Reformer pilates has become a flash point in the wellness world. Photo / Getty Images
On TikTok, Pilates is being called a luxury. But instructors say the practice is meant to be restorative, not exclusive.
Yasmine Reed wanted a low-impact, high-intensity workout she could do after suffering a basketball ACL injury. As a travel ICU nurse during the pandemic, she discovered Pilates. It became a kind of therapy after gruelling 12-hour shifts. But the more classes she took, the more she noticed who wasn’t in the room. “It was a very narrow demographic as far as the clients and the instructors,” Reed told The Washington Post.
To fill the gap she saw, she opened the Method Room in March 2024, a Black-owned reformer Pilates studio in DC, with the goal of making the practice more accessible, more welcoming and less intimidating for people who’ve been told Pilates isn’t “for them”.
That tension, who Pilates is really for, spilled into the spotlight last month when Raven Ross, the former Netflix Love Is Blind cast member turned mega-popular instructor, drew backlash for likening the workout to a “luxury” experience akin to buying a Bottega Veneta handbag, which costs thousands of dollars.
It was a head-scratching comparison to many. But Pilates, a series of lengthening and strengthening exercises linked to breath, has become a flash point in the wellness world, conjuring images of impossibly toned, slender bodies; pricey boutique fitness classes and an air of elitism. In July, a DC barre instructor set off an online firestorm when she linked the popularity of Pilates and a societal emphasis on “smaller bodies” with “a rise of conservatism”.
Ross, who has a YouTube channel with more than 400,000 subscribers where she posts free Pilates workouts, waded in with a TikTok video trying to explain Pilates’ “proximity to Whiteness” and its lack of diversity.
“You would never walk into Bottega and be like, ‘Where’s the diversity? Where’s the accessibility?’ Babe, there is no accessibility,” she said in the now-deleted TikTok. “This is Bottega. I want you to think the same way about Pilates.”
She doubled down, noting that “nothing about Pilates is giving cheap”. Ross went on to criticise similar, newer workouts like Lagree and Solidcore for lacking “legacy” and “craftsmanship”. The backlash was swift: Ross lost more than 30,000 followers, and her comments were judged by many as wrong and hurtful.
The following day, Ross, a biracial influencer whose mother is White and father is Black, made an apology video. She said she had “missed the mark” and “as a Black instructor wants to consistently improve”. In a statement provided to The Post, Ross added, “I can only hope my intentions and actions speak louder than anything else. I’ve dedicated my career to making Pilates more affordable and accessible.”
Still, Ross’s video set off weeks of discourse: is Pilates both a form of exercise and a luxury good? At the end of last mont, singer Dua Lipa began selling an at-home Pilates reformer for US$4999 ($8600).
And why are so many, especially people of colour, still being made to feel like outsiders in a movement they helped start? The Post spoke to five Pilates instructors about the barriers that keep people from practising Pilates, misconceptions about the workout and what they want to see happen in the industry to get more diversity in the room.
The practice didn’t start in a boutique studio with US$40 classes but in a World War I internment camp on the Isle of Man. There, Joseph Pilates, a German circus performer and gymnast, rigged hospital beds with springs to create resistance exercises for fellow detainees. After the war, he brought his method to New York where he opened a studio. He trained Black dancer Kathleen Stanford Grant, one of the earliest certified Pilates instructors, who helped popularise reformer pilates, which is performed on a specialised machine. (There’s also mat Pilates, which usually costs less, sometimes nothing at all, and requires little equipment other than a yoga mat.)
Christina Black, a 40-year-old instructor in Honolulu, said Ross’ comments came off “as very elitist,” but concedes that “training is expensive and the equipment is expensive”. Still, she’d like to see a better emphasis on what Pilates can do to benefit a wide array of bodies.
Pilates is what healed her after suffering back, ankle and hip injuries as a professional dancer in New York City, Black said. Her clients include college football players, people in their 60s and 70s, and a man with a spinal cord injury. “Pilates is supposed to be restorative, not exclusive,” Black said.
