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Norm Violation Yoga Pants
Yoga is an ancient tradition of health practices designed to invigorate the physical
body, clear the mind and calm the nervous system. Almost everyone feels better after a
single yoga class, and the health benefits become apparent after just a few weeks of
regular practice, if not sooner. Today, yoga images fill social media and magazines. The
images are not applauding the health benefits, as one might expect, but rather, extolling
long, lean bodies in advanced poses sporting fashionable, glamorous, specially designed
yoga clothes. The images are most often advertisements for the latest, greatest, sexiest
yoga pants. When I go to a yoga class I am in awe of how our culture has turned this
simple and accessible practice into something impressive, expensive and exclusive. A
pair of decent yoga pants—that aren’t see-through and itchy—range anywhere from $80
to $200, and a single class ranges from $16 to $20 depending on the neighborhood. Far
from its traditional roots and values, American capitalist culture is transforming this
practice into a symbol of privilege and affluence, a trend driven primarily by the yoga
pants industry and the media images they flaunt.
Yoga, which started out in America as a small and humble sub-culture
is readily gaining momentum and beginning to take on the attributes of the mainstream
culture. Although there is no traditional yoga outfit, except that it should be comfortable,
marketing propaganda has a different story to tell: you can’t do yoga correctly unless you
are wearing yoga pants. According to Newsweek1, the yoga pants industry has reached
$10 billion and is growing steadily. As with any burgeoning industry, media images are
ubiquitous, and these images are powerful: propounding new norms and expectations, 1 http://www.newsweek.com/plus-‐sized-‐women-‐want-‐yoga-‐chic-‐too-‐207437
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setting new status quos, creating new symbols and standards of beauty. It is not the intent
of this paper to examine all of the ways media influences people and society, but rather,
to examine what I will call the yoga pants norm by breaching the norm and then
analyzing the response elicited.
A norm is a “rule of behavior shared by members of a society and rooted in the
value system”(Ballantine 89). Norms can be classified as folkways, mores, or laws,
depending on how severe the consequences of a breach are. My experiment focuses on
“the yoga pants norm,” that is, that yoga must be practiced in yoga pants. This norm is an
example of a folkway, because it is a custom and a desirable behavior, but is not strictly
enforced. I broke this norm by wearing jeans to a yoga class in order to test how
entrenched this norm has become based on the response I evoked.
If I wore street clothes to a yoga class, instead of my fancy yoga pants, what
would people think? Would they dare say anything? Would someone offer me an extra
pair of stretchy apparel? Would the teacher recommend I wait until another day when I
have the right attire? Or would people simply disregard me and allow me my peace to
wear whatever I want? I suspected that the studio may offer to sell me a pair of pants, or
that the teacher may offer me an extra pair if she had one.
It was a Sunday afternoon, a 4:30 vinyasa class, level 1-3. I opted for Namaste
Yoga in Rockridge, on College Avenue. Namaste Yoga is one of Oakland’s premiere
studios: they hire highly qualified teachers and charge $20.00 per class. There is one
location on Lakeshore Avenue, and another in Rockridge, on College Avenue. Both
studios are in upscale neighborhoods, surrounded by expensive boutiques and restaurants.
A cocktail next door, for example, ranges from $14 to $22. The surrounding
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neighborhoods are predominantly white middle and upper class. As you walk into
Namaste you pass through a boutique full of sleek, sexy, expensive yoga clothes. Flowy
shirts ($89), tight tanks ($64), strappy bras ($48) and sassy pants ($108). Every time I go
to my mat and look around the room, these are the clothes people are wearing:
comfortable, tight, sexy, and very expensive.
On this Sunday afternoon I rolled out my mat in the front row of an already full
class and noticed there were 4 men amidst a sea of women. Everybody was white aside
from two Asians. The dudes were shirtless in sweats and shorts, while the women were
all well put together in enviable, chic, tight pants. Almost everybody looked thin, healthy
and fit. I sat down in my jeans feeling very self-conscious, completely stupid and out of
place. I noticed immediately that I couldn’t fold my legs all the way, so I lay back and
felt my belt dig into my low back; it was going to be a long class. I felt sure that everyone
was wondering what on earth I had in mind. I was so obviously not abiding by the yoga
pants norm. I looked around to see if everybody was staring at me but I didn’t meet a
single pair of eyes.
As an aside, it is interesting to note this feeling of so called “self-consciousness”
in light of sociological studies. Wearing jeans to yoga is in itself a completely safe and
harmless thing to do, yet every bit of me wanted to “up and leave.” I felt like all eyes
were on me; I felt I was being negatively judged and labeled. Why was I so concerned
what others were thinking? From where did so much “self-consciousness” arise?
According to Charles H. Cooley (1909-1983), a symbolic interaction theorist, this self-
consciousness is the product of what he coined the “looking-glass self.” The looking-
glass self develops based on our interpretations and our internalization of the reactions of
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others. We experience feelings such as pride or shame based on this imagined judgment
(Ballantine 115). According to Cooley, our sense of self is completely dependent on the
reactions of others. While I agree with the underpinnings of Cooley’s theory, he fails to
address the fact that my ability to imagine being judged for wearing jeans can only arise
if I have judged somebody else. If I truly didn’t care or notice what other people wear to
a yoga class, then I would have no problem wearing jeans myself. Only because I have
silently judged other people am I able to imagine the judgments being plastered upon me.
Minutes after I unrolled my mat the teacher came over to comment on my outfit.
