Punking yoga: reconstructing post/neo/colonial fashion and movement

The branded clothes worn through sporting and fitness activities confirm that any movement, practice or behaviour that seems transgressive of heteronormative masculinity and femininity is also implicated in neo/colonial incorporations and the casualized workforce that is a characteristic of sports clothing manufacture. In an environment washed by the marketing of opposition, resistance is both difficult to define and apply in cultural studies. This paper invokes 'the problem' of resistance while denying the seamless and simple determinations of positive and negative representations. The focus of study is Yogurt Activewear, a company attacking corporatized yoga wear by creating an anti-brand brand. They advertise their products as a combination of yoga and punk. The calm corporeality of asanas has now been clothed with threat and confrontation. Yet the cost of this resistance and defiance - the price of building an anti-brand ‑ is a loss in the complexity of yoga's pre/post/colonial origins.