WHITE GIRL YOGA BLUES
I call the westernized, modern version of yoga “White Girl Yoga”, I feel that it does not need a definition as it’s pretty self explanatory. But if you need to know what it looks like, let’s just say, if you Google Image “yoga”, this is what you come up with:
Related to that and the reason we’re here today, Target’s selling some real problematic White Girl Yoga t-shirts. They’re in a series of t-shirts emblazoned with things I’m all about —like “Rosé all day”, YES! And, I want “More Tacos”, like always — but then there’s this:
This t-shirt is even more problematic since I fucking love puns. And I’ll admit, the first time I heard it, I did a “that’s clever wordplay” head nod while also feeling just a titch uncomfortable. Mainly because it’s more of a pun on the way white people say “namaste” than it is on how “namaste” is actually pronounced, which almost makes it worse. And let’s just say, this kind of uncomfortable is apparently a thing surrounding White Girl Yoga for me, cuz I can get real uncomfortable when White Girls invite me to go to their yoga classes, because “it’s the best workout ever!”
It’s taken me a minute, but I’ve come to the full realization that I absolutely hate White Girl Yoga. I’ve posted about it in various online groups that I’m in. I’ve posted about it on my personal social media. And there are three types of people who respond: 1. The ones who want to do better — my advice to them was very unhelpful, because honestly I didn’t fully know what my discomfort was, 2. The Indians who know what I’m talking about and lend their thoughts and opinions on the matter, and 3. The “You Ain’t Coming For My Yoga, Bitch” White Girl. She’s typically the one who has been regularly doing yoga — possibly since the early aughts, she enjoys chai tea afterward, she marched with other women (same!), she prides herself on being a Social Justice Warrior (which is great, me too, girl!), she has demonstrated that she is not racist in other avenues of her life, and when faced with the idea that the way she yogas might have a bit of racism in it, she defends herself wholeheartedly, preferring to remain tone-deaf and not hearing that no one’s actually coming for *her* yoga. She will argue that yoga has become white and is therefore now white, with zero sense of irony, and zero sense of privilege, and zero sense of history. That White Girl sucks.
SIDEBAR: I should probably back up for a second, because if you’ve had a glance at my picture, you’ll see that I look like the kinda White Girl that I’m talking about. And that’s fair; I do: I was born lily white, with red hair, and a cleft-chin. I definitely favor my dad. Not so much my mom, who’s an immigrant from India, and seems to be forgotten by my general outward appearance. That said, there was a family gathering after my mother’s brother died, and there were pictures that were brought out from well before any of our time, including young photographs of my grandfather, and it turns out that he’s the brown-skinned, black hair, bearded and turbaned version of me. At 20 years old, I finally looked like my Indian family. It was pretty big for me, someone who is kinda, sorta, but not really believed when I reveal my ethnic origins. How can someone who’s half-Indian look like me? Well, it’s a thing called genetics. It was around AP biology (oh yeah, I stereotypically did well in science classes) that I figured out why I look like I do — maybe before that, though — whenever I learned about the punnett square. And I found out that Red hair is a recessive gene, and since both parents must carry it, somewhere in my mom’s DNA there was a pesky red hair gene chilling out waiting for the right moment to appear (hi!), and the most likely way that red hair gene could take a dip in my genetic pool is through the colonization of my mother’s people. And that’s just a nice way of saying a bunch of white folks decided to come into my ancestors’ land to rape and pillage and enslave and rule and now I have red hair. And I’m not alone, there are full Indians with similar traits. Well. There’s one that I know of, and like her, I get my freckles from my Indian side:
It’s weird to know that one looks the way they do because of the colonization of one’s people.
ANYWAY.
I’d started posting this White Girl Yoga discomfort that I could feel in my DNA with nothing really to back it up. In my posts, where there were White Girls who asked how they could be better, I didn’t really know the answers. So, I started researching because I wanted to understand what I was feeling and was able to find that other Indians had a similar distaste for White Girl Yoga and I came to understand my discomfort and its roots.
Part of it is because, as I mentioned, when I cite my discomfort, some of these White Girls tell me that the practice is white now, the Indians “gave” the practice to the white people, there’s nothing I can do to stop it, so…
Except, this isn’t the yoga Indians “gave” to white people. This yoga is about fitness, it’s about Saturday mornings, pre-brunch, post yoga “workout”, it’s jaunting over to Starbucks for a Chai tea in your tight, tight yoga pants, yoga mat in tow. That’s fantastic and all for spending a Saturday morning re-colonizing Indians!
SIDEBAR. Did you know that the word “chai” means “tea” in Hindi (and other South Asian languages)? When you order your Chai tea, you’re ordering a tea tea. Great job, team team! Also? The chai that you enjoy over here was “invented” because most Indians were too poor to drink tea, so they made a milky, sugar-y, spiced drink that contained little tea (originally it contained no tea at all, actually). These poor Indians that created chai? They were the slaves of the British Colonizers who were made to work in tea plantations. And the tea plantations were only there because the British Colonizers weren’t super cool with China having a monopoly on the tea trade, so they stole some seeds, slaved up some brown folks, and created tea farms in India, and generally made a shit-ton of money off the backs of Indians with stolen goods from the Chinese. White people, amiright? They really love to steal shit from countries they deem inferior and make money off that shit. It’s the other country’s fault though, right? They should’ve done it themselves. AM.I.RIGHT?
