More than 300 yoga pants-wearing women took to the streets in Rhode Island to demand their sartorial preferences be accepted.
The march was organized in response to man named Alan Sorrentino, who wrote a letter to the editor of the Barrington Times in which he criticized yoga pants as “ridiculous” and “tacky.”
Alan Sorrentino said the response to his letter to the editor, printed in The Barrington Times on Wednesday, has been “vicious” and that he’s received death threats. He maintained the letter was meant to be humorous.
But organizers said even if Sorrentino’s letter was meant to be a joke, the message is clear.
The women were very passionate about their yoga pants cause.
“Women are fed up with the notion that we have to dress for people’s visual pleasure,” said Jamie Burke, parade organizer.
The organizers also pointed out the march was not just a response to Sorrentino, but against misogyny and men telling women what to wear. Some of the yoga pants activists carried signs that said “Peaceful Pants Party” and “I’ve Got Passion For My Pants.”
Sorrentino, in his letter, described yoga pants as the worst thing in women’s fashion since the miniskirt. He argued that they belong in the yoga studio and that women over age 20 shouldn’t wear them in public.
One parade-walker, clad in bright red yoga pants, held a sign that read: “I’m 53.”
Sorrentino defended himself in an interview with WPRO-AM and said that he wanted his letter to be a break from the heated presidential campaign rhetoric. He also confessed that he too owned a pair of yoga pants. The death threats and foul language voice mails were similar to what he’s experienced as an openly gay man.
“It’s vicious and intimidating,” he said Saturday on WPRO-AM. “The fact that this is seen as an appropriate reaction to something I wrote in the paper is really disgusting.”
On Sunday, a police detail was posted to Sorrentino’s house. A banner hangs over the front door that reads: “Free Speech.”
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