A great example of women's impossibly narrow fashion standards

While reading about the recent factory collapse in Bangladesh, I saw a link on the bottom of the page called "The right way to wear leggings in school." Curious and already somewhat annoyed, I clicked. What I found was a perfect example of the incredibly narrow and nearly impossible to reach standards that women are expected to conform to. These tiny windows of what's acceptable exist in multiple areas - personal and professional conduct, sexual expression, how intelligent you come off - and are especially obvious within the fashion world.

Case in point: the leggings debate. Are they pants? Can they be worn with tight shirts? Does thickness matter? What if you're working out?

The article claims that no, they are not pants, and gives several pictures of celebrities to help women understand the incredibly narrow, specific way that they are acceptably worn. But look closer - they still give an inconclusive definition of what's ok. Some women wear them with shirts that go below the rear end (what I had learned should be worn with leggings during college) but others are sporting shirts that go perhaps midway down the rear or - wait - don't cover it at all. Some of them are wearing tighter shirts, some of them looser. The author mentions the need to hide the lines from undergarments, but that's not a real problem depending on the thickness of the leggings, and isn't that also a thing that happens with certain sweatpants or even certain jeans?

The conclusion I draw from this has nothing to do with how leggings should be "properly" worn, but more on the fact that women must conform to an impossibly narrow standard of dress.
Even an article titled "How to wear leggings in school" doesn't give me a conclusive view of how they should be worn. Instead I've just learned that in all likelihood, I will be judged no matter how I wear them, that if there are these many "rules" about one article of clothing, there are probably "rules" about others that I don't know about. These sorts of "helpful" articles simply induce anxiety and tell women that their bodies are not their own to be shown and dressed how they wish. Not conforming to these impossible standards will have a bad result.

Women cannot simply wear clothing to dress their bodies without being judged. You must follow certain rules. Rules that aren't agreed upon and cannot really be followed. Good luck.

Here's what we should do: stop promoting any kind of "rules" around clothing. Leggings are leggings, and don't deserve the time it takes to draw breath to say the words "but leggings aren't pants!" Stop saying things that teach women that their bodies aren't their own - do this by not ridiculing the way women wear certain clothes or their choice in style. Stop giving weight to these impossibly narrow standards of what's ok for us to wear. Let me wear my leggings with my t-shirt if it makes me happy; my body is my own and does not deserve your judgement.