The wait is over, you can finally see this adorable panda cub Viral 'Charlie bit my finger' video to be taken down. Here's why (CNN) — “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?” a Catholic mother wrote. Maryann White urged female students to stop wearing leggings in a letter to the editor this week in The Observer, a student newspaper serving the University of Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s and Holy Cross Colleges. She said young women wearing leggings make it harder for men not to look at their bodies. She said she was ashamed for the women she saw wearing leggings and crop tops at a Catholic Mass she attended. “You couldn’t help but see those blackly naked rear ends. I didn’t want to see them — but they were unavoidable. How much more difficult for young guys to ignore them,” White wrote. White also blamed the entertainment and fashion industries for making it hard on Catholic women to teach their sons that women should be respected. The letter blaming women’s clothes for men’s sexual behavior inspired students at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana to organize a movement and wear leggings to protest White’s views. They wore leggings in protest Anne Jarrett, a junior majoring in philosophy and gender studies, is also an activist at Irish 4 Reproductive Health, a campus advocacy group for reproductive rights. She helped create the protest and a Facebook event called Leggings Pride Day. Courtesy Anne Jarrett "We're protesting our right to not be responsible for men and to not be constantly policed by morals or femininity," Anne Jarrett said in a tweet where she posed with short leggings. Jarrett, 21, wasn’t surprised by White’s point of view because she heard similar arguments in catechism classes and in Catholic school while growing up. There’s a double standard around modesty, she said. “The way that [White] used modesty in the letter as sort of like a call to women to do better was the same argument that I had seen a lot,” Jarrett said. Faculty and students from a diverse array of ages, races and genders expressed their support of wearing leggings and posted on social media. People from other parts of the country shared their support as well. Notre Dame students protested Maryann White's op-ed in The Observer by wearing leggings today for #leggingsdayND. Here's why Nicole Waddick showed up: pic.twitter.com/t9DCX4aFRc — The Observer (@NDSMCObserver) March 26, 2019 Jarrett was impressed by people’s responses to the movement. “I’ve been surprised by the amount of support that this has gotten from male and masculine-presenting students,” Jarrett said. “My guy friends have sent pictures to me in leggings. People in classes have said, ‘Look at all of the guys in my class wearing leggings today.’” The movement faces some backlash Many people, some of whom tend to shame women and harass them online, were not on board with the leggings protest. Jarrett received sexually inappropriate comments on Twitter when she posted her pictures with short leggings. But in the end, she didn’t want to focus her attention on the negativity. “College women have most likely been picking out our own clothes for a long time and we are going to continue to do so,” Jarrett said. CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct the formal name of the University of Notre Dame.<doc-sep>Image : Getty Leggings are like a giant sock that extend up your thigh, enveloping your butt in a soft, warm embrace. They are also, as concerned Catholic mother Maryann White recently wrote in the University of Notre Dame student paper, the Observer, a devious invention by the fashion industry that “has caused women to voluntarily expose their nether regions.” Advertisement White, a mother of four sons, is struggling to teach her sons that “women are someone’s daughters and sisters” (yikes) and leggings are apparently adding to her struggle. In “The Legging Problem,” she wrote: I was ashamed for the young women at Mass. I thought of all the other men around and behind us who couldn’t help but see their behinds. My sons know better than to ogle a woman’s body — certainly when I’m around (and hopefully, also when I’m not). They didn’t stare, and they didn’t comment afterwards. But you couldn’t help but see those blackly naked rear ends. I didn’t want to see them — but they were unavoidable. How much more difficult for young guys to ignore them. Her plea to ask college women to stop wearing leggings was received about as one might expect: by mockery, protest, and dissent. In response to her op-ed, one student organized a campus Leggings Day, encouraging other students to “join in our legging wearing hedonism!” The Washington Post reports that another student group, Irish 4 Reproductive Health, also planned a “Leggings Pride Day,” while one senior penned a response and informal protest, “The Leggings Protest.” White’s letter implies that women’s bodies are shameful, and that, in order to be treated respectfully by men, they must be dressed a certain way. Thankfully, several men on campus also took issue with her sexist logic: “I was raised to respect women no matter what they are wearing. So, I think women should be able to wear leggings if they want to,” sophomore Steve Ayers told the Observer. “In my opinion, I would never tell someone else how they can or cannot dress, because that is a personal choice, and it doesn’t affect me,” freshman Kyle Dorshorst said. “So, why should I tell other people what to do?” Advertisement Leggings are so ubiquitous, though, that ultimately the protest mostly seemed like business as usual. Notre Dame PhD student Dani Green, a founding member of Irish 4 Reproductive Health, told The Washington Post via Twitter that it had been “a little difficult to tell what was protest and what was everyday legging-wear.” How beautiful. People of all genders: wear your leggings freely—or don’t! The choice is your’s, not Maryann White’s!