ABSTRACT
This piece surveys the trajectory of Western movement culture in America and its alignment with oppressive ideologies such as eugenics, Social Darwinism, and Muscular Christianity. Citing the pathologizing of the female body in the development of an American bodily philosophy, the essay examines the performance of gender through movement as a litmus test for an idealized femininity characterized by passivity, affluence, and Whiteness. Focusing first on exercise in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and mapping a historical journey to the present, Yoga Asana and the Performance of Gender in American Exercise connects philosophies and aesthetic trends that hold the performance of asana to a type of spectacle in the public sphere that undermines the agency of the white women it appears to celebrate, while denying the femininity of poor women and women of color, or erasing them from the sphere of yoga in the West completely. In response to the dualistic discourse presented in the first half of this chapter, this piece culminates in a brief exploration of the ways yogic philosophy and practice include areas of slippage that allow for a more inclusive gender experience. A set of guiding questions and a small handful of readily applicable practices offer nuanced alternatives to the norms that persist in American society, while providing possible avenues into a more accepting and affirming future of yoga in America.
