It completely amazes me how much has happened in one week.
The first few times you try pole dancing, it’s super hard and unnatural and awkward. I tripped on my feet and felt really self-conscious walking, like I wasn’t walking “right” or “pretty enough.” I have never had looming concerns about my ability to walk before, but throw a silver pole in one hand and suddenly I am alternating between tip-toes and stomping and trying way too hard to do this most basic human movement.
And forget the spins. I basically stood there watching everyone float around like butterflies while I cocked my head like a puppy dog and thought, “Maybe I should try hula hooping instead.” I was convinced I was not strong enough, coordinated enough or graceful enough. Still, because I’m crazy or a good sport or stupid or all of the above, I kept going back.
Then, something clicked. I’m not saying I suddenly became an aerial expert ready for the circus, but after about class four, I began interacting with the pole differently. Maybe it’s muscle memory, or maybe your brain shuts up, or maybe you stop worrying about how big your thighs look in those booty shorts (which should really be called booty underwear, even though they are smaller than many of my actual underwearses). Or maybe you just stop fearing the pole, and your body, and how it moves, and your femininity.
Feminine is scary.
Ooh. It really is. Because it’s misunderstood. It’s the darkness, the yin.The cold, the inward and downward. The unexplainable and intuitive and unmeasurable and undefinable. It’s that dark part of all of us — of every aspect of the universe — that is easier to ignore than understand, much less accept. Even much less celebrate. This is even apparent down to the way society is critical of the physical shape of a woman (and of course any feminine and empowered movement of that shape), and puts impossible pressure on its women to squish, starve and cut their bodies down into flat, boxy little-boy shapes. (Not to say that only “real” women are all curvy. They aren’t. But not all are skinny, either. We aren’t supposed to all look the same.)
After a few hours of climbing and spinning on the pole — yes, this week I am no longer staring in bewilderment, but I am sort of starting to get some legitimate air — it is beginning to seem silly to think that people would judge it as anything other than another form of self-expression — mixed with a surprising amount of athleticism and power. Which, now that I think about it, seems to be the very definition of “strong woman,” in true, honest and vulnerable physical form.
So of course pole dancing freaks some people out, and elicits a mysterious, taboo response from others.
Still, I find myself casually avoiding mentioning to my mom that I am sore from pole dancing, and I felt apologetic when I mentioned pole dancing around my friend’s 14-year-old son. I felt like I needed to explain that I wasn’t undressing or naked or even grinding on the pole — at all. I want to disclaim that my dance routine could just as easily be done without the pole, but that the pole is just like a prop, to help create different kinds of spins and moves and a different energy.
But even if I disclaim, is anyone really listening? Or just hearing what they already think they know?
***
On another note, a hypnotist asked me (long story… I have a very interesting job) today if I could change one thing in my life, what would it be?
I thought about this a lot, and my brain kept coming back to thinking about these pole dancing classes. But why? On many levels, they are super silly and fun and superficial. But there is something else really odd going on with them, something that’s bigger than just twirling and making my husband get excited to come to a fundraiser for the first and probably last time in his life.
What would I want to change? And how did that relate to pole dancing? I settled on this:
I had a near-death childbirth 15 months ago that left me in bed for several months. I am now finally regaining my strength and energy, trying to reconnect with my body in a new way. I have begun dancing again, and I am interested in realizing my physical strength (because I already have been forced to realize my internal strength), while still staying compassionate with my body and how it is different now.
On an intangible level, it is about seeing myself as a strong survivor instead of a victim of what happened to me. And how that could be expressed externally would be by fearlessly accepting and displaying my existing physical strength as I improve my dancing.
You hear that, me? It’s OK to be as strong as you already are, whether that strength looks like deltoids pulling your body 15 feet into the air, or whether it looks like an effortless spin to the floor, whether it’s smiling, or darkness, or messing up over and over again. The strength is in the honesty.
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