See You at the Pole? [naomi]

Pole dancing? My eyes widened at an e-vite with an unexpected subject line in my inbox. Surely not. Images of girls in Princess Lea-like outfits slinking down greased poles flashed through my mind. I grimaced. Maybe it’s at some sort of aerobics gym or the YMCA or something (that would be some kind of YMCA! Hah!). Hmm… Goddess Movement Dance Studio. Wow. Bring your own high heels. WOW. Ok, umm… I’ve got some thinking to do.

I’m not the kind of edgy Christian chick who would think up trying pole dancing for my bachelorette party, and if I had, it would’ve been closer to a gag than anything else. Everyone would know that it wasn’t at all serious. But this was not my party, and these were not my friends (in fact, quite the opposite, I didn’t know a single one of them). I either had to get over my initial distrust of strangers, not to mention the potential awkwardness of the actual event, or give up an opportunity to hang out with my future sister-in-law and her Canadian buddies. I had a serious decision to make.

A note to the ladies: When you’re trying to figure this stuff out, I’m not sure that your husband would be the best person to ask, or your mother, for that matter. My husband got so giddy that I could hear him snickering and making “King of Queens”(season 8 episode 1) references for days after I told him the news. To be fair, he did snicker, but he’s not the kind of guy who objectifies women, and he did help me process a lot of the thoughts listed below.

My mind played the usual role of interviewer/interviewee. Ok, let’s figure this out. First of all, WWJD? Hah! I’m pretty sure it’d be hard to pole dance while dressed in toga-ish clothing. Hehehe. No seriously, let’s figure this out. Why does the idea of pole dancing make me so uncomfortable? Well, I automatically think of hookers and, you know, strippers, and Britney Spears. It’s all so sensual. So, what if the hookers and strippers (and ok, Britney Spears) part was taken away? Then we’re left with just the sensual part. Right. Is being sensual wrong? Hell no! I would have to never make love to my husband again for that to be true. In fact, I even know of a certain sacred Hebrew book that gets pretty steamy. Ok, so obviously there’s a big difference between what hookers do and what happens in a marriage bed, even though both are very sensual. So where does that leave us? Well, I guess that, like so many other things, it’s all in how it’s used. Sex isn’t sinful. I’m thinking that dancing around a pole isn’t inherently sinful either… unless I’m getting paid for it or if I’m thinking about some other guy while I’m doing it… again, just like sex. Right. I guess I’ll be buying some heels.

That was my basic train of thought. Even so, I was still pretty unsure of the whole thing, and it didn’t help when I learned that the lesson for the evening was going to be a chair dance. A CHAIR dance?!!! What does that even mean?!!! The biggest stretch for me was that I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen there and I didn’t even know the people with whom I was going. The thing that I had to keep reminding myself was that a) I was going for my sister-in-law, and b) I couldn’t be forced to do anything that was sinful (i.e., if that chair dance had turned into more of a lap dance, I would have been packing my heels). Would I be uncomfortable? Undoubtedly. Would I be looked down upon by some people if they ever knew? Most likely. I have to admit, though, it was all worth it to be able to text my friend, “Sorry, I can’t hang out tonight, I’m going pole dancing”. Someday I’ll just drop it in conversation, “The other day, when I was pole dancing…” and see what happens. There’s a part of me that does love being edgy.

There are certain things that automatically get equated with sin: yoga becomes New Age religion; incense becomes bad spirits; drinking becomes being a drunkard; and smoking becomes destroying your body (oddly enough, overeating doesn’t have the same negative vibe, though perhaps weight gain might equal lack of self discipline). I wonder if one person had a hard time with drinking and so it became sin for everyone else too? Honestly, I don’t know who drew those lines or why they were drawn in those places, especially since some of those “good” lines seem pretty harebrained if you think about them (try: “only Christians should be your close friends”, or, “Christian women should only ever wear one-piece swimsuits AND a cover up to the beach”). I know one person who bowed out of the pole dancing. I don’t hold it against her (I wonder if she holds it against me?); I probably would have too if I were a younger single woman. But the point is that she thought about it long and hard before she said “no”. She takes risks, but this is not one of them; it wasn’t time. I think that’s brilliant: know who you are and know why you’re doing or not doing something, but don’t just base it out of what you’ve grown up hearing, and certainly don’t base it out of a fear of looking (gasp) bad.

I went that night and actually had a really good time. I took the risk and it paid off. Did I almost fall right over in my heels? Oh yeah, at least twice. All in all, it was surprisingly relaxing and, honestly, a very insightful experience as far as moving my body in a way that only a woman can. It really was pretty cool to see one of the women there who might be considered overweight by some standards be really comfortable in her own skin and get into the dancing. My husband is happy, not because he has even seen any of the “moves” that I learned that night without both of us busting up laughing, but because I was willing to try a slice of life that was commonly forbidden because of the color, and nothing else.