Fifty Shades of Yoga

There's a fascinating Facebook page called 50 Shades of Yoga which makes an interesting connection between sexual bondage and yoga. Now let me start by making this very clear: I know very little about yoga, I'm not speaking as an expert on yoga.

Still, there's a certain superficial visual similarity between yoga and some of the more extreme bondage poses. The 50 Shades of Yoga page seeks to establish some greater similarity, but I'm not informed enough on the subject to make any judgements along those lines. Read the page and decide for yourself.

I found the 50 Shades of Yoga through a post on a the Elephant Journal blog that completely condemned it. The Elephant Journal post is by someone who teaches and practices yoga, and she's cheesed about it because she feels it's wrong to conflate bondage and yoga, or most forms of sexiness and yoga. She says, "This is the shit that makes men wiggle their eyebrows and make inappropriate comments and passes at me simply because I teach yoga. I’m a yoga teacher, not a whore."

I completely missed the meme about yoga instructors being whores, or whore-like. I had more a picture of them as spiritual, new-Agey, sometimes ditzy folks, generally focused on being healthy mentally and physically, in a sexy sort of way. Frankly, the contortions yoga practitioners go through look too difficult and uncomfortable to make me think of sex. (I honestly have the same problem with extreme bondage poses, they look so uncomfortable I have trouble thinking them sexy, even though the women are naked and tied up, though I realize that the women who are thusly bound are probably either flexible enough to handle them readily, or kind of enjoying the pain, or both).

Sure, the women who practice yoga are sexy and slinky and bendy and probably very good in bed, but it never struck me as what yoga is ABOUT, I mean, most forms of physical exercise and sports that women engage in make them slinky and sexy and are also venues for male fantasies, but that's not what they're ABOUT.

Still the visual similarity is intriguing, and fun to think about in an entirely salacious way. Check out the my post on this topic on my Politically Sexy blog for a thoroughly NSFW illustrated version.

Fifty Shades of Lame Party Game

First Published on 12/72012

As Fifty Shades of Grey the book has spread out into mass culture, one of the things I've envisioned happening to it has happened: in at least one instance, it has had the kink bowlerized right out of it. I mean, completely: let me introduce you to the Fifty Shades of Grey party game, a game that has no kink in it whatsoever.

Basically, it's a card game in which people are asked a series of vanilla questions and then they try to guess most accurately who would be a good match for the answer, or something along those lines. It's generic embarrassing sexy-ish party drivel. As one commenter on the Cafe Mom post but it, "It's one of those games designed to be a gift you give someone to embarrass them at a party, but which will never be played."

I've tried to figure out why anyone would sell a "Fifty Shades" branded item that is sure to disappoint all of the 50 million people who have bought the book, and all I can figure is a combination of greed, short-sightedness and cynicism. The game-makers objective is to sell as many units as possible, that's all. And they figure that having branded the game "Fifty Shades" they've done all they need to in order to attract people who read the book, so now they are after the dollars of people who have not read the book and probably don't even like it's subject matter. So they squeeze the bondage content right out of the game, so Aunt Sarah in Dubuque who doesn't like sex at all won't find it too offensive.

Of course, word of mouth will kill this game dead, and I'm happy to report that all three reports I've read about the game in various media point out that it's very vanilla, in varying degrees of subtlety. (CafeMom is the most blunt of the group, but then, they've got an active group of readers and responders who won't let them get away with crap.)

There IS a Red Room Expansion pack, totally undescribed in any report I've read, which MAY have kinky content, but really, if there is a more classic case of throwing good money after bad than buying the Red Room Expansion Pack, I don't know what it might be.