Bob CollinsWe do love us a good high school fashion controversy.
In Rockport, Mass., a high school principal tried to enforce a ban this week on girls wearing yoga pants to school.
Last Friday he ordered the girls to observe the policy of the student handbook, and sent several home to change. Teachers had apparently complained they were a “distraction.”
It went over exactly as you’d expect it to with a bunch of 15- and 16-year-old girls.
“I think it’s really unfair and really unnecessary,” added Laura Budrow, a 16-year-old sophomore.
Faced with a yoga-pants rebellion, the principal has now backed off and will form a committee to investigate the leggings situation.
Leave it to a 16-year-old boy to offer the proper perspective. “I think there are bigger school problems to worry about than what girls wear for pants,” he said.
In November 2012, Minnetonka High School principal Dave Adney quashed a fashion threat that combined the yoga pants with T-shirts. He emailed parents to talk to their girls about proper attire and urged students to “cover your butts.” The Star Tribune wrote:
From Forest Lake to St. Paul, more than 70 parents and other high schools called or e-mailed Adney supporting his message, which didn’t ban leggings, but urges teens to dress more modestly.
The e-mail sparked a discussion in the Colwell household in Chanhassen.
After Traci Colwell saw it, she sat down with her 14-year-old daughter to talk about how to appropriately wear yoga pants to school.
“I said, ‘See, I’m not the only one to feel this way,'” she said. “It’s gotten way out of control the way kids dress.”
Like a lot of girls, freshman Carine Colwell wears yoga pants to school two to three times a week because they’re comfortable. But some classmates are taking the trend a step further, she said, wearing see-through nylon tights as leggings. Still, the principal’s warning upset a lot of students at school Tuesday, she said.
“Some kids were really mad because they’re comfortable,” she said. “As long as they’re not see-through, they should be allowed.”
Adney left Minnetonka High last year with a long list of accomplishments. But, of course, he couldn’t exit without a question about the yoga pants rebellion.
“It morphed into this thing,” Adney told the Star Tribune. “I suddenly became the Minnesota principal who wants to ban yoga pants. I was just amazed that it resonated with people in the way it did.”
