Alec Baldwin imitating Hilaria's Spanish accent is incredible. She really did invent it to land him. https://twitter.com/vanesstvlvr/status/1343774833759432705

I am so grateful for Hilaria's Gluten-Free Namaste Women (cc @elisewho) act today because I really do not want to think about anything serious any more

The most prescient tweet of our time https://twitter.com/carrierosen/status/1343339182433869826

If it takes Hilaria's grift to finally end the yoga-performative-white-lady-influencer industrial complex that has ruled New York and LA with an iron "Spiritual Gangster"/Lululemon fist then we'll have to thank her

There is 100% a great "Vanity Fair" type story in all the Becky Sharps who would have been partying in Manolos in 1999 now reinvented as manifestation coaches and yoga TikTokers who are still hungry for notice but trying to achieve it with faux mass-market spirituality

I swear I will detour from financial journalism and media criticism to write this myself, has no one ever had a Yoga Works membership and seen these ladies in action? They populate Kripalu too. (I love Kripalu but it dovetails with this faux-mass-bourgeois spirituality movement)

I'm tagging in @katierosman even though I'm sure she's already 1500 words into a piece on this

I've loved yoga since high school but it's more than the body toning thought-free pursuit of a tight butt and strong arms. The best teachers have studied sutras and the spiritual basis. The bad teachers are all "Do your gratitude journaling, ladies! Buy essential oils! Namaste!"

Yoga is like therapy. You must be in good hands, good guides, who know *why* these movements work. Each sequence or kriya has a spiritual purpose. You can't just pose limbs aesthetically and hope for enlightenment. But the LA/NY yoga scenes conflate athleticism with moral virtue

I could write a whole "overheard at Kripalu" essay about this but I will not, because at least there they actually sell Buddhist and Hindu texts to take the knowledge deeper. Anyway, may we keep the actual yoga but send the online performativity to Mallorca or wherever

Also, parallel to the "my real passion is yoga" grift, let's talk about this level of cultural con! I can't believe she really thought the Spanish accent was all she needed to get Alec Baldwin! And that she was right! It's like guy who pretended to be a Rockefeller.

I had a YogaWorks membership. One day we were being rushed into doing headstands 15 mins in and I asked why. The instructor confided that the students --privileged white ladies-- wanted to show off their headstands on the 'gram and felt classes were taking too long to get there

And not to mention the fact that the way yoga is taught in a mass-market way leads to an incredible number of injuries bc everyone is so hype to get their BPM up that the teachers don't demonstrate adaptations for varying abilities. It needs anatomical knowledge too.

Anyway I cancelled my membership and never looked back -- I wasn't going to do headstands without a proper sequence or reason, just to impress white women -- and it's not just YW. So many studios in NY and LA went in the same direction. Style over substance.

I mean, I get that people may feel lost (especially this year, but well before) and without religion, some light culturally-appropriated spirituality that also makes you look good can seem like the answer. But there's something inherently gross about monetizing souls like that

At some point we just have to decide that some things (like souls!) can't be bought and sold, some things aren't achieved fast, that you can't take Hilaria Baldwin's Yoga Vida class and feel pure because you plopped down $40 or whatever. That's the opposite of what yoga is.

In a future thread we will discuss "yoga and wine" type classes but not right now because the thought of it makes me lightly incandescent with frustration. Yoga is a gift from another culture, and whitewashing it and stripping it of context is never going to enlighten anyone. IMO

I don't think we should blame the many, many women who participated in this -- bc cultural movements are like that -- but we SHOULD blame the retail execs and studio owners and influencers who took a practice about erasing ego and monetized it for $90 pants and body shaming