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EntertainmentLove & Sex

Girl Talk: My First Pole Dancing Class

by Lana Vrzic August 18, 2018
by Lana Vrzic August 18, 2018

I am not sexy.

That could be the takeaway if you’d been a fly on the pole — er, the wall — at my first pole dancing class this weekend. There are a great many talents I have in this world. But strutting sexy and swirling around a pole are not some of those gifts.

I don’t usually get on my hands and knees and waggle my butt in the air to the Black Eyed Peas, but maybe I should try it more often.

My girlfriend Jenny* invited me to tag along to her pole dancing class on Saturday afternoon and, honestly, I don’t think I would have gone if she wasn’t a lesbian. If Amelia or some other straight woman was, like, “Girl, you have to try pole dancing!!!” I would have rolled my eyes at the patriarchal brainwashing. Pole dancing is not sexy if Miley Cyrus is doing it to appear “edgy,” I would have thought. But my Sapphic pal Jenny lives deep in the bowels of Brooklyn with her girlfriend and a menagerie of guinea pigs and cats. And hey, if she said pole dancing (typically the stuff of male fantasies) makes her feel good, I’d take her word for it.

I should fess up to something here: I am out of shape. I take beginner’s yoga classes and jog at my gym, but I only recently started lifting weights and, um, I need to do a little more work in the toning department. So I’ll admit that maybe I would have liked pole dancing a lot more if I actually had muscles.

Class began with “sexy stripper moves”: half an hour on a floor mat of sashaying our asses side to side, humping the floor, and gracefully lifting our arms to the beat of Top 40 pop music. I don’t usually get on my hands and knees and waggle my butt in the air to the Black Eyed Peas, but maybe I should try it more often. Jenny had told me to wear shorts and a T-shirt to class — and I swear to you, 10 minutes in, I wanted to take all my clothes off, I was sweating so much.

After the instructor — a dancer with a body like Britney Spears, circa 2001 — tired us all out, it was time to hit the pole. This is when it became clear to me that I am really, really uncoordinated. For the rest of class, she taught us progressively more difficult pole dancing moves. Jenny followed along like a champion: lifting herself up on the pole with one arm and kicking into the air, wrapping her legs around the pole and hanging upside down.

But I couldn’t get past “strutting sexy around the pole.”

It’s not that hard. It can’t be that hard. It’s walking around a stripper pole, for God’s sake. All a girl needs to do is keep her body and arms lax, while strutting around the pole, throwing her head back. I became increasingly self-conscious at my inability to master a “sexy” gait. This isn’t me. This isn’t what I do. My best moves are in bed, not swinging around a pole. I have a boyfriend who thinks I’m extremely sexy as is. Why was I doing this again?!

But I couldn’t just leave. So, we took turns on the pole, Jenny and I. But by the end of class, I let her have it all to herself. I guess you could say I “gave up.” Any looseness I’d shaken out in the first half of class tightened up; my body grew rigid with insecurity. I caught myself staring at the other women during class and comparing myself to their looks, their talent and their confidence. I wanted to watch the other women — professional dancers? professional strippers? — who were good on the pole, especially this one woman who looked just like the model Amber Rose. Their movements were so fluid and graceful that even a pole dancing cynic like me had to admit it’s beautiful to watch.

But the more I watched the sexy women do their thing, the worse I felt about myself. Some women in pole dancing class wore 6-inch-tall Lucite heels, while Jenny and I went barefoot. I have to say, I felt barefoot and everything that connotes it: grubby, dirty, not pulled together, unsexy. They looked like sexy, desirable women, women I wanted to have, women I wanted to be. And I wanted to lose 20 lbs, highlight my hair, and paint my face full of makeup before I even set a bare foot in the same room as them again.

After class, the instructor told me I did a good job — which was kind of her, but a total lie. I thanked Jenny for letting me tag along, but I knew in my heart pole dancing is not for me.

My boyfriend’s been hinting that he wants me to show him my “new moves,” but I can’t find it in myself to, um, hump the floor. I don’t have the confidence to do a sexy strut in a room full of women, let alone in front of him.

All weekend, I kinda thought that was my problem, like I must be more awkward than I thought. Then, this morning, I IMed my friend Chloe, who blogs at Feministing. I filled in Chloe about pole dancing class, and my doubts about my skills, and she made a good (albeit sarcastic) point: “Sexiness as a performance and not something that occurs naturally! What a novel idea!”

Sexiness as performance. How true. I was performing. It was fake, at least for me. Yeah, I’m not physically fit enough to do any of the “sexy” moves on the stripper pole; everything in my body just tightened up when I tried to hack it. I just don’t express myself sexually that way — it’s extremely inauthentic to me. No wonder I sucked at pole dancing: I was forcing myself to “be sexy” in a way that’s been defined by other people. And some of those other people — my guy, for example, and millions of other American men — do really think it’s hot. But I didn’t feel hot; I felt ridiculous.

With the help of Chloe’s analysis, pole dancing class confirmed some of my initial cynicism: It can be a pretty fake display of “sexiness” for some women who find the whole thing unnatural. But pole dancing class also gave me a newfound respect for the athleticism of the skill. Pole dancing is HARD. Pole dancers are athletes and I now wholeheartedly believe they deserve a place in the 2012 Olympics. The strength in their upper arms and core is incredible and making it look fluid, graceful and easy is not easy. Jenny can do this. I can’t. And that’s OK.

Did I feel “sexy” during any part of the class? The “sexy stripper moves” we learned at the beginning of class are something I could do without feeling ridiculous (mostly). I might incorporate them into my workout at home because they really did make me sweat! And perhaps I’ll try another pole class in a few months — after I’ve beefed up my biceps, of course. But I’ll probably just keep both feet on the ground because, honestly, I’ve felt pretty sexy here all along.

*Name has been changed

 

Original by Jessica Wakeman

exercisegirl talkinsecuritypole dancingpole dancing classstrippersstripping
Lana Vrzic

Lana is a dedicated writer and Editor in Chief of TheFrisky, who has been with us from the beginning. Her diverse range of interests, from technology and business to health and wellness, allows her to bring a fresh perspective to each topic she covers.

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