YOGA AND THE FEMINIZATION OF FEMINISM: Downdog Me Like a Lady!

I’m a girl and I’ve never liked pink or lavender. Nor have I have bought anything on the merits of its “oh-for-cute!” factor. I call myself “girl” more often than I call myself “woman” although I have a Bachelor’s degree from Texas Woman’s University. My earned income is one-third of my husband’s although he has only an Associate’s degree level education. While I think this is criminally unfair, I do not resent him for it. I waited for my twentieth birthday before getting married so that I would not be a teenage bride like my mother was and ten years later we are still choosing not to have children. I believe Motherhood is sacred, but I also believe that I can be a revered woman even if I choose not to exploit my uterus.

I am female because of chance; I am feminist because I think.

When I think about yoga and the wellness industry it has inspired and I wonder, “What’s up with all the pink and pastel?” It’s no stretch to say that yoga, at least in America, is a woman’s world. We grace the cover and nearly every yoga magazine with beauty and poise. We own the studios, teach the classes and speak at the conferences with sold-out, record-breaking attendance. Classes and conferences which are largely attended by, you guessed it, more women. I’m down with that. Some would say that women are long over due for a billion dollar industry to dominate. I just wonder; does female-dominated also mean that it has to be fuzzy, lovely and sweet?

My husband and I took our first yoga class together. The studio was owned by a brother-sister duo and the instructor was a husky voiced woman with bombshell curves and a Boat Pose that was (and is still) impossible to imitate. I fell in love with yoga that first night, but my husband felt like an onion in a strawberry patch. I continued to practice and even worked at the studio, priming sheetrock, building dressing rooms and ceiling canopies, to pay for my teacher training tuition, but my husband rarely came back. He would wait for me in the lobby when I attended the only male instructor’s class which was packed to the walls with sweating, blushing ladies of all confidence levels.

When I became a yoga teacher my husband rejoiced that I could now help him do yoga at home, and his friends waited with bated breath at each one of our BBQ’s, hoping that The Yoga Chicks would show up to denounce their vegetarianism with one slow bite of a mustard covered hotdog. Well, actually, they probably would have been just as happy to watch them eat a tofudog...but I digress. I tried, fervently, to get any one of the dudes who seemed to be every present in my life into a yoga class using various male-oriented motivations. The classes are full of women. At least one of them is bound to talk to you if you just show up and try a little. You’ll be able to marathon video game like never before when you can master the lotus position. Nothing worked. Sheepishly, and away from their comrades, they’d ask about yoga-for-this-pain and yoga-for-that-injury. They believed in the system, they wanted to go, but they dared not venture where so few men had gone before.

So, women love yoga and men think yoga is for women… and? Is that really so bad? If guys know what’s good for them they can just show up, right – what’s stopping them? Certainly not the women, we want our husbands, boyfriends and crushes to do yoga with us. I mean, really, Sting the yoga master? Fifty-six years old and totally sexy.

Alright ladies, think about this: The mechanic’s shop. Before I finished typing the m-e-c-h I could smell it; the imitable odor of greasy car fluids, tires, sweaty backs and fast-food taco farts. Even those of us who proudly flex our tough-girl voice will put off going in there alone. It’s man-tastic bowl of testosteroni and not in the annual fire fighter charity calendar kind of way. We need to be there, we know we have every right to be there, the guys probably want us to be there and still, we can’t wait to leave. It is distinctly marked man turf.

Yoga studios and mechanic shops: one cares for your body and mind and the other cares for your car’s body and engine. I would assert that both are needed for most humans in our twenty-first century world, yet an invisible segregation still lingers. Have we not progressed beyond drawing juvenile lines in the sand: One side for serene girl stuff and one side for stinky boy stuff?

Now, I am very aware that there are many manly men who practice yoga and talk about it publicly. Joe Rogan, former MMA fighter and host of Fear Factor is a prime example. True, not all yoga studios and yoga websites have pink or even pastel design themes, nor do all mechanic shops reek of oil and b.o., but we’re talking in generalities. And in general, the overall impression of the yoga industry is one that feels like a sisters club with “Girls Rule” sign written in bubble letters and sparkle paint posted to the front door with heart-shaped thumb tacks.

What I’d like to see is a female-dominated, billion-dollar industry that was just that; a whopping success. Just because women are running the show, it doesn’t mean that the presentation has to be girly, does it? As teachers and business owners, let’s ask ourselves who it is that we are marketing to. If yoga can deliver hope to those in need like no other thing can, are we trying to reach all people with that message – or just those who are like us…