It's the empress's new yoga pants.

Poor Alan Sorrentino had the misfortune to notice that most women past their teen years don't look so great in sheer, shiny britches that fit like twin sausage skins and are supposed to be worn only when you're standing on your head while uttering "Namaste" on a special mat in a studio. Especially when said shiny britches sport swirly, brilliantly hued patterns that look like cotton candy on LSD and you can't get into a size smaller than XXL.

So the 63-year-old Sorrentino wrote a letter to the Barrington Times, a tiny Rhode Island newspaper with a print circulation of only 5,000, that described yoga pants as "stinky, tacky, ridiculous looking." 

"They do nothing to compliment a woman over 20 years old," he wrote in the letter, which was published on Wednesday. "In fact, the look is bad. Do yourself a favour, grow up and stop wearing them in public."

Uh-oh! According to Fox News:

Hundreds of women, girls and other supporters proudly donned their yogapants Sunday as they peacefully paraded around the Rhode Island neighborhood of a man who derided the attire as tacky and ridiculous….

"Women are fed up with the notion that we have to dress for people's visual pleasure," said Jamie Burke, parade organizer.

The so-called yoga pants parade wasn't a protest against Sorrentino specifically but part of a bigger movement against misogyny and men dictating how women should dress, organizers said….

One parade-walker, clad in bright red yoga pants, held a sign that read: "I'm 53."

Sorrentino also complained about receiving death threats over his letter.

Here's the question I have: Why is it "misogyny" to point out that some women are simply too old or too large in girth to wear clothes on the street that make them look like the balloon dogs at your 5-year-old's birthday party? Why are we obliged to pretend that every woman looks stunningly beautiful in every bulge-revealing garment that she chooses to don?

Isn't it actually a form of even more corrosive misogyny to regard women as so fainting-couch-ready that they can't endure the smallest criticism of their appearances? We chuckle at the guys in Speedos on Eurotrash beaches–but we dare not say one word about women whose tastes run to the equally dubious and revealing.