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Skinny white woman traumatized by heavy black woman in her yoga class

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K

Kraftwerk

Member
I thought I was reading the onion at first...Christ.


IT HAPPENED TO ME: THERE ARE NO BLACK PEOPLE IN MY YOGA CLASSES AND I'M SUDDENLY FEELING UNCOMFORTABLE WITH IT.


...

A few weeks ago, as I settled into an exceptionally crowded midday class, a young, fairly heavy black woman put her mat down directly behind mine. It appeared she had never set foot in a yoga studio—she was glancing around anxiously, adjusting her clothes, looking wide-eyed and nervous. Within the first few minutes of gentle warm-up stretches, I saw the fear in her eyes snowball, turning into panic and then despair. Before we made it into our first downward dog, she had crouched down on her elbows and knees, head lowered close to the ground, trapped and vulnerable. She stayed there, staring, for the rest of the class.

Because I was directly in front of her, I had no choice but to look straight at her every time my head was upside down (roughly once a minute). I’ve seen people freeze or give up in yoga classes many times, and it’s a sad thing, but as a student there’s nothing you can do about it. At that moment, though, I found it impossible to stop thinking about this woman. Even when I wasn’t positioned to stare directly at her, I knew she was still staring directly at me. Over the course of the next hour, I watched as her despair turned into resentment and then contempt. I felt it all directed toward me and my body.

I was completely unable to focus on my practice, instead feeling hyper-aware of my high-waisted bike shorts, my tastefully tacky sports bra, my well-versedness in these poses that I have been in hundreds of times. My skinny white girl body. Surely this woman was noticing all of these things and judging me for them, stereotyping me, resenting me—or so I imagined.

...


I thought about how that must feel: to be a heavyset black woman entering for the first time a system that by all accounts seems unable to accommodate her body. What could I do to help her? If I were her, I thought, I would want as little attention to be drawn to my despair as possible—I would not want anyone to look at me or notice me. And so I tried to very deliberately avoid looking in her direction each time I was in downward dog, but I could feel her hostility just the same. Trying to ignore it only made it worse. I thought about what the instructor could or should have done to help her. Would a simple “Are you okay?” whisper have helped, or would it embarrass her? ...

I got home from that class and promptly broke down crying. Yoga, a beloved safe space that has helped me through many dark moments in over six years of practice, suddenly felt deeply suspect. Knowing fully well that one hour of perhaps self-importantly believing myself to be the deserving target of a racially charged anger is nothing, is largely my own psychological projection, is a drop in the bucket, is the tip of the iceberg in American race relations, I was shaken by it all the same.
Click to expand...

FULL ARTICLE
 
E

Ekdrm2d1

Member
03752333863706799757.jpg


90943199573800411780.jpg
 
G

.GqueB.

Banned
This reads horribly and she added a bit of drama for her blog posts but I can't exactly dismiss it. In that situation, in such an environment, someone sitting and staring at you is going to be unsettling even if they mean no harm. Your mind just kind of starts racing.

It definitely sounds like she exaggerated quite a bit of that but the shit going on in her head must've been insane.
 
R

ReturnOfTheRAT

Member
I read about this a couple of days ago on Gawker, or maybe it was yesterday. This kind of neurosis should only be wished on your worst enemy.
 
S

Sai-kun

Banned
Pretty gross. Her practice can't be that great if she's getting distracted so much by someone in class. She should focus on her breathing and working hard on her practice instead of what SHE THINKS someone else MIGHT be thinking.

Blegh.
 
V

vocab

Member
dear diary I went out side today, and saw people who weren't as skinny than me. I feel like an alien who landed on another planet. Everything is so strange.
 
Aesius

Aesius

Member
My god, this skinny white girl is just so.... IMPORTANT.

Fuck, I'm glad I got to take in a small slice of her life. I'm better off for it.
 
D

Dark Octave

Banned
She sounds insane. She went home crying? I can't help but feel like I missed something that happened between the time the woman layed her mat down and she went home crying. Did the girl ever even say one word to her? I read the whole thing but...I just don't get it.
 
Mikey Jr.

Mikey Jr.

Member
I have no fucking clue why she had to include the race of the person. It was completely inconsequential to the story.
 
H

horsebird

Banned
This girl must truly believe that the world is her own personal stage.

Response Article said:
That’s on you. You could have left us out of it. And yes I say “us” because we black women face judgment like yours as a community. We are living and being. You are evaluating and recoiling and running home and crying. We are simply in the world with you and you are terrified. And people wonder why we're “angry.”

In the universe where this piece takes place, you've set up a standard according to which I could now be concerned when I walk into my next yoga class that I might look a certain way and make a white girl cry. Does that sound right to you? Meditate on that.
Click to expand...
Pia laying down truth.
 
S

Stencil

Member
I liked the follow up article a lot. Though it seemed a bit wordy.

But jesus, what a fucking joke the original article was. It's like a coddled 1st grader with anxiety's first day at school.
 
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