Pants are a problem. It’s not just you.
Set foot into your favorite clothing store, department store or superstore and count how many seconds go by until you see a rack chock-full of shorts. Or a shop display proudly showing off a pair of skinny jeans. Or an entire shelving unit dedicated to denim. Better yet, count the seconds between getting out of your car and seeing someone wearing them. The answer is probably 0; I bet you’re wearing some form of pants right now.
Most people don’t think twice about them. There’s a pair pants for every occasion — from the beach to the snow, from working to sleeping. They’re there every moment of our lives, keeping our legs warm and our bodies presentable.
However, there is a problem. Actually, there’s many problems. We’ll start with the origin of arguably the most popular type of pants: The classic blue jeans.
In the 1870s, two men by the names Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss (sound familiar?) came up with an idea to create more durable pants for the working man. The solution was the copper-riveted denim garment known at the time as “waist overalls”. These precursors to modern jeans were loose, ugly and designed specifically for laborers. They remained this way until they became a symbol of rebellion — specifically for men — in the 1950s, eventually becoming acceptable street fashion in the ’70s.
Blue jeans themselves are virtually a lasting artifact from the racist, patriarchic 19th-century America. Yet we embrace them with open arms, and don’t bat an eye while we proudly parade the streets with them on our own legs. The problem isn’t just with jeans — nearly all forms of pants were regarded as male-only clothing just 100 short years ago. That is, until the American woman began to adopt these signs of a male-dominant civilization for themselves.
This might sound like a step forward in feminism, but the reality is closer to “one step forward, two steps back”. Women were forced, by men, to offer up their own identity — in the form of skirts and dresses — and have them largely replaced with the by-men-for-men jeans, pants and shorts of today. Dresses are now largely reserved for events the patriarchy deems “special enough” for women to show their stripes.
There’s little pragmatic benefit to wearing pants, either. Often, pants are far more restrictive of movement than a skirt would be. Their only real benefit is in situations where a highly durable garment is needed. Things like hand-working fields or sweating your way through a coal mine. You know, the things pants were invented for. Things that we’ve largely moved on from. There’s no reason at all to even wear pants in the 21st century, besides to cling to the racist, homophobic, discriminative patriarchy of yore.
While women may have helped themselves adopt jeans and pants, they’re certainly not at fault for the men who pressured them into this situation. It’s our job to fight back against this anti-feminist culture.