She recalled one client who began Pilates after a back injury. “By month three or four she told me, ‘I deep cleaned the house yesterday, and for the first time, my back didn’t hurt.’”
@kianafotoohi as a Pilates instructor I’m just as confused as you are #pilates #pilatestiktok #pilatesinstructor
♬ original sound - Kiana Fotoohi - Pilates
Kiana Fotoohi, an Iranian American mat and reformer Pilates instructor in Los Angeles, also emphasised how Pilates can be used as cross-training to maintain mobility and flexibility, especially as people age.
“Pilates will make you strong,” Fotoohi said. “Pilates will make you more capable of doing all your normal life things.”
In 2023, the hashtag #PilatesPrincess started to appear on TikTok. Scroll the tag and you’ll most likely see a young woman with an iced drink or high-end water bottle in hand, going to or leaving a Pilates class wearing premium athleisure and posting it all online.
It’s not just Pilates, it’s Pilates plus beauty, fashion and wellness rituals. Certified instructors warn that’s where the problem lies: the more Pilates gets wrapped in consumer aesthetics, the further it drifts from its original purpose – a complaint that’s also roiled the yoga community over the years.
Fotoohi said this entire discourse has made her rethink how to build more community access to Pilates.
“Pilates is more than getting a matcha and going to class in a matching [workout] set. When you put things inside a trend, you are putting them in little categories and that creates an atmosphere of restriction,” the 29-year-old said. “I definitely want to do more community events. I’m very fed up with this whole Pilates trendiness thing.”
@bellehenriques love bella hadid but wth was she on about lol #fyp #foryoupage #pilates #pilatesgirl #pilatesprincess #pilatesaesthetic #pilateslife #wellnessgirl #wellness #wellnessaesthetic #wellnesslife #blackgirltiktok #blackgirlmagic @Sol de Janeiro @lululemon @polene_paris @RHODE
♬ original sound - BELLE.
On social media, Pilates is often reduced to an aesthetic: coordinated outfits, Instagram-friendly studios, a workout that will give you six-pack abs and long, lean legs. But Black argues that this image obscures the practice’s real purpose. “A lot of what is on social media right now is not actually Pilates – or it’s a very skewed version of it,” she said.
When the workout was created, the “princess” image was far from the mind of Joseph Pilates, who died in 1967 at age 83. He once boasted that his regimen allowed you to “Eat what you want, drink what you want. I drink a quart of liquor a day, plus some beers, and smoke maybe 15 cigars”.
Studios could do a better job of making everyone feel welcome, instructors said.
“I would love to see more older women, more older Black women, walk into a Pilates class and feel like it’s for them, too,” said Stephanie Green, a Detroit-based Pilates and Solidcore instructor.
“I just encourage you to not let one studio experience or one instructor experience diminish the way that you think about the practice,” the 24-year-old added.
Morgan Jones, a wellness- and Pilates-focused content creator with nearly 100,000 followers on TikTok, said most of her private Pilates clients are black women who find her on social media. “The Pilates industry as a whole tends to be more cold than other fitness spaces,” she observed. For black women who’ve experienced microaggressions, “it automatically makes you tense up a little bit”.
Jones said she thinks Pilates can and should be used “as a complement” to other training regimens. “Anybody like golfers, tennis players, strength trainers can benefit. At the end of the day, it wasn’t really designed around fitness per se. It was designed around mind-muscle connection and core strength.”
But opening the tent will require a more diverse array of instructors who appeal to a broader audience. Which brings us back to Reed, the Method Room founder, who points out one big barrier to entry: Pilates certification programs can run thousands of dollars, keeping many would-be instructors out of the field.
“We’ve made our training prices so that instructors don’t need to have that capital to get into the industry. Because somebody might not have the finances to join a training shouldn’t be why they aren’t an instructor,” she said.
“We’re not only offering a workout, we’re opening the door.”