Girl Upset Over "Heavy Black Woman" Joining Her Yoga Class

A woman who describes herself as a "skinny White girl," is also a fan of yoga. But according to her, a recent event occurred in her yoga class that left her very, very upset. What could it have been? "There was a new person at yoga, and that person was Black."

Posted to Gawker with a headline that could have been pulled from a satire news site, starting with "It Happened To Me: There Are No Black People In My Yoga Classes...," the woman Jen Caron details how a black woman appeared to never have set foot in a yoga studio before and the woman's difficulty with the poses. She describes how it impacted her own practice.

"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."

Jen also shares her realization about how few black students attend her yoga class, speculating on what it must feel like. "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."

The woman, Jen Caron, who wrote the story, changed her name from Jen Polachek following the backlash she faced for the story. According to Gawker Jen Polachek "started deleting or locking down her internet presence. Which is understandable, given the number of negative comments she may have received."

Source: Gawker