After the past two years, unbeknownst to most, across the US, so-called “fitness clubs” and dance studios have begun to offer pole dancing classes for children. I first became aware of pole dancing back in the early 1990s when I attended a performance by porn star Savannah at a San Francisco strip-club; she committed suicide about a year later. The pole was really just a large steel pipe that had been affixed to the floor and the ceiling. The various dancers would hold on to the pole and swing around it. When Savannah came out on stage, she was visibly tipsy and only touched the pole in order to steady herself. In 1995, with the release of the film “Showgirls,” in which pole dancing was heavily featured, the genre took on even greater visibility. Fast forward to the present: now, there are actually pole dance completions, something called the Pole Dance Federation, and a push to include pole dancing in the Summer Olympics.
Personally, I find this all very disturbing. While I am sure some of these pole dancers are quite athletic and talented, and wish to have no association with the earlier history of the “sport,” it’s also a fact that some things are just not redeemable. The parallel is the ever-present, and very successful, contemporary effort to main-stream pornography. No matter how many times a desperate starlet, a burned-out former child star, or a waning pop-music legend strips off their clothes in front of a camera – it’s still a dirty picture that some man or little boy is going to look at and masturbate with. It’s not Art, and neither is pole dancing a sport. Case in point, without exception, every one of these pole dancing contests include dancers who are barely dressed, incorporate very sexualized moves into their routines, and therefore open themselves up for all forms of exploitation. When children get involved: it’s all the worse.