Yoga pants are the new smashed avocado toast.

Last week it was avocado toast. This week it’s yoga pants.

The casual chic active wear lifestyle, spearheaded by millennials on Instagram, and quickly and beautifully taken up by women of all ages everywhere, has come under fire.

Over the weekend, Rhode Island resident Alan Sorrentino wrote to the newspaper Barrington Times complaining about the trend of women wearing yoga pants when they’re not actually… umm… doing yoga. They might be shopping, or going to the movies, or socialising or (heaven forbid) brunching in them instead.

The man was outraged.

The absolute worst thing to ever happen in women [sic] fashion is the recent development of yoga pants as daily wear outside the yoga studio.

“From casual to formal, weddings, funerals, shopping, and even for the workplace, yoga pants are everywhere on women of all ages, usually paired with a blousy top and a pony tail hairdo. What a disaster!”

“Like the mini-skirt, yoga pants can be adorable on children and young women who have the benefit of nature’s blessing of youth.

“A nice pair of tailored slacks, jeans, or anything else would be better than those stinky, tacky, ridiculous looking yoga pants. They do nothing to compliment a women over 20 years old. In fact, the look is bad. Do yourself a favor, grow up and stop wearing them in public.”

“What’s next? Wearing a ‘Speedo’ to the supermarket? Imagine if men did that. Yuck! To all yoga pant wearers, I struggle with my own physicality as I age. I don’t want to struggle with yours.”

This man’s comments about a seemingly innocuous item of clothing (just like another man’s comments about a seemingly innocuous food stuff smashed avocado toast) hit a nerve with a particular group who thought their personal habits were not hurting anyone. Women who love active wear. In response teems of formerly mild mannered yoga-wearing women took to the streets in protest.

They made signs and placards proudly declaring they would enjoy the comfort of yoga pants, regardless of what anyone thought.

Two middle aged men in two different continents poked the bear. Or in this case, bears.

Bernard Salt's article in The Australian last weekend suggested that if millennials would just stop spending so much money brunching and eating overpriced avocado toast they might, in fact, be able to save for a house.

Millennials also hit back:

Bernard salt can pry my smashed avocado from my cold dead hands. 

@BernardSalt is right of course, just give up $22 a week and you'll have a deposit on a median priced house in Sydney in... 175 years.

(One good thing that did come out of the smashed avocado scandal; cafes around Australia generously dropped their prices of avo-on-toast for the following week. I wonder if Lululemon might do the same?)

At the end of the long day yoga pants and avocado toast have never hurt anyone.

And those that love them have had enough of being judged about their choices from middle-aged men who, really, stopped understanding other people's way of life decades ago when they started "doing the garden" every Sunday.

Live and let live.

We're doing that. We haven't mentioned once middle aged men wearing "hip" trainers.

Not once.