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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.