About That YOGA-PANT-GATE Thing…

Yesterday was interesting, to say the least.  

I expected a normal day, but instead, I found myself fielding a gazillion emails and about 500 comments over freaking YOGA PANTS.  That's right.  I've spent way too much time over the past 24 hours dealing with (ridiculous) emails about COTTON FREAKING PANTS.  In 2015, mind you. (Oh wait – saying the year is a "liberal tactic" – my bad.)

I wouldn't mind the emails, I suppose, if I had the same amount of mail over my posts about…let's see….the economy and Boko Haram and oh yeah – the SOTU happened last night. 

But I digress.  

The big news of the week is apparently YOGA PANTS, y'all.  It's YOGAPANTGATE.

In the pile of emails I received over the past 24 hours, one in particular made me smile (yep…just one):

From: XXXXXX
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2015 9:01 PM

To: Chicks on the Right

Subject: I see what you did here!

Dear Chicks,

I just had to LMAO on how much commentary on Facebook and your site your post about yoga pants has triggered.  And then it came to me: nice social experiment to show how much we all are worried about trivial things and not with the issues facing our country and society in general.  That post generated 1800 comments on Facebook and counting!  As a man, I think they look hot but I don’t “lose control” lol.  So thanks for proving once again how far we have to go as far as focus on real issues!  BTW, love your book and I relate to it 100%!
 

Tim

To which I responded:

Tim –

YOU GET IT.

Congratulations.  You’re my favorite person of the day.   Seriously.  You win.  And I continue to weep for our country.
 

Have a good one,
 

AJ
 

(“Daisy”)
Chicks on the Right
93 WIBC
40 Monument Circle
Indianapolis, IN 46204
www.chicksontheright.com

And that wasn't it.  Today, we were written about on The Blaze!  YAY US!  We tend to be a target on the right a lot, so we're used to this sort of treatment here at COTR.  Many folks at The Blaze aren't fans of the makeover (especially the one who wrote the sanctimonious column in question.)  And they wrote about how the original yoga pant blogger was getting namecalled and demeaned, and how apparently that's MY FAULT, and they proceeded to lump me in with the liberal left.  (Thanks for the traffic, fellow conservatives.  We've always appreciated your unwavering support through the years, by the way.)

First off, yoga pants were not "specifically designed to spark the attention of other men."  THAT IS NOT WHAT YOGA PANTS ARE FOR, BRAIN SURGEONS.  If you think that's what they are for, then you are wrong.   I don't care if you think you have a PhD in Theology from the Upstairs Hollywood College.   Or if you think you are God's gift to Christianity.  Or whatever you claim to be.  Yoga pants were made for yoga.  They are pants. For. Yoga.  Thus, yoga pants.  Find us one single yoga pant manufacturer that describes their product as "specifically designed to spark the attention of other men." 

I'm going to go ahead and wait over here.

Second, I never insulted the woman who wrote the original post.  Nor did I mock her PERSONALLY.  If you were paying attention and weren't sift-reading and overreacting and automatically assuming that I was Christian-bashing, I was trying to point out that I believe it's ridiculous that men can't be held accountable for their lack of self-control in the face of FREAKING YOGA PANTS.  Coincidentally, I don't recall either article – the original post, that is – or the cited Blaze article above – where men are having to be held accountable AT ALL for said self-control.

Still.

And because of that, I'm even more pissed off, frankly.

What I do see is a lecture on modesty and how that modesty lies solely with ME – a woman – to make certain that men (still) don't get enticed by ME WEARING PANTS THAT COVER ALL OF MY SKIN BETWEEN MY WAIST AND MY TOES.  Those pants being yoga pants, mind you.

And in the past 24 hours, I've been compared to a "pro-abortion feminist," I've been told to go to my doctor and have a testosterone patch put on for a week so that I can get "the testosterone levels of a teenage boy" so that I can "enter into a phase all men have dealt with and begin to understand how powerful something well presented is, but is off limits."  I've been told that I am immoral.  I've been told that I need to pray for myself.  I've been told by several readers that they're leaving our site because I provided a differing viewpoint on, you guessed it, yoga-pant-wearing.  I've been told that I need to re-examine my entire life.  And this is just a teeny, tiny, miniscule fraction of what I've been told BECAUSE I SAID THAT I WEAR YOGA PANTS and will continue to do so, even though I, too, am a Christian.  

Christians are mad at me because I dared to give a different viewpoint than what they see on other (Christian) conservative blogs.  THE HORROR.  And while every woman can decide for herself whether or not she wants to wear yoga pants, I DO have an issue with a woman deciding not to wear them simply BECAUSE yoga pants are somehow "enticing" to men.  I disagree with this.  I believe this is a man's problem – not a woman's.  Which is why I'll continue to wear my yoga pants.  I don't care what that man over there thinks about my pants.  And obviously, people disagree with me on this.  

So we're going to have to agree to disagree. 

In the flurry of emails, I've also been asked to put my own husband and stepson into this situation.  So I'll do that for giggles (because I'm definitely not doing that testosterone patch crap…are you out of your mind, sir?).  My husband sees women in yoga pants all the time, he's privy to YOGAPANTGATE now (sorry, hon), and he's as taken aback by how ridiculous all of his hullaballoo over yoga pants is, too.  He doesn't think twice when he sees women in yoga pants, and if he does find a woman attractive, he just thinks, "yep, she's attractive," and moves on with his life.  Same goes for my 21-year old stepson.  They are men who can control themselves, and have always done so, which I suppose is why I was a little weirded out by men not being able to do so.  

Perhaps my bar is set too high.  And I'm never going to apologize for that.

I think this blogger has the most exceptional response to YOGAPANTGATE, and I encourage you to read it in its entirety.  Especially the men out there who want me to reexamine my life, wear testosterone patches to feel their pain, or who somehow believe that yoga pants were invented to make them DO BAD THINGS TO WOMEN.  Because those guys have problems, and their problems aren't mine.

For those of you who believe I'm on my way to eternal damnation, I'll take that up with my Creator on my own time, but thanks for your concern. 

But I'll probably do that wearing my super comfy yoga pants.  Just FYI.