Were Leggings for Pants the Single Greatest Feminist Win of the Early Twenty-First Century?

Maybe.

On a bright autumn morning in 2008, Blair Waldorf excuses herself from a tete-a-tete with will-they-won’t-they suitor Chuck Bass for a ‘disciplinary hearing’. With the steps of fictional Constance St. Jude’s her courtroom, Waldorf sets herself on a blonde underclassman. 

‘I didn’t realize…”’ blondie wails. 

‘That tights are not pants?!’ retorts Blair. Judge/Jury/Executioner. 

There was a time (and let’s be honest, that time is still sorta now), when I took all of my sartorial cues from teen soaps. Blair Waldorf’s headbands. Leather messenger bags paired with leather jackets over floral dresses a la Pretty Little Liars’ Aria Montgomery. And if you’re reading this from Ireland, I bet your wardrobe wasn’t complete without at least one pair of ripped Effie Stonem tights, because I did a rewatch - last summer, at 28 - and found myself overlining my lower waterline. 

Rewatching shows I know and love is comforting for me. There are no surprises. I already know Blair (Aria/Effie) ends up with Chuck (Ezra/…let’s keep this light, okay folks?), so the viewing experience is about luxuriating in things like costume design, acting, soundtrack. A rewatch is a return, and retrogration demands recognition of how much time has passed. How what I value - in entertainment, media, girlhood dreaming - has changed, or not. 

(Case in point: it’s actually not chill to trade your nineteen-year-old girlfriend for a hotel). 

Another: leggings as pants. 

At the time of Blair’s denunciation, there were two options for bottom-wear in my rural Nebraska hometown: bootcut jeans (bonus points if they were a bespangled The Buckle version) or Victoria’s Secret PINK sweats. Leggings, however, were firmly, decidedly not pants. They weren’t even athletic wear. Gym class meant going from jeans to glossy basketball shorts back to jeans. 

During my adolescence, women’s wear - particularly for the lower half of the body - was about coverage. Bulk. Bag. Ass (or, lack thereof) was for all intents and purposes persona non-grata, and so were thighs, calves, ankles, all covered by curtain-esque layers of cotton. That, or the body was to be hyper-seen by means of sparkly Rock and Republic ass-pocket-embellishments. But even these rhinestone options seemed to distract rather than attract attention to the female body - blinded by diamante. 

What changed? In the midst of Barack Obama’s re-election campaign and my first year of college, I welcomed The Yoga Pant into my life. Tight Spandex around the waist and rear, with a beautiful flare out from the mid-calf. It wouldn’t be long before my bottom-wear of choice for all occasions - supermarket trips, gym visits, weekend lounge sessions, and all-day classes - would be The Legging. Change. Hope. Belief. It was an anthem for my own sartorial evolution. 

The Legging is activity-wear. It always has been. 14th century Scotland brought us The Legging as a means to an easier time on horseback. Those who ride horses have the distinct advantage of movement, which means the advantage of freedom and agency. The same is true for those who wear trousers. Men predominantly donned The Legging up until the nineteenth century and although the style is now a womenswear staple, it has come to us through a legacy of freedom.

Throughout the years, there has been an air of counter-culture amongst the be-Legging’ed; think of the Mods in their 60s shift dresses, the power-mom having it all in the 80s - conference call at 7, Jane Fonda aerobics at 9. Comfort-wear for the sexual revolution! Is it not a rebellion anytime women choose to move through the world physical, active, unlocked? 

The Legging’s popularity has crested and fallen over the years after the invention of Spandex in the 1960s, when the style became popular with women, but interestingly, The Legging’s social stock price skyrockets at times of liberal or progressive cultural sentiment. Bar its 1st Wave, the peaks and troughs between demand from leggings in popular fashion and waves of feminism match quite neatly.

See? I made a chart :) 

wow!! great research!!!

The most recent eruption? The 4th Wave, circa 2012 - the same year I attended freshman Intro to World Civ in a pair of Victoria’s Secret PINK yoga pants. I, like many of my friends, have evolved beyond the yoga pant to the all-encompassing, total eclipsing Legging. To the gym. At home. Even - when paired with a smart blazer and boot - to the office. 

“What are you wearing?” a friend texted me before a Big Day Out a few weekends ago (sidenote: friends who I still coordinate outfits with as I crest my third decade? Love that for me.) “Cute or comfy?”

Did it matter? Not really, because cute or comfy, I was wearing my damn leggings. They’re the same thing now. There is no distinction. 

Okay, but if you need further anecdotal proof from the folds of my mind, may I point you to the cheugy skinny jean. 

If you didn’t know, “cheugy” is a Gen-Z turn of phrase coined to describe all of the cringe shit millennials do. And obviously, we do a lot of cringe shit. Doggo. Side parts. And skinny jeans - The Legging’s slightly more formal cousin, who goes to Disney World for vacation as an adult and still gets a French tip pedicure.

Personally, I take no stock in applying moral value to cheugy-ness. My hair is parted on the side, which I think makes it look a little French (I’m not fishing. But if I were….). Rather, being the independent cultural ethnographer I fancy myself to be, I think about why certain fashions are deemed cheugy or not. A.K.A. cool or not, in style or out, zeitgeist or zero. 

There has been a steady decline in skinny legwear in the never-ending wake of the Trump era. While skinny jeans are out, The Legging has also been swapped for baggy sweat suits reminiscent of the 90s (I knew a boy who wore these matching sets 5 days a week in elementary school. Navy, emerald green, brick red. Iconic.). The past ten months have given us cargo pants and the reversal of Roe V. Wade. There seems to be a need once again to cover up, to hide the female body. Unsurprising given the global retrograde to a time pre-female empowerment. 

Of course, we can’t only look at what we shift from. We need to consider what we shift to.

Take, for instance, the Sydney Sweeney X Ford Dickie’s collection. In the concept collab, Sweeney - a TV heartthrob who is basically our modern day Brigitte Bardot - takes to a grungy garage with her restored Ford Bronco in a pair of Dickie’s coveralls (pink stitching, of course). Yes, the female body is covered, but in aim of co-opting a traditionally masculine activity in traditionally masculine clothes. And afterall, isn’t that what The Legging gave us, originally? A move that might seem backwards, but propels us further than ever before.

Perhaps the more things change, the more they stay the same. And if we’re running in place, we might as well be dressed for it.