Q: I’m so tired of people telling me that leggings aren’t pants. Why is it my problem if a guy is looking at me lustfully? I should have the right to wear what I want without people turning me into an object. Thats their problem, not mine.

Dear David Leininger,

I don’t know who you are or anything about you, but I read your answer to the above question. I want to preface what the rest of this letter will contain with my admiration for your attempt to answer the above question respectably and from a level-headed standpoint. However, your response does not put you on our “team”. It actually continues to perpetuate the sexist issue.

“If a guy looks at you like an object, that’s absolutely on him… but at the same time, out of love of neighbor, you could help him out.” From the start, you make your point clear. “Men Need Help” is your first angel. You talk about how some of your “brothers struggle with pornography”, saying that leggings don’t help men eliminate the sexual visions they see on screen while in public. Let me ask you this: Take a woman who watches porn, who “struggles with pornography”. She blames the sexiness of a man’s outfit, the texture of the belt or the number of buttons on his shirt, on her inability to see him as anything but a sexual object. Does this mean the man should wear sweatpants and a shirt three sizes too big because anything else is too closely related to the porn she watches?

“It’s extremely hard to purify the brain, and we desperately need your help.” You mention that your goal is to create a world of men who treat women with more respect, but to do this, women must dress modestly. Who is to say leggings can’t be modest? For a man who “struggles with pornography”, it does not matter what a women wears because in his mind, if he truly finds her attractive, he will imagine what she looks like without her clothing.

You then decide to compare women to the IPhone, saying that the first thing anyone would do is put a protective case on their phone, so why don’t we put a protective case on females? I agree with you when you state that we are worth much more than an IPhone, however, how we dress ourselves should not define what parts of us should be valued more. If the world was blind, if nobody could see anything, sexuality would solely be from our other senses. It would not matter what dresses our body because the physicality and visual aspects of who we are would not define our worth, the amount of respect we receive, and so forth.

“Dressing modestly helps to protect you from being treated like a collection of body parts instead of as the whole person you are.” Look at the business world. Women wear business attire, covering their skin, and dressing appropriately. Yet we are still paid less, sexual harassment in the workplace still occurs, and sexual discrimination and disrespect is at an all time high. When a woman lies naked in bed with a man, is she only supposed to feel like a collection of body parts, or is she supposed to feel valued for who she is regardless of the clothing on her body during that intimate moment?

Leggings, a clothing item, a piece of fabric used to dress our bodies, male and female. I appreciate your attempt to make your response considerate. But next time, consider what it is like to be told your whole life what to wear and what not to wear. Consider what it’s like to be the elementary school girl taller than all her friends who has to wear pants when her friends wear shorts because shorts are too short on her. Consider what it’s like to be the middle school girl told to not wear an athletic tank top in gym class because you can see her bra straps while her friends don’t even own a bra yet. Consider what it’s like being told to change your outfit during the middle of math class because your dress distracts the boys around you because your legs are too long and your hips are too wide. Consider what it’s like seeing beauty painted as naked women on billboard ads, yet you aren’t supposed to wear leggings because it doesn’t help men be decent, respectful humans. How about next time I see a man with his shirt unbuttoned one too many times or his arms too big for the shirt he’s wearing, I’ll tell him that he needs to help us women out by not wearing shirts like that?

To the man who said women shouldn’t wear leggings, we will wear what we want. We will wear leggings. We will wear heals. It is not our fault men can’t control both their heads at once. We have learned to separate our heart from our mind, our soul from our voice, our bodies from our existence in order to help you men out. Now it’s time for us to piece back our pieces, while wearing whatever the fuck we feel good in.