COUNTER-POINT: Pants are in the eyes of the bewearer

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There is no single, consistent definition of “pants.”

Those would who like to persecute the young women (and men!) who cover their legs and groin in a thin layer of legging stand in the face of centuries of pantaloon evolution.

I ask you, leggings naysayers, what should we make of the parachute pant? What of the bell-bottom or jort? How would you even begin to classify the rare Zubaz?

Your unwillingness to allow leggings into the noble pantheon of lower-body attire spits in the very face of history.

Some radical members of the working class who rose up during the French Revolution were defined by their unfashionable pants. These sans-culottes, or those “without silk knee-britches,” were identified by their lack of fashionable, large, silk diaper-looking britches.

Their mocked lack of culottes today resemble what many consider fairly normal pants. It’s a bad idea to end up on the wrong side of history; students in leggings could be on the very tip of economic and fashion revolution.

Even in the last hundred years, pants have existed in endless variations. Can painted-on hipster skinny jeans, bell-bottoms and the quickly forgotten foot-wide denim JNCOs really be considered the same article of clothing?

How can you even attempt to define “pants?” As it stands now, men feel very little shame wearing loosely-elasticated sweatpants to class, work and even some funerals (in-laws, great-aunts and uncles only, but still.)

The jegging blurs the line even further. Jeggings look a lot closer to blue jeans than my incredibly poorly fitting dress slacks do. I recommend some deep and meaningful soul-searching, which should prove much more comfortable than staring into the abyss created by lycra clinging to nether-regions of the poor soul walking ahead of you on the staircase in the library.

Take a deep breath amateur fashionistas, this tight-clung heresy too shall pass.

The moose knuckles, camel toes and parrot beaks that so disturb your fragile sensibilities will soon go the way of other forgotten trends like the early 2000s thong whale tail or lasting, stable heterosexual marriage.

In closing, it’s important to point out an incredible hypocrisy at work here. Often the harshest leggings critics are the very same people who wear yoga pants to class a solid three days a week. To guys, yoga pants are just a significantly less brave, if equally awesome, version of the legging.

Now let me slip back into some shapeless, terrycloth sweatpants. This “Freaky Eaters” marathon isn’t going to watch itself.