"But what am I supposed to do?" I whined to her. Do I have to wink or giggle, act in ways that don't seem at all natural to me? Besides, I've put up barriers to fend off unwanted advances, and I don't intend to encourage them. Last month, for instance, an attorney I called about a story asked me if I was "hot," looked me up on Facebook and invited me out for cocktails.
Karyn Pentecost says a regular dose of pole dancing in a healthy, girls-only environment can help a woman navigate these thorny quandaries.
Allison V. Smith
Instructor and owner Karyn Pentecost leads students in "The Heart-on" during the striptease portion of Exotic Pole Fusion.
Allison V. Smith
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"I treat you as if you're Megan Inc. and your business is your life experiences, past, present and future. For most of us, part of the past is that sex and sensuality are considered dirty, that femininity is weak," she tells me one recent afternoon in her office at the Girls Room. "A lot of women don't feel safe around men; they feel they have to be more masculine to be strong. But I believe that if you were born a woman, you have an innate desire to be feminine." The goal, she says, is to balance our feminine and masculine sides.
"You have to believe that your feminine side is just as smart and powerful as your masculine side," she tells me. "Which means you have to go back to when did you stop feeling safe expressing your femininity?"
Easy. Seventh grade. K.C. Lucas sits behind me in economics class and every day comments about my breasts or lack thereof, asking if I'm wearing a bra and saying I'm probably not, calling me a "scrub" and for an assignment, inventing a product called "Scrub-away Spray!"
Who knew pole dancing could be a veritable trip to the shrink? I return from my middle-school reverie to see Pentecost looking at me with her piercing, aquamarine eyes. Then she's off on another philosophical tangent about the merits of using exotic dancing techniques to enhance mainstream gender equality. "Women are repressed," she says, pointing at me. "They tell you to wear a turtleneck and cut off all your hair, because 'You know how men are...'"
I glance down at my short-sleeve red mock turtleneck and touch my hair, which I recently cut short. Is she saying I look manly?
"We need to work on your feminine side," Pentecost says, "get that creative side moving."
Though you'd never imagine it from looking at her, Pentecost says she had to deliberately develop her own femininity. "I was a tomboy growing up because I felt safe with boys that way," she says. "I was always taught that feminine equaled weak." Raised in Tennessee by a Catholic mother and Pentecostal father, she was the middle child of six and says she emulated her older brothers "because they got more attention."
In high school and college, though, she fell in love with dance and began competing in hip-hop competitions. She noticed she was competing against many dancers who performed in strip clubs. One night while she was working the register at Arby's, one of them walked in for a sandwich and whipped out a big wad of cash. "She said she made $800 a night," Pentecost recalls. "It became a game. I said, 'If I'm beating them at contests every week, I could probably beat them at their own dance style.'" At 21 she embarked on a seven-year stripping career and posed for Playboy about a decade ago.
"I made a lot of money, and I saved it," she says. "I wasn't a typical stripper who went into it for the money and then created a lifestyle that demanded making $1,000 a night." She moved to Dallas with a boyfriend in 1999, modeled for advertisements, got certified as a massage therapist, personal trainer and beauty specialist, and opened and operated both The Garden Spa and Gallery and ProModels, a staffing agency for marketing campaigns throughout the Southwest.
She puts a positive spin on her years as an exotic dancer, talking about how "it felt good to be in an environment where I was admired, cherished and worshipped," but concedes that there were dark aspects to it too. Some of the girls drank or did drugs to get through their shifts, and it wasn't uncommon for women to lose themselves in addiction or abusive relationships. Eventually, she wanted out.
"I enjoyed the power, the dancing, hypnotizing people through movement, so I took something I loved and made it into a curriculum that could be taught in a positive light," she says.
Which brings us to Striptease Bootcamp, Pentecost's 90-minute specialty class that costs $150 for four sessions and offers instructions on how to strip. Unlike the pole dancing classes, which take place in the studio's large central room and are generally filled with 10 or so women, this one is held in a smaller room off to the side. Since I'm still recovering from my first pole dancing class—my arms are so sore it hurts to drive, and I have a medallion-sized bruise on my right thigh, which Laster refers to as a "passion mark"—I'd just planned to watch. But only two students have showed, and Pentecost beckons me to join them on the yoga mats that cover the small room.
