The End of Pants

When my daughters predicted the end of pants, I scoffed. They were talking about females and pants. Women, they predicted, would throw over pants (jeans, cords, khakis, dress pants and the like) for leggings, dresses, skirts, sweats and pull-on basketball-type shorts. I had to disagree. Clearly, they didn't know their history. In the 1960s, girls fought for the right to wear pants to school. I was among them, proudly casting my vote for pants in the school-wide election. And pants in the workplace liberated women by giving them equal access to the kinds of freedoms enjoyed by pants-wearing men. Freedoms like sitting splayed-legged. Bending over without squatting. Putting your feet up on a desk. Maude wore pants. Bella Abzug wore probably wore pants. She definitely wore hats.

Pants are still sort of a dangerous choice for women. Think of poor Hillary Clinton, pilloried for her pants suits. Pants have to stay because pants are the great leveler, right? Women may make 77 cents on the dollar of what men make for the same jobs but, dammit, we can wear 100 percent of the same kind of pants. True, the whole fly/zipper arrangement wasn't made for us. And, true, you can sit with your legs apart in a maxi dress and be a whole lot more comfortable. But c'mon! Women stuck out their necks to give you the right to be uncomfortable and have a fly you really don't need. Exercise it!

But Rose and Lily were right, even as the two of them are now sporting ironic thrift shop "mom jeans" as part of the norm core fashion movement (whatever). Norm core aside, mainstream women are just not wearing pants. They're wearing yoga pants. They're wearing bike shorts. They're wearing Zumba capris. They're wearing track suits. They're wearing drop-crotch MC Hammer harem get ups. But not pants.

I should have seen the ath-leisure wave coming. I've watched a lot of TV in my lifetime, and no show (or movie, for that matter) about the future has people in pants. Lycra jumpsuits -- yes. They are worn on the starship Enterprise. Dresses? Check out Princess Leia. Weird feathered getups? Hunger Games. No one in the future wears pants and maybe we should all just stop wearing them now to get ready.

Of course, there is the problem of what to do with keys and spare change without pockets.