#151 - White Supremacy of Yoga with Sabrina Strings PhD, Author of Fearing the Black Body

Join me in conversation with Dr. Sabrina Strings, author of
Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia. She
also is a certified yoga teacher and advocate for inclusivity in
yoga. We discuss our experiences  with yoga and hope for
systemic change.


She shares a personal story on racism and body part
fetishizing (Michelle Obama arms) she encountered in yoga classes
when she was really seeking refuge for grad school stress.
Strings was made to feel like she didn’t belong. 

She explains why yoga is much more than the commercialized
Asana and why her recent yoga experience made her stop going to
studios at all, including fat phobia and ableism.

She shares her research on the lightening of the yoga journal
covers to become more White, contorted, and back branded women’s
bodies.



Dr. Strings’ Research Mentioned
Strings, Sabrina & Headen, Irene & Spencer, Breauna.
(2019). Yoga as a technology of femininity: Disciplining white
women, disappearing people of color in Yoga Journal. Fat Studies.
8. 1-15. 10.1080/21604851.2019.1583527.


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.


Follow Dr. Strings research


About Dr. Strings
Sabrina Strings is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the
University of California, Irvine. She was a recipient of the UC
Berkeley Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship with a joint
appointment in the School of Public Health and Department of
Sociology.


She has been featured in The Feminist Wire, Yoga International,
and LA Yoga. Her writings can be found in Scientific American,
New York Times, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society,
Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and
Society and Feminist Media Studies. Sabrina was the recipient of
the 2017 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Article Award
for the Race, Gender and Class section of the American
Sociological Association. Fearing the Black Body is her first
book which is available everywhere and also on audiobook.


Book | Twitter


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