<doc-sep>Sign up for the Week in Patriarchy, a newsletter​ on feminism and sexism sent every Saturday. Won’t you think of the mothers of sons? For years, Maryann White suffered in stoic silence. She prayed that fashions would change and the legging problem would go away. Alas, athleisure only became more popular. Eventually White could stand it no longer; distraught and desperate, she wrote a letter to Notre Dame’s student newspaper imploring female students to “turn their backs(ides) on leggings”. “I’m not trying to insult anyone,” White writes in the letter, published on Monday. “I’m just a Catholic mother of four sons with a problem that only girls can solve: leggings.” White explains that while her sons “know better than to ogle a woman’s body”, leggings make not-ogling impossible. She recounts a traumatic episode while attending mass at the university, when she was confronted by a group of young women wearing tight clothing. “You couldn’t help but see those blackly naked rear ends. I didn’t want to see them – but they were unavoidable.” Which honestly sounds like something she should have saved for the confession booth, rather than the letters page of her sons’ student newspaper. “Leggings are so naked … so exposing,” she concludes. “Could you think of the mothers of sons the next time you go shopping and consider choosing jeans instead?” Rather than heeding White’s plea, the louche ladies of Notre Dame held a Leggings Pride Day in protest and shared pictures of themselves wearing tight pants with the hashtag #LeggingsDayND. “The Leggings problem,” as it has been termed, has made national news. Depressingly, this is far from the first time a spandex-based controversy has made headlines; the legging wars have been going on for years. In 2017, United Airlines famously banned two young girls wearing leggings from boarding a plane. In 2015, a Montana Republican was so disgusted by yoga pants he wanted to make wearing them punishable by law. Schools across North America have implemented sexist bans on leggings. Fox News has assembled panels to debate whether men would be “comfortable with the women in [their] life parading around in leggings”. And it’s not just men policing women’s bodies; thanks to internalized misogyny, sisters are doing it for themselves. Last year the New York Times published an op-ed called Why Yoga Pants are Bad For Women, in which the female author explained we’re all wearing leggings because they’re sexy; if we want to liberate ourselves from the patriarchy we should be wearing sweatpants instead. My own hot take about leggings/yoga pants is that I never want to hear about them ever again. It is incredible that there is so much hand-wringing in the west about how oppressed Muslim women are by the veil when the proprietary of leggings is a matter of constant debate. Bare-armed and dangerous Turns out it’s not just leggings that make you look like a whore, ladies! The morally righteous also find bare arms unbearable. At least three women have been told to cover their arms while wandering the halls of the British Columbia legislature. This has sparked a “bare-arms” protest by some government staffers and reporters. Female editors resign from Vatican magazine The all-female board of Women Church World, a monthly supplement in the Vatican daily paper, have resigned in protest at what they claim was a campaign to control and delegitimize them. In an open letter, founder Lucetta Scaraffia said the staff were scrutinized after writing about the sexual abuse of nuns. “It seems a vital initiative has been reduced to silence, and we return to the antiquated ... custom of selecting, under direct male control, those women considered trustworthy.” Saudi female rights activists temporarily released Three women’s rights activists jailed last year have been released on bail. Sources have told Reuters that more would be freed on Sunday. Vice Media equal pay settlement Vice has agreed to pay $1.875m to resolve a class action lawsuit brought by some of its female employees, who argued that the media company paid women less than men. A statistician hired by the plaintiffs found that “when controlling for job family/level, tenure and work location, the amount of underpaid wages to female employees appeared to range between $7,000,000 and $9,740,000”. The settlement is nicely timed as it is Equal Pay Day on 2 April. Silicon Valley’s gender pay gap Tech’s brightest minds can’t seem to disrupt sexism. According to new research, more than half of women in the US tech industry are being paid less than their male colleagues. Nasa: we have a woman problem The first all-female spacewalk was supposed to take place on Friday. History had to be put on hold, however, as Nasa didn’t have enough spacesuits in the right size. This isn’t the first time Nasa has shown a less-than-stellar understanding of women. In the 1970s, Nasa thoughtfully designed a makeup kit for female astronauts, because having the right lipstick on the moon would obviously be top of mind. Then there was the time that a Nasa engineer thought a woman would need 100 tampons to get through a week in space. Amazing how some men can be literal rocket scientists and still know nothing about the female body.<doc-sep>At least, not in the way that readers seemed to want. Not in a way that “mocked” her, as one suggested. Not in a scorched-earth diatribe. What would be the point? Within hours of the letter spreading, the earth was already scorched. Demonstrations had already been organized where participants were invited to come in leggings. People were already infuriated by the implication that women were temptresses and men were helpless walking hormones. The public was already having the correct emotional response.<doc-sep>
A mother-of-four is facing backlash after penning a letter pleading with female students at the University of Notre Dame to opt out of wearing leggings “and consider choosing jeans instead.” The mother, who was identified as Maryann White, penned the letter titled, “The legging problem,” which was published in The Observer, Notre Dame’s student newspaper. She 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.” SPRING BREAKER EARNS KUDS FOR HELPING CLEAN UP MIAMI BEACH She added, “we want to be seen as a person, not a body.” “For the Catholic mothers who want to find a blanket to lovingly cover your nakedness and protect you — and to find scarves to tie over the eyes of their sons to protect them from you!” she wrote. 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.” The letter appeared to have the opposite effect on students at the Indiana campus. Irish 4 Reproductive Health, a campus nonprofit group, dubbed Tuesday “Leggings Pride Day” and called on people to take part and post pictures of themselves wearing their favorite pair of leggings. Many students posted pictures of their favorite leggings with the hashtag #LeggingsDayND. “We wanted … to remind people that leggings are absolutely OK and you’re allowed to dress your body in whatever way you see fit,” Anne Jarrett, 21, a student at Notre Dame, who helped organize the demonstration, told Today Style. 3 ARRESTED IN TULANE DORM ROOM ARSON FIRE OF YAL-MEMBER STUDENTS Conrad Palor, a sophomore at the university, penned a response to White’s letter that was published in The Observer. “While White’s comments were likely intended to be innocuous, they contribute to and further the narrative that women need to dress in order to not distract their male peers, which only furthers the sexualization and subsequent subjugation of women’s bodies,” he wrote. A fellow Notre Dame mother, Heather Piccone, penned a letter to The Observer pointing out that “if nakedness is wrong, then this woman’s sons better have been fully clothed at the beach at all times.” “They better never have played a game of “shirts versus skins” pick-up basketball or football in the park,” she wrote. Leggings as pants have sparked debates since coming into popularity. Some schools banned students from wearing the clothing item altogether.