The Curiosity of Leggings-as-Pants

There has been great mystery in the explosion of leggings-as-pants. Leggings are thicker tights which had traditionally been worn under a dress or with a tunic. Historically, leggings were covered; historically, it had been unthinkable to wear leggings as pants, uncovered. To older generations, leggings-as-pants were “hot pants” or “hooker pants.”

Yet college women are wearing leggings-as-pants as men and women wear t-shirts. Very few are saying very much about this. From the male perspective, free, open, rational speech has been long dead on university campuses-especially, especially as it relates to ‘gender.’ Long, vile, primitive mating habits, sex characteristics, millions of years of evolution, have been overcome by proper doublethink. But the obvious state is that on college campuses, women are wearing tight, revealing hot pants. Not some of them, nearly all of them.

This could be marked as another fashion trend, like short skirts, tight jeans, cleavage. Leggings-as-pants, as clothes, constitute fashion. But the preponderance of the fashion is far more significant than emergence of other trends in color or style.

There were four theories, each of them meriting consideration, which we will review. First, college women are laying their bodies on the line because of intense sexual competition. In order to compete for alpha males, women must now leave nothing to the imagination. The display of the crotch and the jiggling ass is the last frontier. (A bikini, followed by total nudity, indeed, is the ultimate frontier.)

Second, among women’s literature (viz., the internet) there is a tendency to describe leggings-as-pants as convenient and comfortable. This, too, is accurate, as leggings are generally cheap, easy to wash, and match with most accessories.

Third, leggings-as-pants are an advancement of body-positivity or body-affirmativity. Women, by displaying their bodies, are in effect claiming and asserting their bodies (and, indirectly, their sexuality).

Fourth, leggings-as-pants are another example of intra-sexual competition, or women’s competing against women. Women with fine asses can use their fine asses to compete against other women. This benefits women with naturally fine asses and also benefits women who are fitness enthusiasts to show off their hard work. There is nothing quite more humiliating to other women than to a) have a highly revealing fashion standard that is now de rigueur, and b) require one’s body to be in near-perfect physical shape to be considered flattering in such attire. For college women, the ass is something which can be easily covered. There are many ways to hide an unfit gluteus. With leggings-as-pants, there is nowhere to hide.

These theories are reasonable, but they fail to take into consideration this sudden and intense display of the female body—it should be reminded that these leggings, once called hot pants, were typically used by prostitutes because they displayed the female figure immediately and left nothing to a man’s imagination. There has not, however, been a radical change in competition for alpha males, desire for comfort, or a radical shift in body-positive or body-affirmative clothing. What theory best accounts for this paradigm shift of clothing?

I offer that the provocative display of the body is simply the entry of a new class of women who had for many years, perhaps centuries, perhaps millennia, not been able to flaunt their bodies to attract men. This is the class of women who do not have large breasts to display. Men like displays of breasts because they are an obvious, large display of female beauty and sexuality. It is very easy for a woman with large breast to display cleavage. There is a long history of the display of cleavage that is not associated with prostitution. Hence women with large cleavage were always in the sweet spot—they didn’t have to worry too much about their outfit—simply display cleavage, and the outfit is good to go. It worked well to compete against and humiliate other women—women with smaller breasts can’t display cleavage as easily, if at all. (Men like breasts. Men don’t necessarily have a preference for large breasts, but large breasts are easier to flaunt and display.) Women with cleavage could also ignore other aspects of their body—the lower torso, the ass, the legs.

Smaller breasted women have entered the market aggressively, as if releasing centuries of pent up jealousy and sexual market neglect or exclusion. They have gone right for the balls, too: wear the most revealing pants possible, with no cover. Make these the new jeans. What stops you from wearing them?

Women with unfit asses can’t wear them, although many have indeed taken the plunge. It’s obvious when an ass doesn’t look good in leggings. The effect is immediate.

But it gets better for smaller breasted women. Wearing leggings-as-pants and revealing cleavage is too much. A woman must choose between one or the other—reveal cleavage, or reveal the ass, but not both.

Fit, smaller breasted women have used a new tool to compete in the sexual marketplace: leggings-as-pants. Many men may misinterpret this display of ass as an effect of an increase in sexual promiscuity. While there has been an increase in sexual promiscuity on college campuses, and leggings-as-pants may well represent a ‘sex-positive’ presentation of the female body, the pervasiveness of leggings as pants is not attributable to a liberalization of female sexual mores. Again, it is the competitive entrance of smaller-breasted women into the sexual market place, who are, at the moment, simply displaying their most marketable sexual wares for the first time, because they can. These smaller-breasted women run the gamut—some have very strong, risk-taking sexual appetites, while others possess more restrained sexual appetites. What men must understand is these women are, for the first time, visually displaying what they have to offer in the same way that large-breasted women have always been able to display cleavage. These women may well become more promiscuous because of a marked increase in sexual offers, just as large breasted women have often been more promiscuous because of steady reception of sexual offers.

With a heightened sense of sexual market value, it must be considered that smaller-breasted women may become less promiscuous, as they become more selective. In the past, if a smaller-breasted woman would offer herself to lower-status men due to her structural disadvantage in the fight of cleavage, she now has a structural advantage in ass-display and attracts the attention and advances of many men. Sluts can now be more selective (while continuing to have the same number of partners, only higher quality), and less sexually active women do not have to be sluts in order to play the field—they will now receive attention and advances without their having to offer sex up front. 

The next vanguard will be cleavage and leggings-as-pants. Yet it will require that large-breasted women not settle simply to flaunt their breasts, but also their asses. Ass flaunting requires a fit ass, which requires diet, exercise, or genetic gifts.