Butt out – I’ll wear what I like

So I finally caved in and bought the TikTok leggings. Which (if you’ve so far mercifully escaped the long, irritating arm of TikTok) are a pair of, ahem, butt-enhancing leggings. I say butt-enhancing as the politest way of saying they’re designed to give flat-bottomed gals the kind of behind that rapper Sir Mix-a-Lot would write an ode to. And they’ve been blowing up on TikTok, and the internet, for weeks as girls like me realise they too can look like a Kardashian without a single squat.

They’re basically the push-up bra for 2021. (Actual push-up bras have been dead since youth culture decided it was too woke for cleavage.)

So these leggings have come in to capitalise off bored online shoppers, lockdown-era fashion laziness, and a never-ending desire to flaunt your best ass-ets on social media. And, of course, the new rage for slutty activewear.

Now, having succumbed to the leggings fad, I can report back that they add pert peachiness and perkiness to every posterior. I don’t know if I’d actually do a workout in them – they give you an almighty wedgie – but I’d wear them out to coffee. After all, they’re marketed to women like me who are embracing our current cultural fascination with flirty fitness gear.

Black mesh panel leggings, micro booty shorts, padded crop tops . . . these are all part of current, casual city slicker chic. And we wear them everywhere from coffee to the gym.

As evidenced by the huffy middle-aged white dude in the office who, as I left for the gym the other day, sighed: ‘‘Why do all young women these days dress like strippers doing a workout?’’

Now normally I’d just roll my eyes at that. But for once, I’m going to respond to it. Because yes, activewear has become more scandalous. (There’s a chick at my gym who turns up to every session in glorious, gold lame´ Kylie Minogue booty shorts, to my undying envy.)

And actually, his huffiness is the entire point of why we do this. Oh sure, there’s things like social media, athleisure chic, influencer booty-beauty standards and the every-time-you-leave-the-houseit’s-a-photoshoot millennial mentality that have all made us buy more outrageous Lycra.

But there’s also a deep, symbolic appeal of the slutty Spandex that needs to be explained. And as a chick with an extensive array of scandalous yoga pants, let me explain the deeper, fiercer, fiery point of it all. Basically, it’s a small ‘‘stuff you’’ to society.

Primarily against the generalised, unending shame that we still throw on women’s bodies, forever insisting that we be more conservative. Outrageous activewear is a small rebellion against this, showing that we can wear whatever we damn well want with our fleshy pockets.

But secondly, we also know that nothing gets people rarked up like yoga pants. For some reason, these stretchy-leggings of sin have become a flashpoint for men and women’s unfocused rage at younger generations.

And so by embracing things like the TikTok leggings, we’re deliberately playing with that.

We’re tired of our bodies forever being a societal message for something. So to get our revenge, young women are utilising our inherent ability to symbolise something. We’re embracing outrageous activewear as a way of taking back the Spandex symbolism.

We know it annoys you. That’s part of the fun of it. A small rebellion against the years of critique in the form of a tiny, shiny, stuff-you. So as long as people keep complaining that young women are dressing like strippers, we’ll keep donning the Spandex.