In Which I Partake of a Cultural Moment

My morning at "Taylor Swift Yoga."

So I went to “Taylor Swift Yoga” this weekend.  As I’ve mentioned here before, I’ve been doing yoga for a while.  Usually I do private lessons or a small class near me.  But occasionally I go to Jill Davis’s yoga classes at the Hi-Wire Brewery in Knoxville’s “South Coast.”  (That’s a development of bars, restaurants, and shops on the south shore of Fort Loudon Lake, which is basically just a dammed up part of the Tennessee River.  It runs more or less through the middle of Knoxville.)

The Hi-Wire classes are inexpensive ($8 usually, though this special Taylor-Swift-themed class was $10.)  And you get half-priced beer.  I don’t usually get one, as pre-lunch beers aren’t really my thing, but I do every once in a while, just because it seems decadent. (There was also a Swift-themed brunch — naturally — afterward, catered by Redbuds, a southern-style restaurant located next door, but Helen and I didn’t stay for that).

The Taylor Swift theme drew a big crowd.  I counted 50 at one point and when I looked around later, more had come in.  Fortunately, it’s a big space.  (5 of us were men; TS-themed yoga is even more heavily female than regular yoga).

(If you zoom in you can see Helen in black near the center of the above image.)

What made it Taylor Swift yoga?  Basically the music was just her new album, streamed in sequence.  I thought it sounded pretty good, though it’s hard to seriously judge music while posing three-legged downward dog.  I didn’t hear an obvious single in the stuff they played, but I’m not sure Taylor Swift exists anymore in a universe where you need obvious singles.  Some people wore T-Swift concert gear, and the teacher, Jill Davis, wore cowboy boots, a miniskirt, and a “Taylor” football jersey.  (Jill’s also a Pilates teacher, and her yoga often includes a lot of Pilates-like “pulsing” movements, which I can do, but which are definitely harder than regular yoga.  But I wasn’t sore, somewhat to my surprise.)

Though the album had only been out for a couple of days, many of them sang along with the songs, having apparently already memorized the words.  That’s dedication.

There’s lots of hate for Swifties, but honestly this crowd, composed largely of college-aged and post-college-aged women was cheerful, friendly, and upbeat.  (There were a few women there who looked to be older than us, but I’d put the mean age at about 25, and the median a year or two younger.)

The Swift phenomenon irritates a lot of people, including a fair number of social conservatives.  But honestly, whatever her overt politics are, simply by existing as a blonde white heterosexual woman with an astonishing work ethic who isn’t ashamed of her self-made billionaire status, Taylor Swift is, in these times, a conservative icon of sorts.

What’s more, as I look at all the ugly news over the past week or two, I think it’s nice that her album release gave a lot of people something to feel good about.  There’s a shortage of that nowadays.  So let the Swifties have their fun, and don’t throw shade.  The world needs pop stars, too.