Last Sunday, two teenage girls were prevented from boarding an United Airlines flight in Colorado. The girls were related to an employee of United Airlines and couldn’t board because of what they were wearing. The girls were wearing spandex, which is against the United Airlines policy.
The mother of the teenagers, Shannon Watts, tweeted angrily at United for not letting them board. Her tweet read, ""Since when can United police women's clothing?" United replied to that tweet, "United shall have the right to refuse passengers who are not properly clothed via our contract of carriage. The passengers this morning were United pass riders who were not in compliance with our dress code policy for company benefit travel."
I understand there is a dress code and policy for employees. Yet, these were family members of the employees. These girls weren't working for United and were not providing services to anyone. It is true that spandex was against the policy and might not have been the "best" image for a the company. I worked in the food service for a while and was required to wear a certain outfit. As much as I wanted to wear leggings, the policy was Kacky pants. Yet, I questioned if the teenagers were men if it would have been different. It seems as though women's professional clothing is always criticized and held to a double standard. It has been proven through research how appearance is a determining election outcome. This is also the case when other factors are involved such as race, gender, ethnicity, etc.
I can see how people believe leggings to be "not real pants" or "unprofessional." The styles that people refer to are when you wear shorts that don't cover your butt. Some leggings also have a bad reputation for being see through as well. However, with leggings I don't believe them to be "not real pants." I have found professional outfits that include leggings that could be appropriate for the workplace.
Yoga Pants and Leggings have became very popular. People who wear yoga pants are not just people who workout. People wear these pants because of its comfortable material and style. Compared to all the pants, I think sweat pants are the worst and totally unprofessional and leggings are better.
I enjoy wearing leggings a lot more than jeans or professional attire. I only have a few pair of jean that I rarely wear. For me, I find wearing leggings very comfortable. I don't always know why people hate on leggings. There are ways and outfits you can make with leggings that can be professional. Leggings are getting a lot more popular than jeans. In my Media Planning Class, we are doing a case analysis on Mavi Jeans. I am in charge of Economic and Societal trends section. I have researched and discovered that the jeans category's biggest competition is becoming the leggings. In 2016, Amazon sold more leggings at 11.6% than jeans at 9.3% (Washington post). Legging Purchases went up 41% over the last year compares to a 3% increase in purchases of jeans (Washington Post).
