Most of us have suspected this since our first wide-legged forward fold, usually right as the morning light comes through the studio window at exactly the wrong angle: all yoga pants are see-through. Yours, mine, the expensive pair, the ones from the clearance bin. Put any of them under bright light, in a deep enough fold, and the fabric gives away a little more than we planned on.
I think that’s actually good news for teachers. If the most famous yoga-pants company on the planet can get caught with sheer fabric, the rest of us can afford to hold our certainty loosely and keep our sense of humor. So let’s talk about the two things this topic asks of us: what we wear, and where we look.
The $2 Billion Reminder That It’s Fabric, Not Bodies
Back in 2013, Lululemon had to recall a huge batch of black women’s pants, reportedly about 17 percent of the women’s pants on their shelves. The problem showed up exactly where we live as yoga teachers: in forward folds and downward dog, the fabric went sheer. The recall wiped out something like two billion dollars in market value and kicked off a genuinely rough year for the company.
The part that still makes me wince wasn’t the fabric. It was the response. Instead of simply fixing the material, the company suggested that the real problem was that some women’s bodies just didn’t suit the pants. They took a manufacturing issue and turned it into a people issue. That’s the trap I want us to step around as teachers. When fabric does what fabric does, it isn’t a verdict on anyone’s body. It’s gravity, loose weave, and physics.
This isn’t only a women’s-leggings situation, by the way. Men’s shorts can reveal more than the person wearing them ever intended. The kind reading, and the one I always choose, is that nobody walked into class hoping to show me their anatomy.
Where to Look: The Easy Part
Let’s take the looking first, because it’s the simpler of the two. When something becomes visible that a student never meant to show, you give them the dignity of your averted eyes. You shift your position. You find something else to cue. You carry on as though nothing happened, because as far as the room is concerned, nothing did.
That’s hospitality, plain and simple. It’s the same instinct that makes a good host step over a spilled drink and hand someone a napkin without comment. You aren’t ignoring your students; you’re protecting their dignity. This is part of the larger skill of reading the room and responding to whatever actually shows up in it.
What to Wear: The Part That Depends on the Room
The wearing side is more interesting, because the right answer changes depending on the room you walk into. I have the perfect story for this.
My student Andrea took my course on teaching yoga to athletes and landed a job with the New York Jets. Before she taught a single session, she did exactly what I recommend: she went in for a scouting visit to see the space and meet the people. Her hiring manager walked her through the facility and then said, “Let’s talk about dress code.” Andrea, gracious as ever, said, “Oh, what I’ve seen the players wearing is absolutely fine.” He said, “No. Your dress code.” Then he walked her into the equipment room and handed her an XL t-shirt.
I love that story, because the lesson lands without anybody having to lecture anybody. In that room, with that audience, an XL t-shirt was the uniform. When Andrea works with the players now, she chooses less tight clothing and less makeup than she otherwise might. I do the same when I teach athletes, and when I bring a younger assistant to the football team, I suggest joggers and a looser top. You read the room, and you dress for it. Different rooms carry different norms, and a lot of your ease comes from simply knowing them ahead of time.
When to Say Something to a Student
So when is it worth raising the subject with someone else? My answer: rarely, and only ever in service of the student. This is never about policing bodies or appointing yourself the modesty monitor of your own classroom.
It comes up when you’re mentoring a newer teacher, or prepping someone for a specific setting, like a corporate class or an athletic team, where what they wear genuinely shapes how they’re received. In those moments, a private heads-up is a gift, the same thing a good colleague would do for you. You offer it the way you’d want it offered to you.
Practical Wardrobe Advice You Can Use This Week
Enough philosophy. Here is the part you can act on:
- If you teach in shorts, go longer, or choose basketball-style shorts with a built-in liner. That solves the whole thing before it starts.
- Looser pants tend to read as welcome and comfortable in most yoga rooms. For many teachers, leggings are simply the norm. Just remember that the norm shifts from room to room.
- Try joggers or drawstring pants. You might discover you love teaching in them: easy to move in, and you never think about them again.
- Run the dressing-room test. When you shop, get into the fitting room, do your deepest, widest-legged forward fold with your back to the mirror, and look between your legs under the brightest light in the building. Virtually all yoga pants are see-through, and fluorescent light will tell you the truth your bedroom mirror is too polite to mention.
The Real Reason a Silly Topic Matters
Here is what I want you to carry out of this one: cover what you can, look away from what you can’t, and offer your students the same grace you would want offered to you. That covers the pants, and honestly, it covers most of the teaching too.
I’ll go first with the vulnerability. I have a recurring teaching dream where I am at the front of the room in an actual dress, trying to demonstrate a three-legged downward dog with one leg high in the air, fully aware that it is going badly. It doesn’t take a psychologist to read that one. It is about feeling exposed, about standing up in front of people half-convinced you are about to be found out.
Almost every teacher I know carries some version of that dream. That is the real reason a lighthearted topic earns a few minutes of our attention. Dressing with care, and looking away with kindness, is one small way we take care of the room, for our students and for ourselves. If that nagging sense of being found out sounds familiar, you are in very good company, and it is worth building the kind of confidence that doesn’t depend on your outfit.
Want to Go Deeper?
If teaching athletes intrigues you, the scouting visit, the dress code, all of it, that whole world is what we get into in my Teaching Yoga to Athletes training. And if you would rather listen than read, this post started as an episode of my podcast, Yoga Teacher Confidential.
I would genuinely love to hear your best wardrobe-malfunction story. Come find me in the Zone, my free community for teachers, and tell me the one that still makes you cringe.
