Essay... THERE ARE NO BLACK PEOPLE IN MY YOGA CLASSES AND I'M SUDDENLY FEELING UNCOMFORTABLE WITH IT
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Young_Chitlin
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I was completely unable to focus on my practice, instead feeling hyper-aware of my skinny white girl body.
By: Jen Polachek
January is always a funny month in yoga studios: they are inevitably flooded with last year’s repentant exercise sinners who have sworn to turn over a new leaf, a new year, and a new workout regime. A lot of January patrons are atypical to the studio’s regular crowd and, for the most part, stop attending classes before February rolls around.
A few weeks ago, as I settled into an exceptionally crowded midday class, a young, fairly heavy black woman put her mat down directly behind mine. It appeared she had never set foot in a yoga studio—she was glancing around anxiously, adjusting her clothes, looking wide-eyed and nervous. Within the first few minutes of gentle warm-up stretches, I saw the fear in her eyes snowball, turning into panic and then despair. Before we made it into our first downward dog, she had crouched down on her elbows and knees, head lowered close to the ground, trapped and vulnerable. She stayed there, staring, for the rest of the class.
Because I was directly in front of her, I had no choice but to look straight at her every time my head was upside down (roughly once a minute). I’ve seen people freeze or give up in yoga classes many times, and it’s a sad thing, but as a student there’s nothing you can do about it. At that moment, though, I found it impossible to stop thinking about this woman. Even when I wasn’t positioned to stare directly at her, I knew she was still staring directly at me. Over the course of the next hour, I watched as her despair turned into resentment and then contempt. I felt it all directed toward me and my body.
I was completely unable to focus on my practice, instead feeling hyper-aware of my high-waisted bike shorts, my tastefully tacky sports bra, my well-versedness in these poses that I have been in hundreds of times. My skinny white girl body. Surely this woman was noticing all of these things and judging me for them, stereotyping me, resenting me—or so I imagined.
I thought about how even though yoga comes from thousands of years of south Asian tradition, it’s been shamelessly co-opted by Western culture as a sport for skinny, rich white women. I thought about my beloved donation-based studio that I’ve visited for years, in which classes are very big and often very crowded and no one will try to put a scented eye pillow on your face during savasana. They preach the gospel of yogic egalitarianism, that their style of vinyasa is approachable for people of all ages, experience levels, socioeconomic statuses, genders, and races; that it is non-judgmental and receptive. As such, the studio is populated largely by students, artists, and broke hipsters; there is a much higher ratio of men to women than at many other studios, and you never see the freshly-highlighted, Evian-toting, Upper-West-Side yoga stereotype.
I realized with horror that despite the all-inclusivity preached by the studio, despite the purported blindness to socioeconomic status, despite the sizeable population of regular Asian students, black students were few and far between. And in the large and constantly rotating roster of instructors, I could only ever remember two being black.
I thought about how that must feel: to be a heavyset black woman entering for the first time a system that by all accounts seems unable to accommodate her body. What could I do to help her? If I were her, I thought, I would want as little attention to be drawn to my despair as possible—I would not want anyone to look at me or notice me. And so I tried to very deliberately avoid looking in her direction each time I was in downward dog, but I could feel her hostility just the same. Trying to ignore it only made it worse. I thought about what the instructor could or should have done to help her. Would a simple “Are you okay?” whisper have helped, or would it embarrass her? Should I tell her after class how awful I was at yoga for the first few months of my practicing and encourage her to stick with it, or would that come off as massively condescending? If I asked her to articulate her experience to me so I could just listen, would she be at all interested in telling me about it? Perhaps more importantly, what could the system do to make itself more accessible to a broader range of bodies? Is having more racially diverse instructors enough, or would it require a serious restructuring of studio’s ethos?
I got home from that class and promptly broke down crying. Yoga, a beloved safe space that has helped me through many dark moments in over six years of practice, suddenly felt deeply suspect. Knowing fully well that one hour of perhaps self-importantly believing myself to be the deserving target of a racially charged anger is nothing, is largely my own psychological projection, is a drop in the bucket, is the tip of the iceberg in American race relations, I was shaken by it all the same.
The question is, of course, so much bigger than yoga—it’s a question of enormous systemic failure. But just the same, I want to know—how can we practice yoga in good conscience, when mere mindfulness is not enough? How do we create a space that is accessible not just to everybody, but to every body? And while I recognize that there is an element of spectatorship to my experience in this instance, it is precisely this feeling of not being able to engage, not knowing how to engage, that mitigates the hope for change.
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I don't know why but I thought of this story when I read that..
