Why Pants?
I'm sure most of you have thought this at some point in your lives. Pants. Why? What's the point? What do they signify? Why are so any people on the pants bandwagon? Why are they so damn tight? I'll tell you: society wants your junk on lock down. It all started in 1609 with the Puritans. They sailed from England to establish their "City Upon a Hill" in the New World. In their Christian Utopia they sought to remove all fun from the world. And their primary fun-obliterating weapon? Pants. The binding, restrictive, nut-hugging pants. Yeah, you know those stupid tights that the pilgrims would wear in your childhood coloring books (or current coloring books). The pantless Native Americans opposed them and look what happened to them - killed or now wearing pants. Imperialist bastards. Then consumer capitalism coopted pants in the mid-20th century in new and nefarious ways. It took this mechanism of oppression and imposed it on women who had only just won a few token freedoms like voting. Once free to wear flowing, comfortable dresses, now women too had been bounded at their hips. The worst part? They were suppose to LIKE it. Advertisers brilliantly reconceptualized denim, formerly the imposed garb of the working man, to be hip and stylish. Pants became a sign of the modern woman - the woman who thinks she is free but in reality is stuck in a cycle of buying pair of pants after pair of pants. Much like the Puritans, consumer capitalism keeps desire at leg's length. In its twisted logic only if you have stylish pants can you ever get with someone else with stylish pants - the only problem is that you need to constantly keep buying new pants to stay in style. Devious. Since we can never be satisfied with our current significant other and their styless pants, those pants we are so desperately trying to get off just stay on. All because we know that there will always be another potential partner with sleeker, sexier pants. This constructed "sexy" in effect renders us sexless and financially broke. Don't you miss the days of simple loin clothes? When everything hung out and was properly aerated? Even now I write this email, I sit in my underpants in protest. We can stop this madness. Together we can lift one leg out of a pant hole, and then the other. We are meeting in the 5th floor Gallatin Student Lounge from 1pm to 3pm. Try wearing anything other than pants. #WhyPants
