Some of you may have heard last week that the founder of Lululemon was getting some heat for saying that the reason some of their pants pill between the thighs isn’t a problem with the pants but rather that “quite frankly some women’s bodies just actually don’t work for it.”

This is, obviously, absurd and offensive. If someone can fit into your clothes (because we don’t even have time to revisit the revelation from this summer about how shunning plus-size shoppers – including size 12 — is part of their business plan), they should hold up to use. Pretty basic.

But I wasn’t going to get into it. As someone who can’t even fit into Lululemon’s clothes, I blissfully ignore most all of the things that happen over there.

This is probably the one time in my life I’ve been grateful to be excluded from something because of my size. I don’t even have to ask myself if I’d shop there. (But for the record, if I could, the answer would definitely still be NO – for many reasons.)

But what made me decide to write about this doesn’t have much to do with a particular company. Rather, what’s really been gnawing at me is the idea that blaming bodies, particularly women’s bodies, is an option — for anything.

Not New

First of all, blaming women’s bodies for any problem, particularly a pants manufacturing problem, is hardly new. It’s called sexism and sizeism, and it’s everywhere.

Women’s bodies have been blamed for inciting rape, car accidents, intimate partner violence, marriage, and all things everywhere, just to name a few – and as evidenced by the quick Google search I ran yesterday.

And while I don’t see sexism going away tomorrow, even in the yoga community where we sometimes like to pretend it doesn’t exist, I do think it’s something we have to interrogate — particularly as yoga practitioners whose bodies are often the vehicle to our practice.

Paradox

So here we are as women in yoga, a stunning majority at 82.2% of US practitioners, but still somehow often on the margins (acknowledging that I’m lumping “women” together without distinguishing gender identity and expression). While yoga isn’t a practice that is just about the body, the body is often the doorway in, and it’s what many people who don’t practice (and perhaps even some who do) believe to be the entirety.

As women, we largely practice poses that were designed by men for men (I mean, Plow Pose alone is enough to convince me of this…hello, death-by-boob-smush!) and when you trace most of the main lineages up, the top is almost always a man, even if local teachers and teacher trainers are women.*

To me, this all feels like the elephant in the yoga room (who hopefully isn’t wearing Lululemon). I believe that yoga can be a tool of liberation — to free ourselves from societal norms and to embrace our bodies as they are. But I also believe that yoga can be a practice of the opposite and re-inscribing societal norms if we don’t bring awareness to the fact that yoga is still part of our society and is just as affected by oppression and inequality as any other institution.

Yoga doesn’t go hand-in-hand with social justice and body acceptance unless we consciously cultivate it.

Repeat After Me

And that starts with claiming or reclaiming the fact that no one’s body is a problem — not for yoga pants, not for yoga poses, not for anything. Will some people’s bodies need to move in different ways than what may have been traditionally taught for yoga poses?

Of course.

But rather than making that about the person’s body needing to change or being a problem, I believe we should get rid of the idea that there is one right way to do a pose and everything else is modification.

If a woman can’t get into a pose because her boobs suffocate her, the problem isn’t her body. The problem is the pose.

If people of varying gender identities and expressions can’t find a place to comfortably and safely change clothes in a yoga studio, the problem isn’t their bodies. The problem is the space.

If a bigger-bodied person can’t fold forward comfortably in a forward bend, the problem isn’t their body. The problem is the pose.

If a man can’t come into Gomukasana, the problem isn’t that he has a male body and is therefore inevitably tight. The problem is the pose isn’t being offered in a way that works for him.

If people of varying abilities can’t “keep up” in a yoga class, the problem isn’t their bodies. The problem is the class description, the teaching or both.

If people of color can’t find a place to practice that isn’t a sea of white faces, the problem isn’t their bodies. The problem is a lack of intentional diversity and/or racism.

I am inevitably leaving out many, many examples here, but I hope the point is becoming clear.

Bodies aren’t problems.

And anyone who claims otherwise is enforcing a power structure that makes some people okay and other people not okay.

This isn’t to say the people making those claims are necessarily bad people; we’re all born into and products of our culture, and none of us navigates that with total grace all the time.

But yoga is a place where we can learn to do better — if we so choose. Where we can cultivate awareness of our own body and practice and make space for others to do the same.

Creating Change

The way things change is the way they always do: When individuals, then groups, then communities, begin to want and look for and demand something different.

So the good and the challenging news is this: it’s not about Lululemon or any one company, though others’ actions can inspire us to create change, and we can certainly hold them accountable.

At the end of the day, it’s about us.

It’s about educating ourselves and noticing when bodies are being made a problem in yoga and being willing to have the hard conversations when we feel able (because it’s not right that any one of us has to do it all the time).

And it’s also about the often even more difficult work of realizing that your own body is not a problem, despite whatever messages you may have received to the contrary, and acting from that knowledge – intentionally choosing where to spend your yoga resources.

For me, I’ll just add this: I’ve had my plus-sized thighs in the same pair of yoga pants that I bought a decade ago. For approximately $17 (about a sixth the price of a pair from that other store), they’ve never pilled or otherwise worn out after hundreds of uses…

*I’ve drastically oversimplified the complex history of yoga and women’s role in it here in the interest of time/space, but please do check out the following if you want to go deeper. I’m sure they’ll lead you to more.  

Stefanie Syman: The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America

Mark Singleton: Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice

Carol Horton: Yoga Ph.D.: Integrating the Life of the Mind and the Wisdom of the Body

Janice Gates: Yogini: The Power of Women in Yoga

 

Photo Credit: Vivienne McMaster

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