6-Day Visit To Rural African Village Completely Changes Woman’s Facebook Profile Picture
NEWS IN BRIEF • World • Travel • Internet • Lifestyle • Social Media • ISSUE 50•04 • Jan 28, 2014
ST. LOUIS—Calling the experience “completely transformative,” local 22-year-old Angela Fisher told reporters Tuesday that her six-day visit to the rural Malawian village of Neno has completely changed her profile picture on Facebook. “As soon as I walked into that dusty, remote town and the smiling children started coming up to me, I just knew my Facebook profile photo would change forever,” said Fisher, noting that she realized early in her nearly weeklong visit just how narrow and unworldly her previous Facebook profile photos had been. “I don’t think my profile photo will ever be the same, not after the experience of taking such incredible pictures with my arms around those small African children’s shoulders. Honestly, I can’t even imagine going back to my old Facebook photo of my roommate and I at an outdoor concert.” Since returning, Fisher said she has been encouraging every one of her friends to visit Africa, promising that it would change their Facebook profile photos as well. -
Ya'll remember Blossom?
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Any active twitterers that have seen tweets going in on her?
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This is a dumb ? forreal
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So this was a fat white woman look like she's in despair over a yoga class, would she have said something to her?
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Response:
Help! There’s a Black Woman In My Yoga Class: or ? You, xoJane
by Kristin Iversen
Imagine, if you can, how difficult it is for a skinny white woman in Brooklyn to go about her business (I use the term “business” pretty lightly here, because that implies some actual sense of purpose), which includes practicing yoga, only to be confronted by the fact that, whoa! There’s an actual black woman in her yoga class. Can you even imagine that? It’s hard, right? What would you do if that happened to you? Would you spend the whole class preoccupied with your own sophomoric thoughts and then go home and cry because it was just too stressful for you to practice yoga with a black woman? Oh, you wouldn’t? Oh, you’re not a racist, page view-generating troll? Well then, good luck getting something published at xoJane.
“Jen Caron” (real name Jen Polachek, relation to Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek not verified, but damn do they look like sisters or something) is a “skinny white girl” who lives in Brooklyn and has been practicing yoga for six years, during which time she has rarely seen any black people in her classes, and so is stunned to see—live! in the flesh!—a real, honest-to-goodness black woman come to practice one day. Polachek explains how confusing it was for her when “a young, fairly heavy black woman put her mat down directly behind mine” and that despite seeming unfamiliar with yoga and not being able to perform much more than the warm-up stretches, the woman “stayed there, staring, for the rest of class.” Yes, that’s right. Rather than run out of the class once she realized that it was too challenging for her, this woman had the audacity to observe others practice, so that she could perhaps get a better idea of what yoga was all about. ? !
Or, you know, maybe this young black woman is not a ? , but she sure did make Polachek incredibly uncomfortable. Polachek describes how the woman stared at her throughout the class, first with “resentment and then contempt,” which Polachek naturally assumed was directed right at her and her “high-waisted bike shorts, [her] tastefully tacky sports bra, [her] well-versedness in these poses that [she has] been in hundreds of times. [Her] skinny white girl body.” This bothered Polacheck. Oh, not because she’s a narcissistic racist. No, not because of that. No, it bothered Polachek because she’s the total opposite of that. Polachek is an empathetic person who is troubled by the fact that “yoga, a beloved safe space that has helped [her] through many dark moments in over six years of practice, suddenly felt deeply suspect.” You see, the problem isn’t that Polachek is racist, it’s that yoga is racist. Or, at least, the yoga that is practiced in New York in 2014 is racist and leads to situations like this one, where each time she did a downward dog, Polachek felt major “hostility” from a black woman. And even though Polachek wished that she could have talked to this angry black woman, she didn’t, because she wondered, even “if I asked her to articulate her experience to me so I could just listen, would she be at all interested in telling me about it?” Which, maybe that’s the only smart thing about this whole piece, that Polachek isn’t quite oblivious enough to have approached a random black woman and asked, “Can you please articulate your experience for me?”
So, I could make fun of this post for another few hundred words, but that isn’t fully necessary because it’s currently being torn apart by the commenters over on xoJane and on Twitter and probably all over the Internet. But the real problem here isn’t Polachek. Well, it isn’t just Polachek. It is definitely partly Polachek because, MY ? , how obtuse do you need to be, how ignorant to think that the experience of another woman—especially one of a different race—is actually all about you? UGH. But so anyway, the real issue is that xoJane even ran this piece as written at all. The truth is, there is actually a good article tucked into the racist, narcissistic ? of Polachek’s writing. The marketing of yoga in contemporary America as just another fitness routine and the preponderance of skinny white women just like Polachek in yoga magazines and in yoga videos is actually very troubling and worth a discussion. Which, actually, a very good discussion about that issue can be found here, on the excellent site Decolonizing Yoga. But instead, the editors at xoJane recognized that an article that essentially trolls women of color would be a much better page view generator and so abandoned their responsibility to the story at hand. Is it really that surprising in the age of “feminist” websites posting $10,000 bounties for unretouched photos of Lena Dunham? Maybe not. And it’s not a bad time to remember that xoJane has also resorted to publishing idiotic ? like Sydney Leathers’ guide to ? a married politician (an article to which I refuse to link, but that can be googled if reading unintelligible writing is your thing). But this feels like a new low, because the raw material for a thoughtful piece is present in this essay, but seems to have been consciously ignored in favor of starting a controversy. So, yeah. ? you, xoJane. It must really suck that your site’s high point was publishing the work of an out-of-control drug addict, but there you have it. -
She asks ' what could the system do to make itself more accessible to a broader range of bodies? Is having more racially diverse instructors enough, or would it require a serious restructuring of studio’s ethos?'
