Now YOU can be sexy is just 15 minutes a day! Whoa, hold the twinkies, are you talking about yoga? This is the marketing message of Tara Stiles’ new book Slim, Calm, Sexy, three little words that unlock a whole smorgasbord of emotions, connotations and a motherload of self-consciousness, maybe even worse than camel toe.
Eat, Pray, Love; Slim, Calm, Sexy; mind, body, spirit – we’re on a 3-word roll! This, friends, is the new frontier of the Incredible, Edible, Yoga: bite sized munchkins of a practice formed from the whole of the yoga donut, downsized and palatable enough for women’s magazine splash ads, and 3-minute morning show bits. Is this bad? Does it matter? Whether we like it or not Tara Stiles is the “new face of fitness” deemed so by ‘Workout’ Queen herself, Madame Jane Fonda. It’s true. (The women’s magazines are a whole other glob of dough to fry).
So Tara has seen her share of the spotlight, as a model, yoga teacher, American Apparel yoga ad-maker, Nissan yoga ad-maker, Deepak Chopra ‘Authentic Yoga’ iPhone app collaborator, and now author. She has done all of this with an impossibly thin physique! Something we assume she was born with, so we can’t really fault her on that, right? (though we can certainly look on begrudgingly).
But WHAT about the message? Responses to the hyper-pinked marketing have ranged from “We love Tara! but…” to vehement and passionately dissenting, aghast at the way yoga is whittled down to a disposable diet fad to tackle the “epidemic of bra fat!“. Stop the insanity! One commenter said it looks like something out of Cosmo, but we’re thinking it’s borderline late-night infomercial. We actually totally get the yoga every day thing. Great! Yoga to “give you the body of your dreams”? Ack. Yoga for the masses? WHO are the masses? Intention is there, but the message all wrong. Although, really, it’s not that far off point as far as thi “mass” marketing is concerned. See the comparison of book covers between T. Stiles and Tracy Anderson, fitness expert to the stars! (Madonna, Gwyneth, etc) below.
In a society where obsession over “no pain, no gain” fitness is routine, a yoga community that is already tossing cookies over too-sexy/naked yoga ads, and the billion dollar industry where there are moguls, large-scale mass-produced corporate sponsored events, Hollywood movie franchising and yoga “talent” representatives, would we really be surprised to find that 1-800 number on the screen at 3 in the morning badgering us to ‘act fast! feel the yoga burn with 4 easy payments of $19.99!’ ? And should we be shocked if the bandwagon of merry yogsters pisses off the hardcore home team? Something is certainly shifting, but it’s undeniable yoga is a hot commodity. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Want to know our reaction? It defaults to: what would Gabourey Sidibe have to say about this?
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Thanks to Tara, I am beginning to REALLY practice yoga as opposed to imagining becoming this enlightened yogini who must retreat to India or a Greek isle to find inner peace and wisdom.
If yoga cannot bring you inner peace and wisdom right where you are — then what’s the point? Just how many people can or should drop their lives, and move on to the mountains and start mumbling-jumbling in Sanskrit?
Knowledge is for people, people are not for knowledge.
P.S. I hate pink, but it that’s truly Tara, then why not? Besides her yoga is all no-nonsense. Peace! (Or should I just say the ever-so-pretentious, “Namaste”?)
namate isn’t pretentious. neither is sansrkit in general. it’s like tara stiles came along and reminded people stretching is fun! yes! it’s true! and here’s some poses from this ancient tradition called yoga but don’t worry about the yoga part… well all i can say is that’s cool- don’t call it yoga.
the harpsichord and the piano are related instruments but you’re not going to tell someone you’re giving them piano lessons if you’re teaching them the harpsichord. It’s totally great to make a routine that’s palatable for the average person but yoga IS actually a specific thing even though westerners may not believe it. You can’t usurp thousands of years of tradition because you don’t like the message. It just don’t work that way.
Let’s say I wanted to teach greek cooking without olive oil, feta or oregano. What do you think people would say? I mean I have no problem with Tara, I just think people need to acknowledge that white westerner women didn’t invent it to lose weight.
Thank you. I agree 100%.
Absolutely. Very well said…
Maybe people want the physical and mental benefits of yoga without feeling pressured to travel to India and drink their own urine. Like Tara said, who made the rules?
I can say a lot about the horrible message this book sends to women on so many levels. But there’s another important point that also gets missed: Tara obviously knows jack about actually losing weight, which is supposedly one of the benefits she touts of her book.
When I was in my 20s, I was stick thin and a lot of people thought I was anorexic. I just had a high metabolism. I could have eaten Twinkies for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and never exercised, and still stayed thin.
Tara obviously has a body like that. She has no business preaching that she knows how to use yoga to lose weight. Let’s see what her body looks like 20 years from now after her metabolism slows down, then maybe we can talk.
