It may be that I was brought up in the house of bad taste or that I had no connotations of bad taste instilled in me. Reason being that I fully believe that things that are seemingly of poor taste can be taken out of that context and re-emerge triumphant. Today, I feel like pondering and questioning something that has been hated yet taken to by people of all walks of life (not just fashion lovers). KoS points out the ridiculous nature of the word 'Tregging' (supposedly trousers that have all the physical properties of leggings) but hideous word amalgamation aside, it did get me thinking about leggings worn as trouser. i.e. sans bum covering skirt/dress/tunic/robe/top or whatever upper garment that serves to see two legs sticking out with those recognisable cutoff points. This is how they started re-emerging and by around 2005 (waaay earlier in HK/Asia though...), everyone's onto them and its cousin the footless tight.
But lets rewind to *shudder* the tregging. Wearing that as trousers, with nothing covering the butt and hip area, the entire legging glory on display. GFY guffaws at any attempts to wear leggings sans bum cover. Many will deem this a 'faux-pas' but many of you will also remember that that phrase means zilch to me. So I will stick my neck out and say 'Is it such a crime?'
I won't leave this question unjustified though but will present a list of questions.
If skinny jeans are getting to the point of the same amount of tightness and body-moulding proportions as leggings, is that not the same as wearing leggings as trousers?
So if it's a body confidence issue, we have body-con dresses coming all over us. Those can be pretty unforgiving. Is it that revealing the shape of the bum, hips and *ahem* front bum all a little too much and disconcerting for people to see?
Is this a 'Only skinny people can pull it off?' thing? If so, how does that explain the LA celeb sticks getting boo-ed for donning leggings without any bum protection? So then we're back to looking at this as a matter of poor taste.
oh well, in which case, like I said before, having no connotations of what is bad taste, and not really having too much of a disregard for giving the illustion of my body in its skinniest form, I enthusiastically pulled the leggings on and wore them not even with short loose tops but short tight tops that basically give the effect of me wearing a unitard. There we go again. 'Unitard? What the F is she thinking?'. Given that this question floats over your heads most of the time when looking at this blog anyway, I guess it doesn't really make a difference if I go and present you with more bad taste.
There's something very liberating revealing the contours of your body in that way and it does force you to take in everything at one time. Thought process being 'Ick... my lack of waist, urgh, my bum, ack, my thighs *turns to the side* good lord!'. But once you get past that, you sort of think 'Eh...well there we go, that's my bod!'. You will all agree that I'm in no way skinny skinny but then again, is that how I wish to be seen anyway (previous protestations of big ass was more anger in lieu of not obtaining those coveted DH jeans than actual anger at myself...)? Despite the amount of body-con incorporated into these outfits, to me, they don't really look purposefully sexy either (a good thing me thinks!). I quite like the bump free sillhouette, the lack of 'stuff' going on, which is rare in my outfits.
Which for me concludes that at the end of the day, leggings are just another form of trousers and no, I'm not saying it's for everyone but for those that don't have those qualms about their bod, there is no need malign them to just a piece of layering. It points to a bigger issue that I have no time to blah on about here about an obsession with hiding 'flaws' in the way we dress that I'm increasingly pondering (as to whether this is entirely healthy...) but for now, you can jeer, jibe and hate at the 'tregging' effect (last time I use that word...promise!).