That's bad? -
Plap and dro bout to knock dat thang dine -
Darth Sidious wrote: »She asks ' what could the system do to make itself more accessible to a broader range of bodies? Is having more racially diverse instructors enough, or would it require a serious restructuring of studio’s ethos?'
That's bad?
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If you read it you woulda read all the racist white superiority ? that ? was spewing. -
Obnoxious liberals are, by far, the most difficult of white people to stomach. I'm unimpressed by her epiphany.
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I was about to say chitlin I know u spelled yogurt wrong
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if she felt so bad for the overweight black woman why didn't she help her and give advice when she saw her emotions go from a state shock, to fear in her eyes, turning into panic and then despair?
But nah you go home cry your white privileged eyes out and write about how you have a great white girl body and tell the world that the "system" needs to make itself more accessible.
What system? -
i skimmed this the other day. ? is horrible. but typical.
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lol..mighty white of her.
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Smash on her and her white guilt/tears
Silly white ? .
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This ? ...
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Her article seems well-intentioned. Seems like ppl are being too hard on her. And who is to say that she isn't right in what she thought ol girl was thinking? Is it so hard to believe that a big girl in a yoga class for the first time would be self-conscious about her body, and resentful of the skinny women there?
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A Talented One wrote: »Her article seems well-intentioned. Seems like ppl are being hard on her. And who is to say that she isn't right in what she thought ol girl was thinking? Is it so hard to believe that a big girl in a yoga class for the first time would be self-conscious about her body, and resentful of the skinny women there?
She made it a race thing unnecessarily.
My fat ass would probably feel awkward in a yoga class filled with skinny white women in tiny yoga clothes..there was no need for her to specify that it was a large black woman.
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My response: ? , shut the ? up.
Her "concern" seems insincere. -
I wanna suck some yoga girls booties.
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A Talented One wrote: »Her article seems well-intentioned. Seems like ppl are being hard on her. And who is to say that she isn't right in what she thought ol girl was thinking? Is it so hard to believe that a big girl in a yoga class for the first time would be self-conscious about her body, and resentful of the skinny women there?
Her good intentions do not make her disposition any less appalling. The thing about well-meaning white people is that it almost always becomes about THEM. Hence the title of the original piece "It Happened to Me: there are black people in my yoga class." Nothing happened to HER. The audacity of this woman is baffling. WHAT exactly led her to believe that this woman was staring at HER… with contempt, no less? Is it not possible that the first pose reminded her that she needed to sit back and observe the class? Perhaps she was trying the observe and learn approach. I can’t imagine a grown woman, wasting an hour of her life by staring at a strange woman with hatred for no other apparent reason than the fact that she’s skinny and white. She was spot on when describing the exclusionary, elitist and downright hostile environment of some yoga studios but she doesn't realize how she became a part of that very problem.
So I’m having a hard time with your understanding of this woman’s behavior. There is no past experience that can justify someone being so moved by her presence that she cried, pontificated her way into almost 1,000 words, and submitted them to a major website… but couldn’t bother to speak. I’m inclined to believe that an “Oh well” would’ve registered in there somewhere. Possibly a “They don’t even like me anyway,” too. She was projecting all her racist, hateful feelings onto this black woman minding her business and started to feel guilty about it. I cant muster up any sympathy.
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? look like a possum
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? do look like a Disney rodent.
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A Talented One wrote: »Her article seems well-intentioned. Seems like ppl are being hard on her. And who is to say that she isn't right in what she thought ol girl was thinking? Is it so hard to believe that a big girl in a yoga class for the first time would be self-conscious about her body, and resentful of the skinny women there?
She made it a race thing unnecessarily.
My fat ass would probably feel awkward in a yoga class filled with skinny white women in tiny yoga clothes..there was no need for her to specify that it was a large black woman.
So race doesn't matter then? The higher obesity rates in Black Americans are insignificant? The fact that poverty correlates with obesity is irrelevant? The link between income and ethnicity is non-existent?
She felt that white guilt hard but looks like an idiot because she didn't do anything to reach out to someone she thought was having a tough time. I would have rather her article be self deprecating than critical of the system. A system is only as good as the people that function within it and she proved that she is incapable of improving it. -
Find it hilarious that OP threadjacked the thread title from LSA................and how I know? My wife goes and read LsA on RHOA stuff and I remember seeing that title before clicking the tab off on my Chrome browser....
*Edited -- here's pic for proof of thread title jack lmfao* :
