As a pole dance studio owner, I receive at least one inquiry a week from people who want to pole dance but don’t know if it is ‘for them’. They worry that they are too big, too male, too not-a-dancer, too [insert socially marginalized typecast descriptor here]. I get these queries so often that I’ve developed a somewhat canned response for answering them. It reads like this:
Dear Person,
I can understand why you’d assume that you are ‘too []’ to participate in pole dancing. The world of dance that pole derives a lot of its inspiration from (performance teams, ballet, etc.) has traditionally eschewed body types that aren’t tall, lithe, and thin. These genres of dance hail from a long cultural lineage that perpetuates itself as it decides who is allowed to be a dancer.
The lucky thing about pole dancing is that it distinguishes itself from the dance forms it pulls from because of it’s relative newness (the first pole dance/fitness studios cropped up about 15 years ago). In this sense, pole dancing is a somewhat blank canvas on which everyone who plays in it gets to decide what it is. Pole dance also doesn’t bear the historically ingrained burden of one single culturally accepted body type. As a modern sport that is rapidly evolving in a way that progressively mirrors the strong feminism of so many of it’s pioneers, pole has become a sport founded in a culture of inclusion, i.e. a culture that promotes the simple truth that pole dancing is for everyone.
At SF Pole & Dance, we interpret this culture of inclusion quite literally. Here, we have younger (under 18) and older (50+) students, male students, plus sized students and students from hundreds of different cultural and ethnic cultures. What is amazing about our community is that the diversity of our student base means that different types of bodies get to learn from each other, increasing the dance vocabulary of everyone’s style.
In short, you and your body, aren’t *too* anything. You are just right.
Best,
Amy
Though I drafted this response sincerely, it has been pointed out to me that in fact there still are some studios that don’t propound its spirit of inclusion. Even in the 7X7 of San Francisco, one of the most progressive cities in the US, only two studios, SF Pole & Dance and Vertical Barre, allow men to take classes. The others are female-only. I’ve also heard from a handful of plus size women who, after coming to our studio, marvel that it was the first time that they felt welcomed in a pole studio. Maddeningly, one particular student told me of a studio that she attended where the instructor/owner actually told her that she should eat less to lose weight and only then would she be able to climb higher on the pole. I used to think that these kinds of anecdotes were outliers — that the sport that accepts my not-tiny body surely accepted everyone else’s, but I hear more of these stories every month as my small studio has grown.
I believe that the exclusion hurts our industry on a macro-level. For many people who have been made to feel shame about their ability to pole dance, they simply find another sport, rather than finding another studio. While it is hard to gather evidence of the absence of something, I sense the truthfulness of this fact by the lapses of time recounted in the stories I’m told: ‘I tried pole dancing 3 years ago but I didn’t feel welcome. I think I’d like to try again.’ What did many of them do in the meantime? Yoga, i.e. another sport where they felt accepted.
For me, community and inclusion are central component to what it means to be part of a healthy pole dance community. At SF Pole & Dance, the celebration of each person’s individuality is a central component of how we operate, and explicitly so as a pillar of our mission, as laid out by our studio manifesto. Our business is thriving under this model. But in order to grow pole into a sport that can be enjoyed by all, it must be perceived as being accessible by all — and that begins on a community/studio level. If pole studios everywhere reevaluated their policies, I believe that the pole industry would benefit from an (even) more quickly growing customer base and acceptance as the sport/art form that it truly is.
