If you Google Jen Polachek, she doesn’t seem to exist anymore, but for a few days in January 2014, she was the biggest thing on the internet. She had written a post for the now-defunct women’s interest website XO Jane, and everybody — everybody — hated it. XO Jane specialised in the personal. Its pitching guidelines told prospective writers: “It helps to always be brutally honest and radically transparent. Don’t fake anything.”
Polachek’s mistake was probably to take that advice seriously. In her piece — titled “It Happened To Me: There Are No Black People In My Yoga Classes And I’m Suddenly Feeling Uncomfortable With It” — Polachek confesses that the arrival of a “young, fairly heavy black woman” in her yoga class had made her feel awkward in her “skinny white girl body”. Why were black people so scarce in yoga, she wondered? How could the discipline she loved be made more inclusive?
... Polachek doesn’t do anything to protect herself from embarrassment. This is brutal honesty and radical transparency.
Polachek’s mistake was probably to take that advice seriously. In her piece — titled “It Happened To Me: There Are No Black People In My Yoga Classes And I’m Suddenly Feeling Uncomfortable With It” — Polachek confesses that the arrival of a “young, fairly heavy black woman” in her yoga class had made her feel awkward in her “skinny white girl body”. Why were black people so scarce in yoga, she wondered? How could the discipline she loved be made more inclusive?
... Polachek doesn’t do anything to protect herself from embarrassment. This is brutal honesty and radical transparency.
Continue reading @ UnHerd.
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