Thanks, but namaste in our yoga pants! About 400 people gathered together for a peaceful parade around a man’s neighborhood in Rhode Island on Sunday, October 23, after the man, Alan Sorrentino, penned a letter printed in The Barrington Times begging women over the age of 20 to stop wearing yoga pants in public.
“The absolute worst thing to ever happen in women’s fashion is the recent development of yoga pants as daily wear outside the yoga studio,” Sorrentino’s letter to the paper read. “Like the miniskirt, yoga pants can be adorable on children and young women who have the benefit of nature’s blessing of youth. However, on mature, adult women there is something bizarre and disturbing about the appearance they make in public. Maybe it’s the unforgiving perspective they provide, inappropriate for general consumption, TMI, or the spector [sic] of someone coping poorly with their weight or advancing age that makes yoga pants so weird in public.”
Sorrentino went on to ask that those over the age of 20 refrain from wearing yoga pants, and claimed that it’s equivalent to if men started wearing Speedos to the grocery store.
“To all yoga pant wearers, I struggle with my own physicality as I age. I don’t want to struggle with yours,” he concluded.
His open letter (obviously) didn’t go over so well.
On Sunday, women and men gathered to protest Sorrentino’s remarks. Some held signs read “we wear what we want,” and others told local outlets they were outraged when they read the letter.
“I don’t get involved in much in the way of protests and marches and all of that, but this just brought me out because the guy’s letter was offensive,” Ellen Taylor told the Boston Globe on Sunday. “It’s OK if you’re 20 and gorgeous to wear yoga pants, but don’t do it if you’re older and lumpy and bumpy?”
According to Sorrentino, who told outlets he’s since received death threats, he penned the letter in jest.
“I assumed the character of this grumpy old man that was railing about women in yoga pants because he was too tight to just relax and accept himself in his age and his own ways. It was meant to sound stupid and creepy,” Sorrentino told WPRO’s John DePetro on Saturday. “I have no problem with yoga pants. Wear them all you want!”