Yoga Journal’s Descent Into Slick Yoga Cheesecake
In going through my old, old yoga videos (from the early 90s), I found one that had an ad for Yoga Journal at the beginning of the tape. What a difference 10+ years makes! Gracing the covers of the old Yoga Journal were a variety of people, young and old. The Dalai Lama was featured on a cover, as well as Swami Vishnu-Devananda of Sivananda fame. Many other gurus were presented…and nary a skinny white woman with a bare midriff to be seen among them!
Now, Yoga Journal hardly distinguishes itself from Cosmopolitan on the magazine rack. Almost all the models on the front are young, skinny white women. In fact, I have yet to see a recent Yoga Journal without a young skinny white woman on the front. The ads are just as bad (I am sooo sick of the Hard Tail ads). In the most recent issue, a back page advertisement shows a white girl stretching up to the sky. We get a really good shot of her entire rib cage. Yikes.
If Yoga Journal insists on having attractive people on the cover, why not mix it up a bit? How about a few men, some older people, and some folks who aren’t white? I mean, please…this is just getting dull and boring.
And then they publish an article questioning why more men aren’t in yoga. Well, maybe more men would be if you didn’t market your magazine like a cheesy women’s tabloid. Get with it, Yoga Journal. Show some vision.
I let my Yoga Journal subscription lapse in October. If it weren’t already clear from the ad to article ratio (heavily weighted in favor of the ads), the six “final notices” I’ve received only confirmed to me that Yoga Journal is less about Yoga and more about money.
Do you want berry sauce with that cheesecake?
nice blog…..
I’ve been writing about how YJ has turned into a fitness magazine and ageism in American yoga for quite some time now — but I’m always ranting anyway…..
peace!
Amen to this post! I still have the first issue of Yoga Journal I ever purchased back in the early 90s. What a different publication! I have nothing against skinny, white women but it has long been clear to me that the publication’s visuals only play into our culture’s unfortuate obsession with form.
Right on. It can definitely be hard to find the yoga in Yoga Journal. Though if you can read through a whole issue without throwing it on the floor, that’s probably the best yoga practice there is . . . (!)
Somehow seeing a “yoga”-based publication do the same old “don’t you wish you looked like *that* too?” manipulations seems so much worse than somewhere where you’d expect it.
They make their choices based on what they think people will buy, and we make our choices based on what’s out there. Sigh. But like I said, if I can read it and get through at least a few pages before throwing a fit, I’ve totally done my practice for the day!
Havi
I don’t condemn yoga journal for the use of fit, attractive women on the cover but I totally agree that this is not the only face of yoga. Where are the MEN!!??!! Where are the gurus!!??! Where is the 60 year old women who has doing yoga since the 1960’s?!!?? They need to spice up there models a bit. Also I think there hope of getting new people interested in yoga isn’t going to work. When the average 30 year old mom of 3 walks by the cover and see’s complex inversions and back bends gracing the cover that women is going to think (sadly) “I could never do that. Yoga looks hard. ” and group yoga into the category of the impossible.