'Heavily whitewashed': Yoga experts slam ‘overly sexualized’ videos that look more like PORN than tutorials
TikTok users are outraged by how sexualized yoga tutorials shared on the platform have become, with some videos more closely approaching soft-core porn than legitimate exercise videos. Nikita Desai, a yoga instructor, criticized the app's "algorithm" previously, alleging that it tends to favor erotic clips of flexible women wearing skimpy bikinis.
Desai stated, "I have been screaming this at the top of my lungs for the past years, but it still amazes me how the algorithm allows to be the spectacle of yoga," in a video that has received more than 55K likes. She added, "I guess this is what happens when an ancient, deep, meaningful, spiritual practice that was intended for the purpose of our mental and emotional wellbeing becomes overly sexualized and heavily whitewashed." Desai encourages her followers to learn genuine yoga with genuine instructors and stated, "Cause the massive part of the problem here is representation of the voices of people from source culture. The practice remains inauthentic and diluted."
READ MORE
'Where can I find a husband?': Porn star Rae Lil Black joins Tinder to search for life partner
Many of Desai's followers wrote about their yoga experiences, with one saying, "There’s a new fad in my town, they rebranded face massages as 'face yoga' and it drives me freakin crazy. DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT YOGA IS???!!"
Another person wrote, "A yoga studio opened in my home town years ago, I went and a white lady lead shavasana with a native american drum... I havent been to a studio since." This other person wrote, "Whew I knew what was going to come up but it was still a jump scare," in response to what Desai had said.
@nikyyoga #stitch with @NIMAY NDOLO #decolonizingyoga #decolonizingyoga #yogaeducation #authenticyoga #decolonizeyourmind ♬ This Is Percussion Sport Drumming Beat - Sound_Force
A fellow yoga teacher commented, "Yes!!!! I'm also a yoga teacher and I'm south Asian! It's very whitewashed it's unbelievable." More than 400K individuals have viewed Desai's video, and there have been more than 600 comments. Hopefully, this will lead to a shift in how people practice yoga. “Wow. I saw EVERYTHING… but yoga,” another user said.
Joshua Gilyard, the content creator known as @queenoftheratchet, started the discussion about how searching for "yoga" on TikTok's search bar results in hundreds of filthy videos. Over 100K people watched, 16K liked, and more than 1K commented on the video Gilyard shared.
In the TikTok, Gilyard stated, "Have you'll ever just typed in YOGA on TikTok! Now this is what I want to say. I want to say this, for all of the people that are black and brown that get community violation. I want you'll to type in yoga on Tiktok... but anybody that's ever gotten community violation."
"If we ain't living in some type of simulation, matrix... where some of that s**t is flying, WOW," Gilyard continued. "And why was I searching Yoga, I just wanted to see... If I ever get a community violation again, I'm going to understand that this app is really unfair, really."
Many individuals agreed with Gilyard's assertion in the comment section with one individual writing, "So my other account was banned cuz some vids unboxing a adults advent calendar but that 'yoga' it's allowed. good job TikTok." "I got a community violation for showing my dad flying a toy helicopter😳," another pointing out the hypocrisy wrote. "Wow, and we are supposed to pretend this algorithm isn't biased hmmm," another user said.