Montreal yoga teacher pushes back against ‘skinny culture’ and harmful beauty standards

A Montreal yoga teacher is using her voice and her practice to challenge skinny culture and promote self-worth beyond appearance.

A Montreal woman is challenging what she calls skinny culture - something she says many have struggled with for too long.

Melanie Richards has been teaching yoga for more than 15 years. She’s shared her practice with all walks of life - from those young and old, and men and women, to those who’ve battled with mental health.

After struggling to find comfort in her own body, Richards says her work is close to her heart.

“When I was little, I really wanted to be an actress. I did get an agent. He was kind enough to take me on even though he said to me, ‘I will not be able to send you for lead roles because you have an athletic build,’” the founder of HappyTree Yoga explained.

Back then, Richards was told that the anorexic look was in. She turned to yoga as a way to get lean and lose weight.

“In deepening my practice, I came in really connected with myself and connected with my body and found a sense of self-worth and confidence that was independent from my looks,” Richards said.

She quit acting to build the HappyTree Yoga studio and community. She focused on body positivity and advocating for mental health.

According to data on body image from the government of Quebec, children notice body size by the age of three. By age four, many girls say they wish they were thinner, and one third of nine year-old girls have already attempted to lose weight.

“Your body is not the problem. The beauty standards are the problem,” psychologist Stéphanie Léonard told CTV.

She says body standards are evolving for the worse.

“In the ‘90s, we used to just flip through a magazine and see this model and just say, ‘oh my God, I don’t look like that.’ [...] Now we’re comparing ourselves to images which have been modified. [...] But more recently we’ve had medication like GLP-1,” she said.

After losing her sister to an eating disorder, Richards warns that skinny culture can be disguised as health.

“[My sister] was a personal trainer. And so she was able to kind of hide behind diet culture. [...] In yoga and fitness and wellness industries it’s especially insidious. It’s saying that automatically you’re healthy if you’re thin and you’re unhealthy if you’re not thin. And that’s actually not true,” she said.

Today, Richards has proudly taken to social media to say ‘no’ to skinny culture. That’s the message she hopes to leave with her students, with young Quebecers, and with generations to come.