Dr. Sabrina Strings
There’s a cute new form of segregation taking the yoga world by storm. Here’s how I found out about it: I was attending a yoga teacher training during the fall of 2013 and one of our teachers was an affable hippie named Mimi. Mimi had spent several decades training with, and subsequently teaching, yoga practitioners in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was leading a meditation workshop as one of our monthly day-long intensives. About midway through our seven-hour slog, she sensed our restlessness and exhaustion. She was encouraged to switch things up a bit.
“Get into groups of two,” she advised.
I turned to see that the woman sitting next to me was Amy. Amy was an African-American woman with a perm and a bourgeois manner. I had diagnosed Amy with people of color blindness.12 This is a condition in which people of color—often black—embrace the America-is-colorblind discourse. They subsequently refuse to see other people of color—often black—and avoid interactions with them in an ironic and assimilationist attempt to pretend as if there is, indeed, nothing to be seen. Of course underlying this behavior is the fear that someone will see them and recognize that they are, in fact, black.
Amy and I had never been in a group together. In reality, Amy rarely made eye contact with me. She usually gave my mat a wide berth when she was deciding where to place hers. On the day in question, she placed her mat next to mine while I was in the bathroom, thus wholly unaware that someone would see the two black women sitting together in the training, and put two and two together.
When Mimi announced that we needed to find partners, I immediately went on the offensive. Sharon, the quirky but inscrutable white lady in front of me would make a good partner, so I lunged forward to tap her shoulder. Too late—someone else had already snapped Sharon up.
“Do you want to be partners?” Amy asked. I froze mid-lunge, slowly bringing my hips back to my heels. I looked over to confirm that she did, in fact, mean me. She did.
“Uhhhhhh, sure.”
Mimi continued her with instructions.
“After you have chosen your partner, just sit in silence for a moment.” She took a beat, giving the yogis a chance to settle in to their dyads.
“Okay, when you open your eyes, I’d like you to tell your partner about your experience with meditation since you started the training. How often are you practicing? What has been your experience sitting? Have you incorporated meditation into your regular yoga routine? If not, what barriers do you have to making it a regular part of your practice.” She paused, allowing us to digest this information. Then she added,
“And I’d like the woman with the shortest hair to go first.”
My head shot up, mouth agape. I looked from Mimi to Amy. Mimi was oblivious, concerning herself with preparations for the next assignment. Amy had a half-smile playing around the corners of her mouth. She raised her eyebrows and parted her lips expectantly, a mute expression of superiority that said, that means you.
It was amazing nobody got shanked.
I wasn’t about to argue the point with Amy. Instead, while she sat with one eyebrow cocked, I settled back in to my meditation. Occasionally, I’d open my mouth to respond to one of the questions Mimi had posed and then return to silence. When it was Amy’s turn to go, I maintained my meditative posture, completely tuning her out. The exercise, and whatever it was supposed to help us learn from one another, was a wash.
I was at a loss. This type of comparison seemed curiously out of place, given my yoga experience up to that point. I’d found yoga four years prior. I took my first class on a lark, tapering as I was from a serious running habit. But, over the course of those four years, I kept coming back because it gave me the tools to feel comfortable in my own skin. Being a black woman in America, there were many times in which I felt reviled, unwanted, because I was seen as physically different from the white “norm.” Yoga helped me discover my internal power and beauty. It was a form of liberation.
I’d listened attentively as teachers preached about self-love, tolerance, and the unity of all beings. Of course, the yoga community wasn’t perfect. There were many times when my racial difference was marked, when people would move their mat from mine, trying to articulate some false colorblind explanation (“Oh, there’s more space over there …”). But before Mimi made us play this hair game, I could not remember a time when difference was purposefully called out, brought to the fore, used to divide. I could not think of another time in which we were called to order ourselves based on physical appearance.
There were a couple of reasons I was disappointed that Mimi made us mark the difference, made us play what I’m calling “the Rapunzel Game.” For one, this game invited “comparing mind.” Comparing mind is the innate tendency for all humans to compare themselves to others. These comparisons can be based on anything. But they are often based on things that have a social or economic value (e.g., how much money you earn, how you look, the area where you live), and can engender hierarchies between persons or groups. In contemplative practice communities, we are encouraged to let these types of comparisons go.
