Milky Way meggings from Kapow Meggings.
It’s inevitable, really.
Women have been doing it for years.
It seems silly that anyone in Boulder, Colorado, ever wore anything else.
We live on our bikes, except when we’re doing yoga. Spandex should be Boulder’s required uniform.
Yet for decades, men have been wearing bulky denim, baggy sweats and oversized shorts — as sloppy as if they just hopped out of a potato sack race at field day in elementary school.
Finally, men’s jeans and shorts have grown tighter in cut, which shocked women everywhere, who had no idea that men also had glutes and multiple sections of the leg. Knees, even! Who knew?
Men today with modern tailored and skinny cuts look more pulled-together and stylish. But one problem still persists. You’re still trapped in the denim cage.
Admit it. You’ve got to be uncomfortable with your boxer shorts all bunched up underneath your jeans, with their awful zippers and buttons and stiff fabric restricting your range of motion. No sporadic dropkicks, cartwheels or fan kick-lines for you. Tragically.
While women get to wear elastic-waist yoga pants so comfy they can sleep in them, exercise in them, shop in them and even wear them to work with an oversized sweater or flannel.
For the first time since corsets were invented as a torture device (right?) in the 16th century, women’s standard of fashion has become more comfortable than men’s.
That’s why for Christmas I bought my husband several pairs of meggings from Kapow (kapowmeggings.com). Yup. Leggings for men. Made longer and wider to fit the male body.
At first the husband laughed (hard) (very hard) at the idea of wearing spandexy leggings with patterns on them. (To be clear, I didn’t go straight to the merman or rainbow leopard print. I opted for a subtler introduction: the Milky Way pattern, a black and white swirl, and the shiny black “wet diamond sheen” Nightrider style.)
“B-but aren’t leggings for girls?” the Kapow website writes, which was incidentally my husband’s exact response. Kapow answers: “Hell no, son! Human beings are built for self-expression, and we’re here to give risk-takers and heartbreakers the conversation starters they were born for.” Which is about how I responded.
He still wasn’t having it.
The meggings sat in the original box I wrapped them in for a few days, until one chilly day, he was looking for an extra layer to wear under his sweatpants to the gym. He half-sarcastically slipped on his Milky Ways, and the next thing I knew, he was leaping around the house in delight.
He said the fabric felt fantastic and wasn’t bunching up like boxers. He wore the meggings to the gym, came home and put on the other pair while he was washing the dirty pair, and has alternated his meggings every day since — sometimes under his sweats, sometimes just alone. And much to my surprise, I think he looks incredibly sexy in them, leg muscles and glutes all on display.
Kapow comes from London and says the style is picking up in the bigger metro areas. The megging might be a bit early for smaller, inland cities — but I say not Boulder. This trend was made for us.
I mean, if I get to live in my yoga pants all day, it’s just a matter of equality that my husband can sleep, sweat and chill in his cycling get-up. Even though he doesn’t own a bike.
This article originally appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera. Contact Aimee Heckel at aimeeheckel@gmail.com, twitter.com/Aimeemay and AimeeHeckel.com.