Jessamyn Stanley: The Unlikely Yogi Who Took Instagram by Storm

With over 300,000 Instragram followers, 30-year old yoga sensation, Jessamyn Stanley has reclaimed the word ‘fat’. She began documenting her home yoga practice on Instagram in 2012 and has garnered several endorsement deals with such brands as Motrin and Kotex. The candid, yet reflective captions that accompany each jaw-dropping photo of her doing a seemingly impossible pose has drawn in countless followers on various social media platforms. And it all started on Instagram.

Why is Instagram a viable social media platform?

Jessamyn has been called an “Instagram star” in several articles chronicling her rise to fame. Instagram’s popularity has been growing steadily since it first debuted back in 2010. With more than 500 million active users, it’s currently the second most popular social media network in the world, behind only Facebook. In a survey of more than 2,500 micro-influencers (mid-sized social media users with a large following of daily engaged users), 60% thought Instagram was the best overall platform for engagement. The social platform’s benefits include:

• Mobile functionality: Easy to use on-the-go making it an in-the-moment experience for users.
• Visual nature: Humans prefer to gather and interpret information visually. 
• Novelty: Different from Facebook and Twitter because of its simplicity. This quality has attracted mostly users under age 30.
• Function: Not limited to just one social function making it approachable to a wide number of people.

How has social media played a role in Jessamyn’s popularity?

As social media has become a mainstay in our society, consumers have gravitated to sharing their ideas, opinions and expertise in this space. American media scholar and professor, Henry Jenkins describes participatory culture as one:

• With relatively low barrier to artistic expression and civic engagement.
• With strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others.
• With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices.
• Where members believe that their contributions matter.
• Where members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created).

Jessamyn instantly connected with her followers because she shared her art in an unashamed and compelling way. She has proven her credibility and expressed her passion by demonstrating amazing yoga poses and showing off her curvaceous body in an industry generally characterized by a diminutive Caucasian woman with toned abs.

“They want to see another person that’s like them,” says Stanley of her followers, many of whom, she says, feel intimidated by the average yoga studio.” 

Source: Raphael, R. (2017). How This “Fat Femme” Yoga Instructor is Reshaping the $3 Trillion Wellness Industry.

The notion of loving one’s self, particularly for women, has become a mantra in social media as women are often the target of bullying or “body shaming”. Body shaming is expressing mockery or criticism about a person’s body shape or size, typically in a public or social forum. Social media campaigns, such as the #SpeakBeautiful campaign by Dove, that was created to change the conversation and tone of women’s body-negative Tweets. 

Jessamyn has used her voice, expertise and passion to shut down all the body-shamers on social media by conveying that she may be overweight, but she can do a headstand and the splits. This is the hook of social media – it gives ordinary people a
platform in which to share their passion and creativity and for those interested in the same cause to join the conversation.

Jenkins also coined the term “spreadability”. Not to be confused with stickiness, spreadability is the dispersing of content widely through both formal and informal networks, some approved, many unauthorized. It describes the ways in which content travels through social media. Jessamyn began with Instagram by simply sharing amazing photos of herself doing grand yoga poses. She expanded her reach by sharing content on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and eventually created her own website and blog on Tumblr and her audience grew as they shared, commented and posted Jessamyn’s content on their own social media feeds and pages.

What can Jessamyn do to maintain her appeal on Instagram and other social media platforms?

With an already impressive number of followers on major social media platforms, particularly Instagram, Jessamyn can employ additional tactics to keep her follower base engaged and attract new followers. Some recommendations include: 

• Posting more video content on Instagram.
• Updating YouTube channel with new video content.
• Using Instagram Stories to stay at the top of followers’ feed.

More about Jessamyn

Jessamyn Stanley was recently awarded the Shorty Award for Best Work on Social in the Healthy Living category. The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media by recognizing the influencers, brands and organizations on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat, Vine and more. She has also lent her personality and voice to other social media campaigns, including, #WomanInProgress pioneered by actress, Tracee Ellis Ross and the #FindYourFitness campaign by Kotex to market their new active protection line.