Second, and relatedly, the Rapunzel Game invites an invidious racialized and gendered form of comparing mind. Long straight hair, and short curly hair, have had clear social values attached to them in Western culture due to their respective associations with whiteness and blackness.
Indeed, the sorting of people based on the length—and relatedly the texture—of their hair dates back to slavery.13 With the onset of the slave trade during the fifteenth century, artists and philosophers routinely compared the newly encountered African women to European women. By the sixteenth century, as the judgments of black women became more derisive, these comparisons were used to reify European superiority. Black women’s hair was often at the center of these assessments. The long, straight, blond hair of deified Roman goddess Venus was the gold standard; black women’s curly locks were deemed inferior.
By the seventeenth century, comparisons of black and white hair would become a lynchpin of scientific racism. The first man to ever draft a racial hierarchy made the appearance of African hair integral to his classification schema, writing, “… their hair is not truly hair but instead a sort of wool”(Bernier 2001: 248). Indeed, by this era, the stereotype that Africans had short hair—which, because it was unlike Europeans’, wasn’t truly hair at all—was a well-worn invective (Kolfin 2010).
As African slaves made their way to the United States, hair was a pivotal marker of race and status (Tharps 2009). Along with lighter skin, straighter, longer hair could give slaves access to “better food, living conditions and a chance at an otherwise illegal education” (Tharps 2009). It was within this cultural milieu that the term “good hair,” meaning hair that is straight or with looser curl pattern, was born and circulated among African Americans (Tharps 2009).
It wasn’t until the 1960s that black people mounted a significant challenge to this hegemonic aesthetic. The Black Power movement in particular rejected the reliance on white (long and straight) hair and beauty ideals, urging people to get rid of straighteners and wear their hair in its natural state. (Angela Davis and her massive natural became formidable and iconic symbols of black resistance.) Many black people, impacted by the critical social movements of the era, wore their hair in Afros, reclaiming a sense of pride in their coils.
But, the pride and protest of the social movements of the previous generation did not overturn long-standing hegemonic ideals by which women in the West (regardless of race) are still being judged. There remains a hierarchy of beauty in these United States. The women sitting at the top have these qualities: White or light skin with long, straight blond hair.14
A simple perusal of the fashion and beauty magazines at your local drug store will reveal the obviousness of the truth. Whether it’s Blake Lively or Jennifer Lawrence or Jennifer Aniston or any number of the celebrities perched atop the mountain of mainstream ideals, many, many will fit the mold. Most may have died their hair, straightened it, grown it out, or bought extensions because they know that straight, long blond hair can be a tremendous asset. However they arrive, as if inspired by Rapunzel, they cultivate this style because of the seeming opportunities for social and economic prosperity this hair affords them.
I didn’t say any of this to Mimi, and I did my best to meet Amy where she was. As a yoga and meditation practitioner living in the Bay Area, Mimi would undoubtedly have claimed to be concerned about social justice. All the while, she was blissfully unaware of how her actions in the studio participated in a system of sorting rooted in slavery.
At the time, I dismissed the “game” as a one-off. I thought it was a peculiar if annoying sorting tool she thought fit to deploy. I was wrong.
The following year, I enrolled in another yoga and meditation training. On the first day of this training, the Rapunzel Game resurfaced. This time it was “And let the person with the longest hair go first!” Later that same day, this game was played again, “And the person with the shortest hair should go first!” That last time, my partner in the game, who had straight hair, asked why don’t we unwrap our buns (and I would also have to unravel my twists) to compare lengths?
I noticed there was a titillated sense of glee in playing this game, specifically among women with straight, long hair. In fact, in the many times I was forced to play this game, every single time it was proposed by a woman with straight or wavy, long hair.
At this training, I decided to take it up with the staff. I sent a note to the one black person on the team, Jesse. She was not a regular faculty member—all of the faculty were white—but an assistant. I explained to her that I was offended by the Rapunzel Game. I had noticed that some of the older women with short hair were visibly irritated, and I imagined the game was less than fun for balding men.
“Unless being in a yoga training now requires black women to get perms,” I said, “I’m not sure how I’m supposed to measure the length of my hair.” It was, moreover, unclear how that was supposed to add to my spiritual advancement. I asked her if I was imagining that this game was offensive and racially biased. She replied, “No, I felt that too.”
