Guy's 'Joke' Rant About Yoga Pants Backfires

Letter to Rhode Island newspaper inspires protest march, death threats
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Oct 23, 2016 11:35 AM CDT
Updated Oct 24, 2016 12:05 AM CDT
Guy's 'Joke' Rant About Yoga Pants Backfires
Yoga pants. Cue the controversy.   (Associated Press)

A Rhode Island man who penned a letter to the editor complaining about women wearing yoga pants says it was meant to be humorous and he doesn't have an issue with yoga pants. Alan Sorrentino tells WPRO-AM he hoped the letter published in the Barrington Times would be enjoyed as a break from the current political campaign rhetoric. Instead, the letter generated a huge outcry and a group of women say they'll parade through Sorrentino's neighborhood Sunday afternoon dressed in yoga pants. "Yoga pants belong in the yoga studio," Sorrentino wrote in the letter, via the AP. "What's next? Wearing a 'Speedo' to the supermarket? Imagine if men did that. Yuck!"

Organizers say the march is not a protest against Sorrentino but part of a bigger movement against misogyny and men dictating how women should dress. Sorrentino says the response to his letter was "vicious" and he's received death threats. He asks marchers to stay away from his home. "I assumed the character of this grumpy old man that was railing about women in yoga pants because he was too tight to just relax and accept himself in his age and his own ways. It was meant to sound stupid and creepy." (More yoga pants stories.)

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