This Millennial Woman Reminds Gen Z: We Gave You The Gift Of Leggings
We walked in ballet flats so you could run in pants without zippers.
Gather around, children, it’s time for a story from your elders. That’s right, the Millennials have something they need you to know, because when you don’t remember, you start to forget...
TikTok creator @ifeelprettyweird (we’ll call her Pretty moving forward) recently pointed out that some of you young ones may not be familiar with an important piece of your sartorial history. Specifically, a garment many of us wear every day that would not have happened without the dogged efforts of Millennial women.
“I hope this younger generation knows,” she begins, “that we fought for your right to wear leggings.”
She continues...
“See, when leggings first came out, we instantly fell in love. But men, and the older generation could not comprehend the difference between tights and leggings. They thought we were wearing tights as pants. We were seen as harlots. And school did not allow that ... they would tell us that ‘if you want leggings you have to wear it with a dress. a dress! but we rebelled. We wore leggings as pants, and yeah, we were seen as hoes. But over time, we did it. We won the war. And you’re welcome.”
You know how at the beginning of the Lord of the Rings movies, Cate Blanchett as Galadriel gives us all the epic backstory? This feels like that. Well done, Pretty: you brought the gravitas this situation required.
But more to the point: it’s true. All of it. If you weren’t there, you don’t know the absolute derision we got from Boomer and (it must be said) Gen X men and women going on about how we weren’t wearing “real pants,” which, what even does that mean?
“They BANNED leggings and yoga pants completely from my high school,” one commenter recalls.
“Men and grandmas were SO pressed,” another concurs.
“My aunt likes to remind she led her schools walk out in the sixties for women to be allowed to wear pants,” shares a third. “I followed her footsteps in my Uggs.”
“I remember some pick-me girls in my high school had ‘leggings are not pants’ in their MSN names,” reminisces yet another. (If you’re confused by what an MSN name is... that is another piece of Millennial lore for another day.) “It was a MAJOR culture war.”
Fortunately, those days are over. The “Are Leggings Pants?” debate that raged for basically all of my 20s is well and truly settled, and now there are girlies out there who haven’t had to live under the tyranny of zippers and buttons for years.
Again: you’re welcome, ladies.