Jesse relayed our grievance to the faculty. They expressed heartfelt concern. Issued an apology to the entire training, claiming that the game exposed an unconscious form of white privilege. This was close, but no cigar. Having straight, long hair is not inherently a “privilege.” Its value has had a good deal to do with its historical link to whiteness in a society that has made comparisons based on hair and deemed this type superior. In this way, it reveals itself not as an example of white privilege but an example of white supremacy.
I had hoped that was the end of it. It wasn’t. One year later, same training, new faculty, the Rapunzel Game made a comeback. This time it was started by Carter, a multiracial woman, with long, wavy hair. When I confronted her about it, she became defensive. Said there was nothing wrong with short hair. Many people are proud to have short hair. This was of course, beside the point. I, like many black naturals, love my hair. I love it long, I love it short. Its kink and swirl makes me feel like an original. It’s full of body and life. This, however, doesn’t mean I had escaped being measured against white ideals of beauty, telling me how my hair should look (hint: long and straight). I’d had to resist dominant hair narratives to find what was best for me.
Though she was herself part black, and looked to be in her forties, Carter had apparently missed the social movements asserting pride in various African hair textures and lengths, and had never heard any derisive statements being made about black women’s hair (not even those by Don Imus.) She reminded me of dear, POC-blind Amy. She told me, in no uncertain terms, “I think hair is race and gender neutral.”
Whether or not something is racially biased is not based on a straw poll of the available people of color. It is rooted in the historical and ongoing fact of domination. Short or long hair may have different meanings in different contexts, in other cultures. But in this country, we cannot conveniently sidestep the historical and current meaning attached to straight, long (and often blond) hair.
The Rapunzel Game is more than a racially biased pastime that several people I have encountered find strange and offensive. It serves as an important reminder of the fact that despite many yoga studios’ best efforts, the space they are holding may feel neither safe nor welcoming for those persons who are not in (or unlike Amy and Carter, do not aspire to resemble) the majority. In yoga, the majority are white and female. Several news articles have pointed to the overwhelming whiteness and femininity of modern yoga. For most, the question is about the cause (i.e., “how did we get here?”). Questions about the consequences of yoga being largely white and female are rarely considered. And yet the consequences are significant. One consequence is that women of color, men of all backgrounds, and queer or trans persons may enter a space that claims to be inclusive but feels hostile.
If yoga studios truly are invested in creating safe and inclusive spaces for the motley crew of potential practitioners, it would behoove them to end games that require people to sort themselves based on physical difference. Should we organize people by weight next time? Thinnest people go first? Or how about height? Shortest people go first? Or eye color, blue eyes go first?
Games that require practitioners to point out differences, measure them, discuss them, then order themselves based on these differences are not only slow and inefficient sorting mechanisms. They also invite the comparing mind that we are supposed to be checking at the door. And—even if unintentionally—they pick up on the necessarily racialized and sexualized legacy-creating hierarchies based on physical appearance. A tip for teachers: just let the group members decide who goes first.
I took these trainings hoping to be able to extend the yoga wisdom, to adapt the skills I learn, and to deliver them to underserved communities. I’ve learned a lot about what goes on in yoga, not all of it for the best. The Rapunzel Game and countless other instances of oppressive and exclusionary practices in yoga are what motivate me to continue to examine and critique current practices and to cultivate an awareness that can make our practice feel more like it belongs to all of us.
Sabrina Strings, PhD, is an assistant professor of Sociology at UC Irvine and a 200-hour CYT. Her work is featured in Yoga International, The Feminist Wire, Feminist Media Studies, and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. She is also the cofacillitator of the Race and Yoga Working Group at UC Berkeley. Author photo by Heather Ashbach, UCI.
12. This term is an homage to Jared Sexton’s “people-of-color-blindness.” However, while I am using the term to describe the phenomenon in which black people literally do not want to see other black people, Sexton uses the term to articulate a racial politics in which liberals purport that all persons of color have similar experiences of oppression under white supremacy, ignoring the “specificity of anti-blackness” in the United States (2010: 48).
13. With the revival of classical ideals during the Renaissance, Venus, the Roman goddess of love, came to represent the epitome of beauty. She was praised, amongst other things, for her long flaxen hair (Schreuder and Kolfin 2008).
14. I would also add that these women are usually thin and blue-eyed, qua the Nordic/Aryan ideal rigorously promoted in this country between the 1890s–1930s (Strings 2012).