_Chong) and Nicole (@_nicoliooo) are co-creators of This is Why we Can’t Have Nice Things even though it doesn’t make sense why they’re friends.