New Delhi: Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently celebrated his success in driving the campaign to get the United Nations to endorse June 21 as the International Day of Yoga, U.S. lawmakers appear to be busy trying to clamp down on some aspects of the practice.
Montana representative David Moore, thinks that amid global wars, economic challenges, climate change etc, people wearing yoga pants and other "provocative" clothing pose a challenge to America.
The Montana lawmaker apparently spearheaded the anti-yoga-pants campaign after he took umbrage to a bicycle event last summer that involved naked cyclists riding through the town of town Missoula, Montana.
A bill is introduced that would outlaw any costume, or covering that gives the appearance of or simulates the human form below the waist, would include a likely ban on all tight-fitting beige clothing; a mainstay of US's $30 billion yoga industry.
It's not clear why Moore is stretching the law to cover provocative clothing when his constituents were completely in the buff at the 'Dare to Bare' ride last August, but at least one of Moore's female legislative colleagues initially had a problem with the lawmaker singling out yoga pants and nipple exposure in his bill, pointing out that it unfairly targeted women.
Consequently, Moore's proposed law, introduced on Tuesday as Bill 365, seeks to expand Montana's indecent exposure law to include any nipple exposure, including men's. It also seeks to ban any garment that "gives the appearance or simulates" a person's buttocks, genitals, and pelvic area.
Moore's view, includes yoga pants (which he says "should be illegal in public anyway") and Speedo pants worn by men. Some yoga buffs see in Moore's strike a thinly disguised attempt to curtail yoga, which America has been embracing in a big way and whose universal spread is part of the Indian PM's soft power agenda.
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