Fitness Carter

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

"The Fat Yoga Teacher" - Jezebel

"The Fat Yoga Teacher"


This article on YogaDork[1] is pretty interesting. It's about a yoga teacher who gains 40 pounds on purpose as an experiment. Actually, she calls it an art project, blergh. You can read all about it on her blog[2] ...but it goes like this. She goes on a diet of "See it… eat it," she gains weight and feels bad about herself, fearing that she will "die alone, probably from choking on a potato chip." She learns some life lessons and gets thin again, etc.


YogaDork describes why this is problematic:



Gaining weight to feel what ‘fat’ feels by eating tons of “bad” food, then stopping it all by going back to eating “healthy” is not a luxury we can all afford. Hall is, of course, free to do what she wants with her own body and feel whatever she feels, but I wonder if her public story of personal disempowerment due to weight and body image issues is a great triumph in unmasking what many others feel inside their skin, or demoralizing and insulting to those with larger bodies who are trying to lose weight or who otherwise feel completely comfortable and confident exactly where they are.



Anyway, I think it is a pretty interesting discussion and was wondering what you Jezzies think? While I think her experience was valid, she seems pretty blind to her privilege. And it seems like she's getting all of this attention because she was and is thin and pretty, while other yoga teachers who advocate body acceptance in yoga don't because they're not.



References



  1. ^ YogaDork (yogadork.com)

  2. ^ blog (treenuhyoga.com)



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