

I remember when I was fourteen and I bought my first pair of black, form fitting Lululemon yoga pants.



One day my mom made a comment about me wearing them out in public. She said, “You look almost naked, you can see basically every curve of your body—and crotch.” I remember feeling self-conscious and always making an effort to wear shirts that were longer than my lady bits, solely from her request.



I still wear yoga pants, and I do think about her words from time to time when I get dressed.



Regardless—I wear them doing yoga, I wear them cleaning, I wear them on airplanes, I wear them volunteering doing rabies campaigns in Guatemala, I wear them shopping—I wear them almost everywhere. I love my yoga pants and they love me. Why? Well, because they’re comfortable as hell.



Last week a Republican lawmaker from Montana, David Moore, sought to ban yoga pants (yes, seriously) in an effort to strengthen the state’s indecent exposure law. Mr. Moore made the proposal after being greatly offended by a group of naked bicyclists that dared to ride their indecent selves through Missoula last August.



After the hearing he claimed that, “Yoga pants should be illegal in public anyway.” He also stated that he wouldn’t have a problem with police officers arresting people who wear provocative clothing, and he would leave it up to the discretion of the individual officer.



Dear David Moore, I don’t necessarily like banana hammocks, but those are also legal.



Would your officers arrest a man wearing a plum smuggler?



A few months ago, while wearing yoga pants walking down a street in Edmonton, I had three men eye fuck me/cat call me.



I felt violated by their stares—I was outraged.



I confronted one of them with my eyes, holding them accountable, aggressively and engaging in strong, short conversation—making myself tall with everything inside of me.



“I will not take your inability to control your sexual energy. I refuse to let you throw your sexual energy upon me,” my eyes/body yelled back.



I shared the experience on my Facebook and a few men said, “It’s not our fault—we’re men. We’re wired primitively to express appreciation for women’s bodies.”



So, here’s the deal. Men/women may very well check out females/males who don yoga pants, or anything else for that matter. (Yes—they also make male yoga pants, are those inappropriate, too?)



I think we are wired to some extent to appreciate beautiful bodies when they walk by.



If Ryan Gosling walked by me, I very well may sneak a second, or third look.







This is inevitable.



We’re here to mate and reproduce and keep the humans over-populating mamma earth until the sun blows up or we blow each other up, or something.



Here’s what’s not inevitable: possessing the self-control to see a woman wearing yoga pants without yelling like a fucking baboon exploding with testosterone.



We are not animals, although we are related to them.



And as men, and women, we have an accountability to check our sexual energy.



When I wake up in the morning and get dressed, I will not ever take into account, “What if I run into a man who struggles with self-control?”



If a man sees a woman wearing tight, crotch illuminating yoga pants—it doesn’t mean a green light to start slobbering and yelling like an imbecile when she walks by.



FYI: I also wear Lululemon leggings when I am bleeding, because they are comfortable and more accommodating to my cramps.



I don’t put them on because it’s business time.



The solution to cat calling, rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment isn’t to cover ourselves from head to toe in cloth, or worry about the men of the world encompassing enough self-control—it’s to gain some accountability over our own sexual energy.



The bottom line is, no one is entitled to tell me what I can and cannot wear.



And we have bigger issues than first world women wearing yoga pants—like Kim Kardashian’s bum and whether 50 Shades of Grey is an abomination.



Let’s quit telling our daughters to put more clothes on, and start telling our sons to gain more respect and self-control.





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