Meet the yoga social media star who is proud to call herself fat
If you’ve ever told yourself that you were too big or too black, too out-of-shape, or too old to do yoga, Jessamyn Stanley can change your mind. From Durham, North Carolina, this yoga teacher and body positivity activist has become one of the most popular voices of the body positivity movement, sharing a mixture of personal stories, empowerment messages and yoga poses to her loyal 463,000 Instagram followers. She’s also the founder of The Underbelly virtual yoga studio and the author of Every Body Yoga.
Now, before you roll your eyes and scoff at the idea that you can be ‘fat but fit’, ask yourself this: how often do you see bodies that look like Stanley’s in mainstream media?
Google ‘yoga’ and you’ll be met with mainly white, mostly affluent, certainly skinny, vanilla yummy mummies. Yet according to research from Sport England’s This Girl Can campaign, 63 per cent of women who see slim, toned bodies on social media sites say this has a negative impact on them, while nearly a quarter who follow fitness influencers say they make them feel bad about themselves.
And if the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that health is wealth, and movement is key. Yet, as the original This Girl Can research from 2015 showed, while women want to be more active, they tend to be held back by a fear of being judged.
From periods to motherhood, women face a whole host of barriers when it comes to movement. It’s these boundaries Adidas wants to push with its latest campaign, Watch Us Move, where Stanley features alongside other female athletes. Their aim? To inspire women to move however they choose – no matter what activity they do, how they look or how sweaty they get.
“It is so important that people see themselves represented – people of all genders, all identities – but especially women,” Stanley tells me over Zoom. “It's so crucial for us to see our bodies as they really are.”
Stanley is a firm believer that yoga is for everyone. Every single body. But even she admits finding it hard. “My very first yoga experience was when I was 16 years old. My aunt was obsessed with Bikram yoga at the time and she was like, ‘Oh my God, Jessamyn, you should go to yoga, it’s gonna change your life’,” she says.
“I remember walking in and because it was a hot yoga studio it smelt really bad – because there was so much sweat everywhere. It was just awful. It was so hot. Just the experience of being in the studio felt unpleasant.”
She walked out a third of the way through the class and vowed never to do yoga again. “And so any time someone says they don't know why I like yoga, I get it. I have been there,” she says. “There are days where the postures feel impossible to me, where breathing is laborious, where I have to really battle with my mind. It’s just the acceptance of the reality that changes.”
Of course, being a body positivity activist comes with its own set of challenges. Especially when our culture stigmatises fat people.
“I’ve experienced discrimination as a yoga practitioner, but also as a yoga teacher. I’ve had people come into my classes and look at me like, ‘you can’t possibly be the teacher’. And they will ask me: ‘are you a teacher?’ And I’m like, ‘yeah’. And you can tell that they’re thinking: ‘Am I going to have to pay this fat girl $20 to not really get the experience that I thought I was gonna have?’. It’s always that same person after class who comes up to me saying they had the most incredible experience.”
Stanley unashamedly refers to herself as fat. “Whether you’re fat, or you’re black, or you don’t see people in the [yoga] space who look like you, there’s this feeling of ‘I shouldn’t be here, I don’t deserve to do this. And the only thing that I’ve found to counter that is just accepting that haters are going to hate and that’s OK. Let them do them. And I can do me.”
Talking to Stanley is like a breath of fresh air. She is compassionate, confident and inspirational. So what needs to change?
“There are endless reasons why someone might feel they’re not good enough to do yoga or to live an active lifestyle,” she says. “That’s why the Watch Us Move campaign is so crucial. This kind of representation – showing different bodies doing different things, living their lives fully and proudly and honestly – the repercussion of that single action, of just one physical body being shown to people, can change the world. It changes people’s whole perspective.”
The phrase, ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’ comes to mind.
“Any human being who has ever believed that they are not capable of doing what they set their minds to, if you then see someone directly challenge the mainstream idea, then you are inspired to live your biggest, most vibrant life. And that is what I think can move mountains. It’s visibility. The more that we make space for other people, the more that we lift up people whose voices have not been heard, and whose voices and stories need to be told, the greater change we'll see in the world.”
To the women who are worried about taking up sport, who think yoga is just for skinny people, or who are worried about being judged or being the biggest body in the room, Stanley says just start from wherever you are right now. “I know it feels so scary to step outside your comfort zone and try something new, especially if you think you’re not going to be good at it. Just start from where you are right now. Start small.”
Her best advice? “Don't research, ‘what’s the best place to do CrossFit’ or ‘who’s the best yoga teacher?’. And don’t spend any money. Get on YouTube – there are so many amazing free resources there. You can try teachers all over the world, all different body types, all different lifestyles, and you can just engage with them; you don’t have to sit through the whole class. If you get five minutes into it and the person’s voice gets on your nerves, skip to the next class – don’t worry about it.”
And while you don’t need to invest in the latest kit straight off the bat, “you'll quickly realise why you need a good yoga mat.” she adds. If yoga means just practising child’s pose every day then “that’s perfect,” she says. “Because that one pose will grow into more poses.”
Learning to love your body – whatever shape or size you may be – is, of course, easier said than done. But just think how much happier we would be if we weren’t so focused on how we look or what others think. “Don’t worry what other people think,” she adds. “I know it’s hard, and there are going to be times where it feels completely impossible. But that, ultimately, is yoga.”
