In a recent Branding Iron Opinion article, “The Bane of Yoga Pants,” Audrey Horning speaks in support of the recent slew of bans barring young women from wearing yoga pants and leggings in high school. As an activist for women’s rights, I found a scattering of dangerous misconceptions throughout her article that merit address.
First, Ms. Horning poses the question: “…how did we go from the banning of leg wear to promoting rape?” As per her request, I’d like to let Ms. Horning know that I have found a “clear link between the two.” Or, to be clear, I would like to explain the connection between banning young girls from wearing yoga pants and promoting rape culture.
The first distinction that needs to be made is between rape and rape culture, as the terms are not interchangeable. Though the definition of rape is contentious and evolving, it is a physical act, and most generally defined as one of forcible penetration. Rape culture, on the other hand, is more abstract, and is what critics of the ban on yoga pants cite as problematic. Rape culture is an insidious presence in our day-to-day lives perpetuated by behaviors and practices that tolerate rape or excuse it completely. Though the list of behaviors is extensive, two of the most well known would include rape jokes and victim blaming. Rape culture trivializes violence against women and normalizes sexual coercion to that point that it is assimilated into our lives without contention. Rape culture makes preventing future rape and fighting for current survivors immensely difficult. It is important to acknowledge here that almost all men are not violent or coercive and that men, too, are harmed by rape culture.
So, to answer Ms. Horning’s question, the connection between banning yoga pants and rape culture is this: if a girl is taught from the time she is in high school that her body is distracting to boys, and if, because this “distraction” is so detrimental to boys that she is mandated to conform to someone else’s standard of modesty, she is stripped of her ability to make decisions about her own body. Worse still, she is taught that boys cannot control their sexual urges and that she is obligated to protect herself from male sexuality. To connect this with my definition of rape culture, we are creating an environment in which we try to keep girls safe from the predation of the male gaze not by impressing upon their male peers the value of consent, but instead by mandating modesty in order that women avoid luring men to act upon their sexual urges. While banning yoga pants may not directly cause rape or lead to an increase in sexual assault, what it does do is reinforce a culture in which male violence is less reprehensible than exposing the female body.
Ms. Horning argues that banning leggings is “not an issue of sexism; it is an issue of propriety.” What she does not acknowledge, however, is how sexism has shaped the cultural norms and mores that define propriety. Modesty is a moral issue but only if we can concede that morality is subjective. The morality of modesty, for example, has its origins in the demonization of female sexuality and the subjugation of women. This is not to say that we aren’t entitled to display the level of modesty with which we feel the most comfortable. This is a fundamental issue of agency, an agency that every individual deserves. However, to propose that we should act on the basis of propriety, we must acknowledge the social factors that determine what is proper.
Perhaps most frustrating to me as a feminist reader was Horning’s capitalization on sexuality as a means of control. The old saying “modest is hottest,” set forth by Ms. Horning as an adage that ought to be readopted, works as a mechanism to control the behavior of women. It plays off of the logic that all women want to be hot, an argument that functions because our society teaches women that their value is found in their aesthetic appeal. In order to be valuable, a woman must be hot, and in order to be hot, a woman must be modest. Therefore, in order to be valuable, a woman must be modest. This argument is all the more reprehensible because it is made on behalf of women who are adolescents and teenagers. Arguing that yoga pants ought to be banned because women are sexier when they “cover up” uses sexiness as an imperative and is a basic example of the sexism that Horning so vehemently argues against. I think that Ms. Horning is correct to assume that the women at Devils Lake High School will endure the ban on yoga pants without suffering any immediate harm. However, she overlooks the danger of the toxic culture that the bans create. It is the culture in which our young women will grow up. If we concede that the ban on yoga pants is merited, we perpetuate a world in which our girls are stripped of agency and in which they carry the sole burden for their safety.
Letter by: Cady Favazzo
