A group of upstanding, and no doubt comfortable, women in Rhode Island led a peaceful protest in yoga pants over a local man’s criticism.
In a Letter to the Editor in the Barrington Times, Alan Sorrentino, of Barrington Rhode Island, said women over 20 years old should not wear yoga pants outside of yoga-related settings. Hundreds of local women (and some men) responded by donning their comfiest activewear and marching around Sorrentino’s neighborhood Sunday with signs like, “We wear what we want,” and, “I like my pants.”
Sorrentino wrote that yoga pants on certain women were inappropriate due to the “unforgiving perspective they provide.”
“From casual to formal, weddings, funerals, shopping, and even for the workplace, yoga pants are everywhere on women of all ages, usually paired with a blousy top and a pony tail hairdo,” He wrote. “What a disaster!”
A disaster indeed, Alan. The entire letter is a disaster, and an unsettling attempt to control what women can and cannot wear. Sorrentino’s main point being that he doesn’t want to see women wearing yoga pants, therefore all women should alter their wardrobes for his sake.
The yoga pants parade was organized by Jamie Burke, who said she was angered when she read the letter, and decided to hold the event to comment on much larger women’s issues.
“This is way more than yoga pants,” Burke told WJAR. “It is women fed up with the policing of our wardrobes and our bodies.”
Sorrentino has since said that the whole thing was a joke, but he probably should have read his audience a little better. Letters like these are not harmless because they’re not taboo; we have a Republican presidential nominee who constantly and unabashedly criticizes women’s appearances, and people support his tirades.
So take a note from these rad ladies in Rhode Island and do whatever it takes to fight sexism in your community; and do it wearing whatever the hell you want.
Photo and video via YouTube
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