Yoga as a technology of femininity: Disciplining white women, disappearing people of color in Yoga Journal

ABSTRACT

Yoga has seen an explosion of popularity in the United States. Though the practice can be traced to the Indus Valley civilization, its mass media representation is dominated by young, thin, white women. Little is known about how the practice came to be portrayed in this manner. However, scholars suggest that when media outlets target (white) women, they often encourage them to adopt “technologies of femininity” that may include instructions on how to tame, diminish, or banish fat. In this article, we examined if and how yoga has been presented in this fashion in the mainstream media. We performed a mixed-method analysis of cover images and articles featured in Yoga Journal from 1975 to 2015. Findings revealed that since 1998, men and people of color have seen a steep decline in representation on the covers. Full-body shots of white women have increased precipitously. We also found that the articles promote yoga as a part of a beauty regime. This regime relies on a dubious mix of self-love and fat aversion for white women, while people of color are almost entirely excluded from consideration. We conclude that, since 1998, coinciding with the latest yoga boom, Yoga Journal has encouraged white women to adopt yoga as a technology of femininity that tames fat. It has concomitantly disappeared people of color.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. “Yoga” is a practice that includes meditation, physical postures (“asanas”) and breathwork (“pranayama”), as well as ethical and moral codes (Freeman et al. 2017).

2. Biopower is “disciplinary power,” wherein individuals are taught by experts to act in ways that will enable them to meet the goals of maximizing their health, utility, and productivity (Foucault, Rabinow, and Rose 2003). Per Foucault, when these teachings are internalized, they serve as self-disciplining strategies, known as the “technologies of the self” (Foucault 1988).

3. Markula (2014) does mention the whiteness of cover models. However, the analysis does not center questions of race or whiteness.

4. We make no claim that the commercial yoga industry is the ultimate source of white women’s entry into the practice. Such a claim would deny the historical forces that had long brought white women into the fold (Gregoire 2013). Instead, we contend that the recent cohort of white women entering the practice coincided with the rebranding of yoga as a beauty regime.

5. “Active Interest Media Announces Major Cross-Platform Relaunch of the Yoga Journal Brand | MPA”. See: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/active-interest-media-announces-major-cross-platform-relaunch-of-the-yoga-journal-brand-274449881.html.

6. The term beauty is often in conjunction with yoga, as in cultivating an inner beauty (Leboyer 1999), an appreciation for the beauty of life and nature (Skolimowski 1994), and yoga for physical health and attractiveness (Alter 2005).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sabrina Strings

Sabrina Strings, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine.

Irene Headen

Irene Headen, PhD, MS is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Drexel Urban Health Collaborative at the Dornsife School of Public Health.

Breauna Spencer

Breauna Spencer is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine.