When I was twelve, I babysat a seven-year-old girl who could twist herself into pretzel shapes and practically hang from the ceiling. She said her mom was teaching her yoga, and it was fun. All I knew was that my body could not fathom striving for similar levels of dexterity, and in addition to doing yoga, the family ate only organic food, which to me meant no sugar, preservatives or fat. They fired me one day after I took the kid down to a convenience store and bought her chocolate Teddy Grahams. "Go ahead, eat `em, they're good. Your mom will never know." Whoops.

For years after that, I equated yoga with whole wheat bread, carob and all-natural peanut butter in plastic yellow vats, the oil part separated, swimming on top. Plus, I was convinced that spending over an hour simply stretching made absolutely no sense, when you could be looking and feeling a lot cooler playing basketball with the boys.

Skip ahead about thirteen years. Now, everyone I know is doing it-contorting their bodies, breathing properly, finding their chi. After mocking hippie neighbors and hippie friends and vegans and everyone else at the Vinyasa class, I found myself at City Sports, arguing with my roommate about which yoga mat to purchase.

It's all about the packaging

I wish it weren't true, but when you get right down to it, sophisticated presentation is pivotal. Whether it's the new line of perfume by Fresh in sleek letters on cream-colored rice paper or the decor on my paper towels, I have to admit, good graphic design is eye-catching and income-generating. The rationale my friends and I use is, Well, they've obviously worked very hard making their product look pretty; we should reward their efforts by purchasing said product. But what about when said company is a world-renowned foreign child-exploiting, overpriced conglomerate? What then?

Let me first say, I also used to babysit for one of the owners of City Sports. While Cody slept, I would watch Dirty Dancing, pet their Egyptian cat and eat five of the six ice cream Snickers bars in their freezer. I'm always torn when I enter their store now. I think, is the money I'm spending only going to buy more Snickers bars or an addition on their house, or am I right in supporting a family I know and like, even though their company is buying out privately-owned businesses? Frankly, at seven o'clock on a Monday night, you're lucking if any sporting good stores are still open. We went in City Sports and stood in the yoga section for oh, nearly an hour.

Here's the problem:

The brandless yoga mats didn't look as cool. Yeah, that really was the problem. In addition, Nike offered an actual yoga kit, complete with a mat, two blocks and a belt. Not only was it ten dollars off, but everything in the box was a svelte shade of blue and looked pretty cool with the swoosh logo slapped all over it. Please-don't throw the eggs just yet. It's not that I didn't know it was wrong to buy evil Nike-I've made good on my boycott endeavors since the end of high school, in fact-I just thought, Geez, I need a yoga mat tonight and this is the best deal.

I need.

I neeeeeeed.

We need food, water and a place to sleep. We do not need Nike yoga mats. Still, the ever throat-clenching, gut-wrenching pull of commercialism always gets us in the end. I felt a little schmaltzy on the train home, with my new toys sticking out of City Sports' bright yellow bags. I had become a struggling member of the working class cleverly posing as a wealthy yuppie. What part of American culture, which is purely the culture of materialism, is so alluring? How is it we convince ourselves, time and again, that we need something as trivial as a sports accoutrement or an overpriced burrito? And it always seems the more broke we are, the more dumb things we "need." All I can do is lower my head and limp shamefully out of one corporate retailer to the next, jingling bells banging behind me.

Om...

Later, mats unrolled on the kitchen floor, we sat ironically criticizing the hippie neighbors upstairs for interrupting our Nike-sponsored meditation with house-shaking thumps from their drum circle. Unable to sit in proper silence, we read the yoga guide my roommate had been given at her overpriced women's gym. As long as we talk sarcastically about these places, it's ok to go to them, right? That rationale gnaws through me with the weight of the fact that, just like eating an occasional fancy dinner, frequenting expensive exercise facilities isn't necessarily bad, as long as you view your membership as an earned and consciously-chosen commodity.

I wasn't very good at the stretching or balancing and I still can't touch my toes, but as long as I've got my Nike yoga mat and it's got me, I'll improve eventually. Or maybe I'll just start my own line of sporting goods for the don't-call-me-yuppie target market, stealthily stealing business away from every family I ever babysat for. Until that day comes, my fellow Americans, consume with discretion.