Despite yoga being an ancient practice — nearly 5,000 years old — yoga pants seem to have materialized out of the fashion ether.

It’s hard to pinpoint when yoga pants became a wardrobe staple for American women of all ages, especially college students.

Yoga first became popular in the United States in the 1930s and was all the rage, once more, during the Woodstock era. Within the last few decades, yoga’s popularity has reached a new zenith, and women who have never set foot on a yoga mat now purchase yoga pants regularly.

So, what has inspired this yoga-pant proliferation and phenomenon? Comfort, of course.

For female college students whose schedules are jam-packed with classes, homework, part-time jobs and countless other responsibilities, some mornings the task of buttoning and zipping up a pair of “real” pants is simply too taxing. I, too, have lived through such mornings.

Some days it is much easier to just shimmy into a nice pair of polyester and Lycra blend yoga pants and head out. Is this taking the easy way out? Perhaps. But at least yoga pants are not as lazy-looking as sweatpants.

In the pilot episode of Seinfeld, Jerry scolds George for wearing sweatpants: “You know the message you’re sending out to the world with these sweatpants? You’re telling the world, I give up. I can’t compete in normal society. I’m miserable, so I might as well be comfortable.”

Jerry makes a compelling point, and while I do not know how he feels about yoga pants, it is safe to say that in the fashion family, sweatpants are the older, frumpier cousin of yoga pants.

Unlike sweat pants, yoga pants are by nature form fitting. They are typically made of clingy material and many contain spandex. While some yoga pants do come in cotton, the cotton is often not as thick as the cotton used to make sweatpants and therefore the silhouette that yoga pants create is more streamlined.

Yoga pants are a wonderful wardrobe option for the days that you simply can’t get away with going outside naked, but don’t want to put jeans on.

When shopping for yoga pants, it is imperative to keep length, fit and color in mind. You need to make sure the hemline of the pants is not too long. Yoga pants can help make your legs look leaner and longer, but if the fabric pools around your ankles or drags, you will appear shorter. It is a pain to hem yoga pants – and any pants for that matter –, so it is best to keep searching until you find the right length – just below the ankle.

As for fit, you want to make sure your yoga pants show off your shapeliness. Always try on the pants before purchasing them and be sure to check out the fit from every angle, paying close attention to how the fabric rests on your thighs and posterior. You don’t want the pants to accentuate any trouble spots you may have, so pick a fit that is snug but does not strangle.

In regards to color, black is always a safe bet, but navy is a nice alternative. I would not recommend light grays or bright colors unless you are very comfortable with the current look of your legs, because these shades tend to be less forgiving and accentuate flaws.

I do not condone wearing them every day, but wearing yoga pants is not a sign of fashion surrender either. After all, you could always say you are headed to yoga class.

Jenna Belmonte is a magazine, newspaper and online journalism graduate student. Her fashion column appears every Monday in Pulp. She can be reached at jmbelmon@syr.edu.

Published on September 22, 2013 at 10:53 pm