It’s 11 pm. I have been wearing yoga pants for 15 hours. If you had told me 20 years ago that I would spend an entire day wearing yoga pants I would have laughed and sworn it would never happen.

Twenty years ago I moved to the suburbs from NYC and went to the bus stop the first day of school wearing soft buttercup yellow DKNY jeans. The other mothers wore Mom jeans and looks of amusement as they checked out the new city expatriate. I didn’t care if I looked overdressed. I’ve always found it preferable to being underdressed. As the school year wore on they would roll up the street in their SUVs at 7:30 am in bathrobes and pajamas, with sunglasses covering their swollen morning eyes. I had my hair washed and makeup on. I knew I’d never become one of them.

My new friend Gail, who lived down the street, commented that I would soon be wearing “normal” jeans and sweat pants and showing up at the bus stop looking ragged and rushed like the others. We have now been friends for 19 years. Our boys are grown. It never happened.

But now it HAS happened. I returned to the city from the suburbs where you would think I would spend the day wearing chic city clothes, but I am looking at myself and I’ve spent the day in yoga pants. How did I become that person? It started when I signed up for Pilates in a real studio instead of the safety and privacy of my basement gym and I bought some rather cute yoga pants. Yoga pants are really comfortable. There’s a reason I’ve fallen asleep on the floor at the end of any yoga classes I’ve taken. It’s the pants.

I usually feel energized when I put them on in the morning and they get me motivated to exercise. But to be honest I didn’t do any exercise today. I put on the pants this morning planning on the 9 am Pilates class. I answered some phone calls and missed the class. I spent an hour thinking about going to the gym instead while I threw in some laundry. I never got there. I kept them on while I sat at my computer barefoot and comfortable in my stretchy soft pants and I wore them for the next few hours while I clicked on Huffington Post links, read emails and cleaned the kitchen.
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Yoga pants have become the house dresses of our generation. My very stylish grandmother had an assortment of snap front pastel house coats she wore to dust and vacuum and cook inside her Jackson Heights apartment. But you would never catch her wearing one to her nearby Waldbaum’s.

I broke that wall. At 5 pm I needed some groceries. I thought about changing but I threw on some boots over my yoga pants. It almost looked like I was wearing real pants. I went outside to walk to Whole Foods. And do you know what I noticed while I was outside? I was not alone. There were LOTS of other people wearing yoga pants. Some of them looked healthy and fit. Many of them were dressed for exercise but looked like they hadn’t broken a sweat quite a while. Because that’s the thing about yoga pants. They usually feel better than they look. They feel tight and uplifting like a girdle or Spanx. But those are worn under clothes. Yoga pants are not. Once you see your behind with your legs thrown over your head as you do a crunch in the exercise studio mirror you realize they aren’t as shapely as you thought. Unless you are actually a yoga instructor or trainer you should not be wearing yoga pants all day. Its risky. They are a “gateway” pant — you could wake up one day and realize you have been wearing them for weeks at a time. And wearing no makeup. And not exercising at all. Pretty soon you are overeating in those stretchy pants with the expanding waistband and yoga pants will be the only pants that fit. Look around the streets of any suburb or city and you will agree. It’s a cautionary tale.

I believe there’s a solution here. I’ve spent most of my adult life in tight clothes and painful shoes and I think I’m just tired of suffering. Yoga pants made me realize how much happier I could feel if I spent the day in more comfortable attire. I think it’s time to lose some of my more restricting clothes and high heels and go out and buy some pants that are as comfortable as yoga pants but appropriate for the real world. I wonder if DKNY still makes buttercup yellow jeans. Or if all else fails – Maybe I’ll just have to become a yoga instructor!