Dear Montana, hide your yoga pants, they could soon be outlawed. Wear them in public and you could be arrested. This is true. We would joke about something so serious?
Montana Rep. David Moore, R-Missoula, a crotchety crusader of decency, wants to expand the state’s indecent exposure law and take away your right to wear yoga pants in public. Moore introduced House Bill 365 on Tuesday to do just that. If it passes, forget grocery stores, forget to and from yoga class, forget even driving your kids to school (or, you know, going out of Friday night, which is how we roll.)
“Yoga pants should be illegal in public anyway,” Moore said. Blasphemy! We know there was a see-through pants issue, but this is absurd.
This all because Moore was offended by a Bare As You Dare naked cycling event back in August that saw a bunch of cyclists ride around town in the nude wishing to express themselves in celebration of body image and their right to use public roads, as the organizers put it. Moore, clearly, does not agree. He wants to protect Montana’s virgin eyes and make sure his state is “known as a decent state where people can live within the security of laws and protect their children and associates from degrading and indecent practices.”
Apparently, degrading and indecent practices involve wearing any tight-fitting clothing in public that “gives the appearance or simulates” a human’s buttocks, genitals, pelvic area, the male or female nipple. If you were wondering, this also includes Speedos and, we assume, all bathing suits introduced after 1922? Moore also has a problem with beige and tight-fitted clothing that’s skin-toned because body parts.
Unfortunately, it’s female body parts that seem to be the most problematic. “I think you are kind of being a little prejudiced against women,” said Rep. Virginia Court, D-Billings, who points out how outlawing clothing that shows the outline or appearance of a woman’s nipple unfairly targets women. You think?
And women are the ones wearing yoga pants (most of the time). There have been several high schools across the country attempting to ban yoga pants and leggings and the argument has been the same. Aren’t we just penalizing women for their bodies and shapes?
If this bill passes, the penalties range from a $500 fine and six months in prison for your first offense, a $1000 fine and a one-year stay in prison for your second offense. Montana’s law currently states a third offense would hand you a life sentence and a $10,000 fine, but in Moore’s revision he mercifully lowers this to no more than five years in jail for being caught three times, keeping the $10,000 fine. That’s pretty expensive, even for a Lululemon fanatic. If this bill passes, expect a new cottage industry of underground clubs and yoga pants speakeasies cropping up all over the Big Sky State, or shall we say the Big Moon State.
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Earlier…
It never made it out if commitee, but on the plus side two Missoula breweries offered discounted pints for wearing yoga pant…
He was laughed out before the bill could make it anywhere. And, as noted by a previous commenter, the breweries offered discounts to yoga pants, and speedo wearing patrons. So all ended well.
When yoga pants are outlawed, only outlaws will wear yoga pants.
*Like button* good one Carl!
The Montana legislation is over the top but there is a real debate out there about what kind of clothing is appropriate for school — especially since none of these girls has any interest in yoga — which should concern us actually. It’s all about booty and nothing to do with beauty — not the yogic kind, at least.
Here’s one piece that’s reasonably intelligent actually —
“Yoga Booty: Have Stretch Pants Become Too Hot for High School?”
http://papaoftheyear.com/yoga-pants-whats-wrong-public-schools/
I think the issue probably looks somewhat different if you are a parent — and concerned about your own child’s mindless embrace of the mass market’s commercial sexualization of their bodies?
Unfortunately, a lot of people in yoga have no better ability to tease out some of the issues involved here and have blurred the distinction between eroticism, exhibitionism, and sexual exploitation all n the name of some soapbox feminist “freedom” mantra
Yoga pants in yoga studios — already a rather hilarious phenomenon — but at least they fit the setting and the purpose. What we’re seeing society wide, and not just in schools, is part of how yoga is being prostituted to sell a lifestyle, clothing products, and the semblance of a “look” — which many of us find distinctly unattractive.
It’s becoming a fashion blight – trashy at worst, unimaginative at best. I have seen more inspired and attractive outfits on supposedly “repressed” women in countries like North Korea.
What’s sad is how easily yoga becomes an emblem not just of trendiness, but of mass conformity — not individual insight. Rather scary, actually…
The Montana legislation is over the top but there is a real debate out there about what kind of clothing is appropriate for school — especially since none of these girls has any interest in yoga — which should concern us actually. It’s all about booty and nothing to do with beauty — not the yogic kind, at least.
Here’s one piece that’s reasonably intelligent actually —
“Yoga Booty: Have Stretch Pants Become Too Hot for High School?”
http://papaoftheyear.com/yoga-pants-whats-wrong-public-schools/
I think the issue probably looks somewhat different if you are a parent — and concerned about your own child’s mindless embrace of the mass market’s commercial sexualization of their bodies?
Unfortunately, a lot of people in yoga have no better ability to tease out some of the issues involved here and have blurred the distinction between eroticism, exhibitionism, and sexual exploitation all n the name of some soapbox feminist “freedom” mantra
Yoga pants in yoga studios — already a rather hilarious phenomenon — but at least they fit the setting and the purpose. What we’re seeing society wide, and not just in schools, is part of how yoga is being prostituted to sell a lifestyle, clothing products, and the semblance of a “look” — which many of us find distinctly unattractive.
It’s becoming a fashion blight – trashy at worst, unimaginative at best. I have seen more inspired and attractive outfits on supposedly “repressed” women in countries like North Korea.
What’s sad is how easily yoga becomes an emblem not just of trendiness, but of mass conformity — not individual creativity. Rather scary, actually…
Even the least intelligent politician would have known this proposal would be impossible to pass and harder to enforce. It was obviously just noise designed to appeal to a certain demographic, especially the “yoga pants” remark. “Yoga pants” have obviously become such a lifestyle product they’re now part of lifestyle politics. That means there’s a whole untapped, currently hostile, market out there for yoga. “Yoga for conservatives” is the next big target demographic. Instead of veganism and how evil competition is teachers could harangue their students about how much better life would be if women didn’t have the vote and never revealed their ankles. It would be “traditional Indian” yoga, they could get Ramdev over to give seminars on bouncing into poses and tell them how homosexuals “need treatment” and electing politicians with a history of overseeing muslim burning mobs is the yogic path.