SPEAKING OF.
There’s this chick from Colorado, she went to India this one time about 20 years ago. She dug the chai there that she got from street vendors, barely making a living on the sales. So much, that she came back to the states, recreated it, sold it to other white people and is now worth $35 million. That chai you’re drinking might literally be putting money in her pocket! Because she figured out a way to monetize it in a really profitable way. Cool cool cool.
ANYWAY.
Yoga has an equally storied history. Dating back at least 2500 years, Yoga had been a deeply spiritual practice for Hindus that engaged the eight limbs of the practitioner until it was banned by British colonizers who found yoga to be scary as fuck. Nearly a century ago, a guy named Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, anglicized the practice and brought it to the white colonizers. He charged his young brother-in-law, B. K. S. Iyengar, to do a demonstration of this new yoga, which incorporated western isometric exercises, to the white people. He did, and this new form of yoga was “unbanned” and Hindus were allowed to practice this white-ified version. However, Iyengar was injured during the demonstration, and realized that this new yoga wasn’t actually healthy for the body. He amended it to incorporate more of a flow, which was more in keeping with the ancient practices. This is what we understand to be Vinyasa or flow yoga.
SIDEBAR: Ashtanga yoga, another offshoot of Hatha, begat Power Yoga. This is the yoga that Madonna made popular in the 90s. What is interesting to me is that Ashtanga was developed by K. Pattabhi Jois, after studying with Sri T. Krishnamacharya, with Iyengar — both sects of the bastardized version of traditional yoga, helped yoga return a little more to its roots, because anglicizing it was harmful to its practitioners.
ANYWAY.
In the mid-1950’s, Iyengar wanted to spread yoga far and wide. It was a practice he loved and cherished and he wanted to share it with the world. He brought it to America, but white people weren’t interested. By the ’70s they were, however. And in the mid-’70s he opened his first institute, named after his late wife, Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Institute, in India — he then opened more in Western countries, and the western countries welcomed him with open arms — because, well, hippies. In the 1980s, Iyengar noticed that his older students had stopped coming to class, as the practice was too hard on their bodies. It was then that he amended his practice into what we understand to be Iyengar yoga now.
Around the same time Iyengar was being embraced for sharing his practice, Bikram Choudhury brought his version of Ashtanga yoga to the western world, intent on monetizing it. He named the practice after himself, after competing in yoga competitions. Note: You should be reading this in a sarcastic tone, because to me, Bikram yoga is about as far from the yoga practice as can be, and yoga competitions go completely against what yoga is about. But Choudhury is governed by his anti-yoga mind: egotistical and greedy, he tried to patent and/or trademark a variety of yoga poses, to further monopolize the practice, but thankfully failed. During this time, it was also proven that his version of yoga was actually harmful and dangerous. That’s right, folks — Hot Yoga is bad for you, SURPRISE! And it speaks to the kind of person he is. It’s possible that it’s better that he, an Indian, try to monetize yoga, than a white person. Sure. But notice that other Indians weren’t trying to. Choudhury was a special brand of trash human: it came out last year that he’d sexually assaulted numerous women. My mother, with zero information about any of any of this, ranted about him being garbage since my childhood. And she was beyond right. She’s basically a witch.
ANYWAY.
In 2002, the New York Times interviewed Iyengar. During the interview, he wasn’t happy with what was happening with yoga, what the west was doing with what he’d shared with them, displeased with a yoga “studio” opening near his institute, upset by the multi-million dollar industry benefitting westerners, he said, ‘’The commercialism may wash off sometime later.’’
It hasn’t.
As mentioned, it’s a now a multi-billion dollar industry in the western world — and none of that money is making its way to India. And the thing about colonization? Things like yoga and chai that have been anglicized can be sold back to the same people they were stolen from. Westernized yoga “studios” are cropping up all over India and it’s expensive, and many of these studios aren’t Indian owned and operated. And now a practice that has always been about being accessible to everyone is now no longer completely accessible to its people — even the white-ified and then white-ified again version. And that’s troublesome to think about when you take into account just how many people in India are living BELOW the poverty line — that westerners are profiting off of the Indians who can afford this White Girl Yoga.
Yoga came into the western world in MANY ways. I preferred to track Iyengar’s story and also to make my mother happy by pointing out how terrible Bikram was. There was another way in which yoga came to the States, specifically, and where it became sexualized. There is a wonderful article on the matter by self-proclaimed White Girl, Bella Brache.
