Perilous Times, False Religions, False gods
The Pagan Religion of Yoga's naked commercialism
The nude trend is stirring debate about how far the pagan religion of
yoga, now a multibillion-dollar industry, has traveled from its
mystical pagan roots
o Stewart J Lawrence
o
guardian.co.uk, Monday 18 October 2010 18.00 BST
Kathryn Budig yoga guru Yoga guru Kathryn Budig in the controversial
ToeSox ad. Photograph: Jasper Johal
American yoga practitioners are abuzz with a new controversy rocking
their once boutique but now rapidly commercialising industry: magazine
advertising and public yoga classes featuring unabashed nudity. The
controversy pits seasoned yoga teachers and other spiritual purists,
who abhor the growing trend, against a new generation of aggressive
yoga "entrepreneurs", anxious to promote the ancient Hindu practice as
America's premier "wellness" lifestyle – even if it means exploiting,
as critics maintain, the female "beauty myth" and embracing a
"sex-sells" marketing strategy.
So far, the two sides have largely confined their debate to articles
and blog postings in popular online yoga magazines, including the
industry's trade publication, Yoga Journal, where nude and semi-nude
ads featuring a prominent Los Angeles yoga teacher, Kathryn Budig,
first started appearing last summer. Budig posed provocatively in ads
for the clothing manufacturer ToeSox, which prompted one of the
magazine's original co-founders, Judith Hanson Lasater, to protest
publicly, first in a letter to the editor, and more recently, in
interviews.
For yoga purists, it's bad enough that yoga is no longer the quiet,
esoteric practice of yore. Thanks to heavy marketing, and word-of-mouth
advertising, it's now a bustling business worth $6bn a year and
featuring a gallery of self-promoting yoga "celebrities" like Budig,
and an endless array of high-priced yoga accessories, including sticky
mats, CD-roms, home videos and pricey yoga retreats and vacations in
exotic Third World getaways.
Until now, many have tolerated, and even celebrated, yoga's
commercialisation as a way of promoting its popularity, even if it
means "dumbing down" the practice or heavily tailoring it to the
traditional fitness market to further expand its appeal. According to
Yoga Journal, some 18 million Americans – about 1 in 10 adults – were
practising some form of yoga in 2006, though the numbers seem to have
fallen off in recent years, even as the revenues generated by the
industry continue to grow.
But something seems to have cracked inside the souls of long-time yoga
enthusiasts when Budig agreed to be photographed wearing only her
ToeSox. In one of the photographs in the series of ads, she's in a
difficult Ashtanga yoga pose, known as "firefly", and her expresson is
serious, but the effect is oddly disconcerting. Is it "art", as some of
its ardent proponents, including Budig and ToeSox executives maintain,
or is it merely the latest twist in a long history of sexual and
commercial exploitation?
The debate over nude advertising and health & fitness is hardly a
new one. Four decades ago, Sports Illustrated caused an enormous stir
when its cover featured a topless woman jogging on the beach. Critics,
including me – yes, at the tender age of 10, I wrote a letter to the
editor that was published – suggested, naively perhaps, that topless
women simply don't belong on the cover of a serious sports magazine.
Others saw it as a celebration of the human body, and of the joyful
exuberance that one experiences through jogging and other forms of
exercise.
Clearly, our mores have changed – or have they? In 1999, women's soccer
player Brandi Chastain caused an enormous controversy when she
spontaneously stripped off her jersey after kicking the goal that
ensured her team's victory. And Chastain didn't expose her body – just
her sports bra.
Male soccer players often doff their shirts, but, of course, men
exposing their chests in public is commonplace. Amazingly, people to
this day debate whether Chastain crossed an imaginary line of female
"propriety".
But is yoga somehow different? Perhaps. For one thing, it's not meant
to be a sports activity, and the persons exposing themselves, while
celebrities of sorts, claim to be spiritual models, and some, like
Budig, have direct contact with us, their students. According to
Lasater:
"[A]ll this sexualisation of yoga through props and advertising
[affects] the environment of yoga classes in ways that do not honour
the boundary between teacher and student. I want to help create a safe
space for yoga to be taught. In the US, we pay people the most money
who can distract us the best: actors, personalities and sports figures.
Entertainment is all about distraction. The use of naked bodies to sell
yoga products is about using distraction to sell introspection."
Others are equally worried that selling yoga with fit, trim bodies –
almost all of them young and white – imposes the same harsh
psychological burden on women that traditional fashion and beauty
advertising does. Even more, perhaps, because women with serious
psychological or physical health issues – such as obesity, as well as
anorexia and bulimia – are drawn to yoga to affirm themselves,
regardless of their "looks" or how they might feel about their bodies.
Budig, however, disagrees, and so do many yogis, especially –
surprisingly, perhaps – many women. They see her as a courageous role
model for self-expression, who is simply saying, I love my body, and
what I can do it with it, and you should, too. But it is also clear
that Budig is using the controversy to promote her own yoga business,
and to enhance her own celebrity. Equally, ToeSox appears to be
exploiting her yoga connection – and body – to appeal to a key consumer
niche for its product.
The appearance of Budig's ads – and others similarly controversial,
including one titled "Say No to Cameltoe", parallels the sudden
emergence and rapid proliferation of "Naked Yoga", yoga classes
conducted entirely in the nude. Its founder, Aaron Star, says many
people, especially in cities like New York and Los Angeles, don't have
ways to express closeness and intimacy without having sex, and that his
practice affords that. But Star's also heavily promoting Naked Yoga
videos that feature full nudity and bear a strong resemblance to
soft-core pornography. He's even provocatively entitled one of his new
videos apparently designed for the yoga beginner, "Hot Nude Yoga
Virgin".
But if so, why stop at nudity? It's conceivable that someone might try
to create a business that exploits yoga's Tantric roots even further,
promote studios where students can engage in erotic exchanges with
their teachers? Actually, that already happens, but so far, no one's
figured out how to make a buck off of it, without actually breaking the
law on solicitation.
Does all this fuss over yoga and sex reflect the enduring strength of
American puritanism and prudishness? Are critics merely jealous
killjoys? Supporters of Budig and the new nudity trend in yoga
certainly think so. But it's also true that yoga is one of the few
industries of its size that exists with virtually no regulation –
either from public authorities, or from within. Last summer, about the
same time the nude trend emerged, New York and Virginia tried to impose
state guidelines on yoga "teacher training" programmes – the programmes
that are used to teach advanced students to become teachers themselves.
But heavy lobbying by yoga associations in both states beat back those
efforts, claiming yoga was a "spiritual" enterprise, much like a
church, and should be "exempt" from all government interference.
A spiritual enterprise with revenues of $6bn a year? That's some pos