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{
    "pk": 41854,
    "title": "I Do Practice Yoga! Controlling Images and Recovering the Black Female Body in ‘Skinny White Girl’ Yoga Culture",
    "subtitle": null,
    "abstract": "Black women’s health and fitness practices remain under-theorized in Public Health, the Social Sciences, and Women’s and Gender Studies. This paper positions the controversy over the \nXO Jane \n2014 post “It Happened to Me: There Are No Black People In My Yoga Classes and I’m Suddenly Uncomfortable With It” by Jen Caron, a white woman, within a broader analytical context. It raises and answers two questions: How did Black women, especially yogis – teachers and students – respond to this post? And, what can their responses tell us about the nature of negative ‘controlling images’ in shaping participants’ experiences of yoga and navigating yoga culture? To answer these questions I draw on comments posted on \nXO Jane’s \nwebsite in response to Caron’s post, the blog posts from six African American female bloggers, as well as comments to their posts for a qualitative content analysis. Drawing on Black feminist analysis, I argue that Polacheck’s post draws on longstanding tropes used to situate the Black female body, including otherness, monstrosity, deviance, and the idea that Black women take up “too much” space. Three themes emerge from the analysis: naming stereotypes and rejecting controlling images, affirming and resisting ‘skinny white girl’ yoga culture, and defending difference. Black women’s responses to the post highlights the complex ways they may negotiate perceptions of yoga as accessible and inviting, and “race neutral,” while also naming and challenging normative whiteness, dominant beauty standards, and reaffirming Black female worth and visibility. This analysis makes visible the multiple ways that many Black women experience and navigate predominately white yoga spaces. It also demonstrates the ways in which African American women resist stereotypes.",
    "language": "en",
    "license": {
        "name": "Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives  4.0",
        "short_name": "CC BY-NC-ND 4.0",
        "text": "Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.\n\nNonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.\n\nNoDerivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.\n\nNo additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.",
        "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0"
    },
    "keywords": [
        {
            "word": "African American Women"
        },
        {
            "word": "Black Feminism"
        },
        {
            "word": "Controlling Images"
        },
        {
            "word": "fitness"
        },
        {
            "word": "Yoga"
        }
    ],
    "section": "Article",
    "is_remote": true,
    "remote_url": "https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3w04347q",
    "frozenauthors": [
        {
            "first_name": "Michele",
            "middle_name": "Tracy",
            "last_name": "Berger",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill",
            "department": "None"
        }
    ],
    "date_submitted": "2017-03-13T11:05:43-07:00",
    "date_accepted": "2017-03-13T11:05:43-07:00",
    "date_published": "2018-12-20T18:57:51-08:00",
    "render_galley": null,
    "galleys": [
        {
            "label": "",
            "type": "pdf",
            "path": "https://journalpub.escholarship.org/raceandyoga/article/41854/galley/31281/download/"
        }
    ]
}