@ namasteph: I absolutely couldn’t disagree with you more. I started practicing yoga about 4 months ago, and I tell you, I’ve dropped more weight (27 lbs so far) doing yoga than any other excersize I’ve tried. AND I’m in my late 30s. The metabolism does slow down when women age, because we don’t move as much as we did when we were younger – yoga has changed all that for me. So before you demonize Tara by claiming that she has “no business preaching” that yoga allows people to lose weight, you might want to consider my case, and scores of women like me who look better, breathe better, and fit into their clothes better all because of yoga.
I think Tara Stiles is great, but what bothers me about the weight loss book is that it pretty much claims that everyone will have a ‘yoga-slim’ body, just like hers, with only 15 minutes a day.
Exercise has never been proven to cause weight loss… only diet has.
Thanks for this article. Very interesting. I have a question. I am trying to learn more about yoga in our country and how it is connected to marketing, etc., and I was interested in one of your comments in the article: “Intention is there, but the message all wrong.” I am wondering what you mean by this. What intention is there exactly? Why do we do yoga and why are we marketing it to the masses? Why do we push ourselves to do complicated poses verging on acrobatics? Is our intention to heal our minds and bodies? If yoga was really doing that, would we even need to market it? Wouldn’t is speak for itself?
Thank you again.
Juliana
I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed. Oh dear! Not just yoga but WEIGHTLOSS yoga presented by…. Dunkin Donuts. OMG. That video alone was so much fun to watch it made my day. I’m still giggling. Stiles’ yoga is not my yoga but I wish her and her students well. Rock on Yogadork – my face hurts from smiling too much.
Yogadork I’m a little confused. I flipped through the book in a bookstore but ended up purchasing another book that was recommended in one of two Tara stiles videos I have watched before. It was called Light on Yoga by B. K. S. Iyengar. She mentioned that this was practically required reading for people seriously getting into yoga. I guess I’m just wondering if you are saying that everything she says is just pseudo yoga leading people completely off..that is what I gather your opinion is of her. That sucks because my girlfriend found her free videos extremely inspiring as a down to earth, non intimidating person and kept pursuing it whereas the class I took with her locally we were so turned off by the arrogant teacher who pretty much humiliated us for lack of prior understanding that we never tried it again for a year. I guess I’m just saying that maybe her book title is not the best but I know at least my girlfriend found her approach to be extremely easy to relate to and inspired her to continue. I believe she also teaches $10 classes at her studio in NYC or wherever she is located. That is pretty cool if you ask me, especially for someone who apparently has become very popular as your article suggests. I guess what needs clarification is what do you mean that she just teaches stretching and not yoga? I believe all of the poses my girlfriend taught me that she learned in tara videos have been consistent with what she has learned in local classes.
Nicely said, I second you comment Chris!
Yep, the marketing might not be so great, but her yoga is awesome and who can deny that she knows her stuff when you watch her video.
Tara reaches so many people out there! People who probably would never have tried a yoga class at all if it weren’t for her plain English (leaving out the Sanskrit) & modern take on yoga. Some yoga is better than no yoga if it gets an every day person to connect with themselves a little more. it inevitably plants some sort of seed, in which a person can choose to pursue the deeper legacy of yoga if they wish. That’s at least how it happened for me…
I found Sadie Nardini (one of YD fav celebrity yoginis AKA the Rock star yogini) on YouTube and found her own modern interpretation and creative interpretation on yoga far more compelling and attractive than intimidating traditional classes & such other styles.
YD i’m a huge fan of yours.
So Tara got some sleazy marketing done for her book, It still can’t undo all the good she’s done.
Rock on Tara!
Rock on YD!
Maybe it would be interesting if people knew her background which began as a fashion model in NYC. This profession in itself helps to promote a false image of the Self. Being a model myself I understood the need to stay healthy but at the same time if I did not stick to a certain size I would not work, that does not come with yoga alone, it helps to eat very little. And this creates a sort of neurosis, sticks with you through your life if you have been in the industry long enough. She started to promote yoga during her contracted period with Ford Models. This I know from the online you tube videos which are still available and promote the model agency as well as her short yoga sequences. So I see a young women who found something worth promoting probably as a way to stay fit and healthy in the modeling world & to probably secure more high end dollar jobs… I see a woman who is using herself and her great looks and probably her knowledge on how to promote herself (as you learn how to do in the cut throat industry as the modeling world) to get ahead in the yoga world which is new to yoga, the whole marketing beautiful slimming sexy idea. Is it wrong? well as an ex model who has practiced yoga for over 10 years to help cope with the demands of the job, I think it is lovely in a way for her to be able to reach so many, and yes there will be lots of critics just like the modeling world. I just hope that she can be humble through all of this, and give back more than just videos and books to the world and help people through other forms of seva, which dont need promotion and exposure and earn big bucks. I love her videos, but I also see the the money she must make from all of this, and wonder is she exploiting herself like she did in modeling to get ahead and buy a lovely something rather, or is she truely doing this to help all of the sentient beings love and get a long with each other.
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