At the end of class, we come to the part I hated the first time, taking turns employing a range of different walks—cute, sexy, runway-style—to approach a pole and display our new skills. I still feel slightly ridiculous during the slinky, shoulder-rolling walk, but when it comes time for The Dominatrix, a determined, shoulders-down, Dolce & Gabbana-esque runway march, I'm shocked to find that I feel right at home.
Pentecost takes notice. "You've got that Dominatrix one down, Megan! I guess that's who you really are—no wonder people probably think you're intimidating."
Allison V. Smith
Author Megan Feldman takes a break as Megan Magana does the splits in the air.
Allison V. Smith
Tassi Mendek performs a poletrick during class at the Girls Room.
Details
Video Feature: See basic pole dancing moves in action.
Related Content
More About
All righty then. Don't know how I feel about that, but maybe I've found my Halloween costume.
After class, I talk with some of the students about what keeps them coming back.
"When I leave, I'm always happy," Lauri, an executive assistant and mother of four, says. "No matter what went on at work or with the kids, I'm in the best mood."
Rose, a hair stylist, agrees. "This is the best workout I've ever had," she says. "I'm never going back to the gym. You're engaging your mind to concentrate; you're learning how to feel sexier and boosting your self-confidence; it's cardio and weights in one. What more could you want?"
Pentecost says a number of her students also report feeling more magnetic after class, getting asked out on dates while wearing their workout clothes, for example. I notice that after attending the classes I feel similar to the way I do after practicing yoga or having great sex. The morning after Striptease Bootcamp, a middle-aged man made a grand show of throwing the door open for me at Starbucks, flashing me a kindly, beaming smile and breaking into song. "There she is," he sang, "Miss America..."
That's never happened to me before.
On my last visit to the Girls Room, Pentecost asks if I'll continue taking classes. I nod, thinking I'd like to do more of the Rock 'n' Pole, which consists mostly of fast-paced, complex dance routines that minimally employ the pole. The full range of pole tricks and striptease classes, while fun for a weeklong novelty, aren't for me. Aside from getting nauseated every time I manage to spin around the pole, there's something about the routines, which include lingo like "set your table" and "reach back for your money" that strike me as cheap, even ridiculous. Maybe it's the awareness that I'm imitating a caricature of femininity that was developed and mass-produced with the express goal of turning on a male audience.
I agree with Pentecost's view that sexuality begins with one's self-perceptions, and that in order to be sexy you have to feel sexy, which in turn comes from appreciating yourself and your body. And maybe for some women, pole dancing and striptease classes are a healthy way to achieve that. But as a girlfriend of mine remarked recently, "Doesn't there have to be a happy middle ground between striptease classes and total sexual repression, even in the Bible Belt?"
I've come a long way from my seventh-grade horror at puberty, my high school rejection of heels and my initial unease with sex ("Doesn't it feel like being skewered?!" I recall wailing to one of my friends). I've managed, in some 15 years, to construct what I consider to be a fairly healthy sexual identity. Sure, there are still the challenges of how to be feminine without attracting undesirables and yet uninhibited and approachable enough to actually get a date, along with myriad other quandaries that come with working and loving amid a dizzying array of gender stereotypes and pop culture-promoted expectations. But for me, at least, pole dancing isn't the key to unraveling such mysteries. The best thing I got from whirling and swinging around poles at the Girls Room was the freedom that comes with putting myself in a situation that renders it absolutely impossible to take myself too seriously—always a good thing for a type-A personality. And hey, at least if I ever get married, I'll have a few tricks up my sleeve to keep things interesting.
