I recently read a newspaper article where local girl Natasha Wang made good by winning the National Pole Dancing Championship and $5,000 (in one-dollar bills stuffed down her bra). In her interview, she stated that she’d like for pole dancing to “shake the strip-club stigma and be recognized as a legitimate sport.” I couldn’t agree more.
I love sports, and there’s no reason leather corsets and fishnet stockings can’t come in traditional team colors. Plus, it takes a serious athlete to work a pole and defy gravity while wearing 9-inch heels. That’s a lot of drag. Hopefully, when pole dancing is recognized as a sport, scientists will perfect the 9-inch heel by making it more aerodynamic. And then there’s no stopping this sport! Look for PPDA franchise teams to spring up, with names like the “Pittsburgh Pole Kittens” and “Sheboygan Shimmies.”
In these days of personal seat licenses and hundred dollar tickets for sporting events, I think America is ready for a sport where you can get a front row seat with a just a fat wad of dollar bills. Thus making it easier to explain to my wife . . .
Me: I’m going to a not-quite-sanctioned sporting event at MSG.
Wife: Madison Square Garden?
Me: Well, no. It’s a place called “My Secret Garden.” It’s a little more intimate.
Wife: And the bulge in your pocket?
Me: My admission fee. Fifty dollars in one dollar bills. But there may be a discount since it’s Monday. And lunchtime.
The great thing about this . . . sport . . . is that they haven’t lost sight of their roots. The pole goes way back to the early 1900’s Colonel Quentin Pfepherhaus’ Traveling Burlesque Show, held in a large tent, where Lois “Good and Plenty” Amore got tired of running into the main tent pole and incorporated it into her routine. You didn’t need a Ph.D. in literature to tell you what that pole symbolized. The pole was here to stay. And still today, anyone able to pull off those crazy acrobatics without getting her hair tangled in their stiletto straps deserves our admiration, respect, and cash.
While doing research for this blog, I stumbled across another article: Pole Dancing for Jesus. Naturally, this group is based in Texas; leave it to Texans to take a great sport and elevate it spiritually.
Every 2nd Sunday of the month, the group gets together to work out on the poles with Christian music. Then they carry the collection plate through the church. But it’s not as decadent as it sounds: they wear t-shirts and shorts instead of nothing. But still I can’t help but picture Jesus, hiding behind sunglasses and with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, sitting in a club waving twenty dollar bills to his, er, disciples. How much cash must a dancer earn to be saved?
I can already see the next rapture approaching in October:
“So do I have what it takes?” asks the pole dancer/athlete/disciple as she slinks down the pole.
Jesus shrugs.
The pole dancer jumps off the stage and into Jesus’s lap. “Maybe you’d like a little lap dance? Don’t tell my manager, but I’ll let you have two songs for $40.”
“Eh, I don’t know,” Jesus says. “I’d kind of like to check out the other dancers/athletes/disciples.”
The dancer runs her fingers up his chest, licks his ear, then whispers, “What about the VIP room? I can do things there that are illegal in 17 states. I’ll show you a real rapture.”
“Okay, sure, just let me tell Moses to find another ride home.”
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