A major part of the sexualization of the practice is the attire. Bring up yoga pants, it evokes a high, pert ass. Hell bring up whatever your version of practice is, and some men might ask you just how bendy you are, with a gleam in their eyes. If you’re sporting the gear, they can imagine you downward facing doggy style. Which is fine, if that’s what you’re into — but… yoga is not a sexual practice. No matter how many efforts there are to sexualize it. I’m looking at you, Janelle Monáe.
Speaking of yoga pants, however, one can’t mention those without mentioning India. Sorry, no, just wishful thinking. What I meant to say is that you can’t mention yoga pants without mentioning Lululemon. And if you’re like me, when you think Lululemon, you think murder…
ANYWAY.
Thing is, what people think of as yoga attire and yoga gear, this westernized Lululemon shit, is actually bad for people and our earth. Tight materials restrict breathing/breath work, and the synthetic materials are bad for the environment (both of these things go against the tenets of yoga) and restricts airflow to your body — FYI, this is what yoga attire looks like, and it’s that way for a reason. Westernized blocks and mats are made of plastics which are harmful to you and the environment. But you can buy this shit and contribute to the continued colonization of Indian people! Yay.
Okay, so I might not be able to single-handedly topple this multi-billion dollar industry. But I’m definitely going to start speaking up about my displeasure of it, and thankfully, now with a little more knowledge. Part of my research found me looking for Indian-made attire and gear — because that seems to me, if people aren’t willing to learn more about yoga and its origins, and try to seek out practices more in line with Iyengar’s practice, to be the best way to beat the colonizers. So, here is my short list:
There are Indian companies like Proyog, that are trying to save Yoga from plastic attire: “This is the beginning of our campaign called ‘Save Yoga from Plastic’ to create awareness about the ill-effects of PET fibres used in yoga clothing in three directions:
- Antithetical to the principles of traditional practice of yoga
- Adverse effects on our health and well-being
- Impact on our environment”
Satva Living is a yoga clothing company that is geared toward promoting Indian farmers. From their site:
- “Dedicated to improving the livelihood and economic prosperity of smalland marginal organic farmers in India, SATVA® and Suminter’s “Creative Capitalism” approach ensures that a portion of all proceeds are invested back into its local communities & agricultural programs.
- “With a literacy rate of only 65%, improving women’s educational opportunities is a key initiative, sponsored by Suminter and Satva across each of the rural communities in Kerala and Gujarat, India — offering them the opportunity for greater empowerment and professional opportunity. Together, Suminter and Satva launched Disha, an initiative that sponsors the education of young girls in villages where organic cotton is cultivated for Satva garments.”
- “An integral part of rural Indian households, livestock is not only vital to farming, but often serves as a secondary income. Suminter and Satva help to sponsor livestock immunization and medical assistant livestock programs across 20 rural Indian villages making a lasting impact on the livelihood of the farming communities.”
Sudara is a clothing company that was started very similarly to that chick who drank chai in India, came back to the States, recreated it, called it tea tea, and built a fortune selling it to other white people. Well, the story is similar in that an American went to India. That’s it. In Sudara’s origins, Shannon Keith went to India, and began hearing stories of the huge sex trafficking trade there, and well:
- “Sudara, an initiative that works through providing sustainable jobs for women to make their way out and to stay out of sex trafficking and slavery, was founded by Shannon Keith. In 2005, Sudara founder Shannon Keith took a trip to India that opened her eyes to a tragedy occurring daily to women and girls throughout the country. She could hardly believe what she witnessed in India’s Red Light Districts — modern day slavery. Shannon listened to story after story of young girls being sold into the sex trade by their families, orphans picked up off the street by pimps, and even young mothers just trying to get enough money to feed their children. Many were held against their will. Others were trapped by economic poverty. Worst of all were the stories of those who managed to escape the brothels only to return due to social stigma and having no other means to survive. Shannon returned home and gathered friends to help do something about it. The team knew that without safe, steady employment, these women stood little chance of surviving outside of the brothels. They identified a group of like-minded partners in India who were compelled to work together with any women looking for a way out of the Red Light Districts. Together, the team created a simple pattern that could be used to teach anyone wanting to learn how to sew. In 2006, Sudara hired the first 6 employees in their first-ever sewing center partnership and began teaching each woman the skills needed to become seamstresses and our first pair of PUNJAMMIES™ loungewear was produced. Stitch by stitch, the women gained confidence not only in their newfound trade, but also in their newfound hope and freedom. Since that time, our relationships have grown into multiple sewing center partnerships and hundreds of women gaining a new community and safe place to work and heal.”
You can find natural yoga mats that are made in India:
The good news is: This part of the research wasn’t that hard to do, actually, so anyone actually looking to change their version of White Girl Yoga away from re-colonization… can. This research was also the most important to me, because these were the answers I didn’t have before when asked how people can change. It seems that the very least people can do is to eschew the Lululemons in favor for Indian-made and shift the money and/or benefits from the colonizers to the inventors.
And if you’ve made it to here, you now have all of the information I have. And the next time you see some White Girl prancing down the street with a tea tea in one hand and a plastic yoga mat in the other, you can show your wokeness by being all:
Sari, not sari.