“You’re going to do this in Jeans!” she exclaimed. I felt my face warm as I realized I
didn’t know what to say, but she put a positive spin on it, saying she used to practice in
jeans in order to have a better understanding of what it’s like for people with tight
muscles and limited range of motion. A few minutes later she circled back to me and said
she was thinking of changing the lesson she had planned, considering my attire. She
looked at me worriedly. My jeans had clearly unsettled her. I laughed with
embarrassment, “why?” I asked, “were you planning the splits?” Indeed she was. At that
point I felt even more self-conscious and disruptive, knowing that everyone was listening
to our conversation. Simultaneously, however, I was satisfied and smiling to myself that
having street clothes in a yoga studio was causing a disturbance. Halfway through class
she demonstrated a pose that involved high range of motion in the hips and hamstrings,
and then motioned for us to try, “just see how it goes” she said chirpily, and then bent
down beside my ear: “see how it goes” she said quietly in a more ironic but humorous
tone. It didn’t go well. My usually flexible hamstrings were completely constricted to no
more than half of their potential. The teacher came over to me a fourth time closer to the
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end of class and commented on the fact that I still had my belt on. When class was finally
over and I was heading out the door she asked me how it went and we had a very brief
chat. At that point I felt somewhat triumphant for having completed my experiment, but I
remained anxious to exit as soon as possible.
In sum, the teacher commented on my jeans four times. That is more than I
expected. Admittedly, wearing jeans was a bit extreme, anybody can see that wearing
jeans to a yoga class is a bad idea, but I wanted to be sure everyone noticed that I was not
wearing yoga pants. The fact that the teacher approached me four times confirms my
conviction that not wearing yoga pants to a yoga class was a breach of the norm. The
yoga pants norm certainly arose for the purpose of functionality: stretchy pants allow free
movement. Athletic shorts achieve the same purpose, however, and are much more
economical, yet I almost never see anyone wearing them.
Upon deeper examination of this “yoga pants norm” we see that what used to be a
norm based on functionality (ease of movement) has become a norm based on
consumption and materialism. As stated earlier, norms reflect the values of a culture, and
with yoga pants now on the market that cost up to $500,2 the values of our culture are all
too evident. As yoga has become more mainstream the yoga pants norm is no longer
about functionality, but about status and wealth and consumerism: the epitome of
American culture.
Just to be clear, I am not in opposition to yoga pants, I have a stack of them in my
closet, and I am definitely a proponent of the trend toward comfort and leisure. But when
it comes to the actual yoga practice, let’s be honest: there is nothing magical about
2 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-‐05-‐13/-‐400-‐yoga-‐pants-‐are-‐ just-‐the-‐beginning
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expensive yoga pants. They will not make you float up effortlessly into a handstand, nor
ease you into pigeon; the purpose of yoga pants is no longer yoga, they have become
symbols of status—depending on the label—and another means of identity construction.
Symbolic interaction theory will help to elucidate this point.
The cornerstone of the symbolic interaction theory is that humans live in an
essentially meaningless world and therefore must create meaning through the use of
shared symbols. The human world is human-created, that is, we are active agents
continually creating and shaping our world in new ways through the use of symbols. This
theory asserts, therefore, that the human mind functions on symbols—when you hear the
word “tree” your mind procures a tree without actually needing to see a tree. Even though
no two trees are the same, in our mind a tree is a tree and we can in this way create a
more uniform and stable world through the use of symbols. Likewise, our sense of “self”
is in constant flux and craves a sense of identity and therefore symbols with which to
identify. By “self” I mean “the perception we have of who we are” (115), which,
according to George Herbert Mead (1934-1962) is composed of two distinct parts: the “I”
and the “me.” These two dynamic components are in constant interplay and often at odds
with one another. The “I is “spontaneous, unpredictable, impulsive” (Ballantine 118) and
also largely unconscious. The “me” is the part of the self that has learned the rules of
society through interaction and role taking, and it attempts to maintain control over the I
and its desires. Because of this lack of cohesiveness between the two parts of the self, our
self is constantly at odds and in flux and looking for stability. Erving Goffman (1922-
1982) took this theory further to say that there is essentially no self at all, but merely
constant role-playing. “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely
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players”3. This is no doubt unsettling, but helps to explain the buying frenzy that has
become the “yoga pants norm.” If a human can mark themselves as a yogi, or an affluent
person, stylish person, sexy person, flashy person (the list goes on and on) by simply
buying a certain kind of yoga pants, then no wonder yoga pants are flying off the shelves.
As humans we crave stability in a constantly changing world and as a result we reach for
the symbols that make us into a somebody and give us a sense of self from which to
create our world.
By wearing jeans to a Sunday afternoon yoga class I was upending the self-
identity I have created as an aware, knowledgeable and well-practiced yogi. Moreover
my breach of the yoga pants norm alarmed the teacher and caused her to worry about her
lesson-plan. Although nobody offered to sell me a pair of pants as I expected, there was
an outpouring of sympathy from the teacher, which confirmed that yoga pants have
become the norm. Not necessarily expensive, chic yoga pants, I failed to confirm that
those have become the norm, but certainly I managed to demonstrate the culturally
constructed truth that if your clothes aren’t stretchy you shouldn’t do yoga.
Works Cited
Ballantine and Keith A. Roberts. Our Social World. Los Angeles: SAGE, 2014
3 Taken from Shalespeare’s play As You Like it. this quote inspired Goffman’s theories.