A mother with 4 sons has penned a letter pleading with female students at the University of Notre Dame to stop wearing leggings “and consider choosing jeans instead.”
Maryann White penned the letter titled, “The legging problem,” which was published in The Observer, Notre Dame’s student newspaper.
Maryann, a Catholic mother, started her letter by saying she had been considering writing it for some time after she attended Mass last autumn and saw four young women in front of her “all wearing very snug-fitting leggings and all wearing short-waisted tops.”
“Some of them truly looked as though the leggings had been painted on them,” White wrote.
The mother said her sons “know better than to ogle a woman’s body – certainly when I’m around (and hopefully, also when I’m not).”
“But you couldn’t help but see those blackly naked rear ends,” White said of the women wearing leggings during Mass. “I didn’t want to see them — but they were unavoidable. How much more difficult for young guys to ignore them.”
White concluded her letter saying leggings are “so naked, so form fitting, so exposing.”
“Could you think of the mothers of sons the next time you go shopping and consider choosing jeans instead?” she asked. “Let Notre Dame girls be the first to turn their backs(ides) on leggings.”
But the letter has generated outrage as women pointed out that no one polices men’s morals and their fashion choices, even when they step out topless with snug shorts. The critics of the letter added that the letter furthers the narrative that women need to dress in order to not distract their male peers.
Read White’s full letter here.
