Pole Dance Mania!

I am not a fan of pole dancing. I went to a strip club exactly once in my life, and that was more than enough. It wasn’t my catholic guilt/prudishness that made me recoil in disgust at the experience; it was the extreme sadness I felt for humanity that overcame me while watching these naked girls with glassy eyes gyrate in front of men who were too drunk to get it up anyway. How did these girls arrive at a place in their lives where stripping made sense as a career choice? Something definitely went wrong.

I realize how awfully judgmental this is. I realize there are many girls who think it’s a liberating choice, an empowering career move, a way to best the men who ogle them – by taking their money with such ease.

But I just don’t buy it. I cannot believe these women feel good about themselves, when they get naked in front of a bunch of strangers who look at them as they would an inanimate object. Literally. These women are being looked at as a side of beef: some thing to feed a hunger.

That just can’t feel good, sordid night after sordid night. All that empowering talk – who are they trying to convince with that, their audience, or themselves?

I’m not condemning strippers, I just feel bad for them. Sad for them, at the end of the day. Just like I felt at my one and only trip to a strip club.

Unless you count the time when a producer from the PlanetGreen show I did made me go to another strip club in Portland because the owner served “vegan” food, ie rice and beans. Thank GOD that never aired.

I AM airing this other foray into the world of strippery, however, because now there is this very weird trend of girls “pole dancing” for exercise. Now this, I don’t mind so much! Do it in your own home, get nekked for your man, who puts up with the REAL you in addition to the sex goddess that you are.

It’s a weird thing to have happen – taking the pivotal object of strippers out of the sordid den of shame and bringing it into your own bedroom. So I decided to cover it, for my series “New in New York” on Babelgum. Thought you’d enjoy seeing it here.

So what do you think? Is stripping/pole dancing a way to empower women, or is it a sinful, sad, sad part of our culture? Let’s talk about that this week.