Doting wife that I am, I was concerned that my husband would be disappointed that I'm not getting him a pair of "meggings" for Christmas. Meggings seemed to be a really hot trend right now for men, and I would feel terrible if my husband were the only guy in town wearing chinos when the rest of the male population was wearing meggings. Not wanting him to think I was indifferent to his fashion needs, I decided to ask him.

"Honey, would you feel bad if I don't get you meggings for Christmas?"

"Maybe," he said, "if I knew what meggings were. Is it a new kind of egg?"

"No. Meggings are leggings for men."

He looked at me and made the same face he makes when the dog has bad gas.

"Are you serious?" he finally said.

"Yeah. I see them on all the guys these days. They look really comfortable."

"I don't care how comfortable they are. I would never in a million years wear leggings, especially not leggings made for men. What does that even mean?"

"I'll show you," I replied.

I went online and looked up meggings. Tons of images appeared of athletic men in skintight leggings in various prints doing various things. There were magenta meggings and mustard meggings, meggings with monkeys and meggings with mallards, meggings for muscular men and meggings for medium-sized men. Men who were microwaving in their meggings and others who were meditating in their meggings. There was a megging for every man and every activity. It was a whole new megging-wearing mega-world.

I showed my husband the pictures so he could see what he was missing. After he recovered from what I had surmised was a meggings-induced stroke, he spoke.

"Forget giving them to me as a present. You couldn't pay me enough to wear those."

"Why not?" I asked. "They look super comfortable, and you can wear them to do yoga."

"Only if I want to offend everyone in the yoga class," he said.

"But they have one called Velvet Elvis Meggings!" I exclaimed.

"Nope. Not gonna happen," he said, grabbing the dog's leash to take him for walk so they could have some male solidarity.

"You could also wear your meggings to walk the dog!" I shouted as the door closed behind them.

I decided that it probably wasn't the concept of the meggings that bothered my husband as much as it was the name. He was somewhat disturbed by the term "murse" (man-purse), and truly horrified by the name "mantyhose" (man's pantyhose). There were also "manties," "manpris" and "manscara," which were probably taking the whole "manparel" thing to the extreme, and I would certainly understand if my husband didn't want to have to ask a salesperson where the "mirdles" were in the department store. Not that he needed one... just hypothetically speaking, of course.

Ultimately, I thought I could understand his reluctance. We don't give specialty female names to women's apparel, although there are some drugstore items that are named for the female parts that they treat, which is unfortunate. However, we do have men to thank for one very important name in the beauty world...

The manicure.

Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller, "Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble," available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online! You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com

Photo credit: Max Harlynking at Unsplash