Black tights are miracles — luxurious yet accessible miracles! This is my going philosophy, and I know many women who share it, which is why I was so stunned to see this clickbait-y article in The Guardian shaming the wearers of black opaques. (Okay, stunned isn’t the right word; I don’t think anything on the web can surprise me ever again.) I am the queen of overthinking fashion, and if you don’t believe me, read the 1,000+ words I spilled on black turtlenecks last month. But even with my healthy appetite for going deep on a particular garment, I found fashion editor Jess Cartner-Morley’s argument against black tights to be somewhat exhausting. Because she does something that I think fashion writers, at least those who truly love clothes and not just the industry surrounding them, should never do: She argues that a specific item of clothing should be associated with shame.Cartner-Morley writes that black tights are a telling metaphor, one that “reveals a lot about your status, age, class, and self-image.” She argues that because you don't often see black tights in fashion editorials, they don’t signify high fashion. She says that true fashion die-hards don’t wear them, choosing instead to freeze in February while waiting for their Ubers to arrive. She says that putting on a pair of black tights is a form of giving up, a small death. She actually writes that she “dies a little” every time she puts on hers. She writes that black tights separate the models from the mortals, the rich from the poor, the young (and bare-legged, and carefree, and glowing?) from the old (and varicose-veined, and withered, and hideous?). She calls them a “matter of cold, hard cash.” Those who have cash, she says, go bare. Those who don’t wear Spanx with the rest of the plebes. She also says that wearing tights during any month without an “R” in it is a breach of fashion protocol.Let’s pick apart this pile of nonsense, shall we?