Should men wear leggings for fashion?

I have been wearing men’s leggings for fashion for a few years now. I have learned a lot of lessons about how to style leggings and what looks good with my body type. I have also gotten a lot more comfortable with who I am and wearing leggings has really been a net positive experience.

But sometimes the nagging questions of should I be wearing men’s leggings for fashion creep in.

Should men wear leggings for fashion?

If you read other peoples’ opinions on the subject of men’s leggings there is a clear social norm. Plenty of articles discuss men’s leggings strictly from a sports and athletic perspective. To many people, men’s leggings are for the field and for the gym. If you do venture out in public wearing leggings it should be because you are either heading to or leaving the gym and running an errand enroute.

There is also a general opinion that leggings should be paired with a pair of shorts to make them more modest and socially acceptable.

Now compare this to women’s leggings and fashion standards and your head will spin. There is clearly a double standard. This double standard sits at the heart of the question - should men wear leggings for fashion?

We have to take about gender norms.

The basic concept of should a man do something or shouldn’t he is the concept of gender norms. If you find yourself asking a question that layers expectation on an entire gender you are clearly pushing up against the very idea of what men are. There are all kinds of these questions being answered right now.

• Should men be stay-at-home fathers?

• Should men be more open with their emotions?

• Should men wear leggings?

Earlier I commented on a double standard between women’s fashion and men’s but these kinds of double standards cut both ways and women arguably have had to deal with gender norms a lot more in our recent history.

• Should women be in the workforce?

• Should women be paid the same as a man?

• Should women have control of their own reproductive rights?

At the heart of all these questions we are wrestling with the way things were and how society viewed, cataloged, and controlled genders. We are breaking those definitions down and reestablishing what it means to be human, what it means to a man or a woman, and how we manage gender in society.

These are good things but they are also big things and deeply buried in our cultures and in certain areas they are generational and can’t be resolved quickly. In many ways, women are simply farther ahead of breaking old traditional views on women than men are. I am sure you could argue against that but the ideas of what a man is are newly being restructured while women have been at it since the suffragist movement.

So again should men wear leggings?

The obvious answer is of course. Who the fuck actually cares anyway? Do you really need permission?

We can do anything we want really. The biggest hurdle we have to overcome whenever we wrestle with these existential questions is ourselves. The cultural weight of gender norms is immense and we have to counter-program all our societal conditioning but the question of should or shouldn’t isn’t external it is internal.

It is a question we are asking about ourselves. We need to reframe the question. It is not should men wear leggings for fashion. Really the question is should I wear leggings for fashion.

Two things happen when we reframe the question. We turn down the pressure on ourselves and we open ourselves up to feel better about ourselves.

Take the burden off your shoulders

What you do has very little to do with your gender. If you take that identity away from your line of questioning you’ll find it becomes a lot easier to breathe. What you wear shouldn’t define your gender and you shouldn’t let your gender limit you. Gender should empower you.

Also thinking about what you should or shouldn’t do as a man pits you versus the world. You feel insignificant. The massive weights crush down around you and you can’t really cope with that. You shouldn’t have to. Should men wear leggings is a question that doesn’t really matter - certainly not to you the individual. Letting that pressure go is really empowering.

Give yourself the freedom to become more than your socially assigned gender. Should I wear leggings is a much easier question to answer. It is also a lot more relevant to your actual life.

Become who you want to be

Getting rid of all the social pressures and really focusing inward on who you are and what you are and how you want to present yourself lets you actually do it. You don’t have to hold a social yardstick up to yourself and measure yourself versus the concept of “manliness”. You can do as you choose.

To me, this was the biggest challenge of my entire life. Releasing the pent-up anxiety. The shame I have felt for years. The fear that my desire to wear leggings would ostracize me from the world.

I have written about this before and I’ll probably do it again, but this idea of accepting yourself is a superpower. It starts you on a path that will improve not only your fashion but your mental health, confidence and relationships as well. It gets the social monster out of the way and lets you become who you actually are. It’s pretty cool stuff.

Should men wear leggings for fashion?

From a high viewpoint, I think the answer is yes. You can create fun outfits and really play with your siloutte. You can be incredibly comfortable doing it. Leggings are loved by women every for all the same reasons that I love them. They hug my figure, make me feel sexy and desirable, I can move in them and they compliment my figure when styled with the proper footwear and tops.

The question is actually very silly.

Should or shouldn’t really have no place in the conversation around gender anymore. Not broadly speaking. That line of questioning is fair for the individual but no longer fits when applied to populations. We have evolved socially.

Let yourself evolve and get into leggings. They are a great way to create fun and aesthetic outfits that will leave you feeling empowered.