When Glee does things right, they
I’m really disappointed that this is so over sexualized because pole dancing is really cool
okay, so first of all: this example is not “over sexualised” - this is someone who very possibly has never done a day’s worth of stripping in her life performing some moves in a dance studio. She’s very likely to have had a lifetime of dance and gymnastics training behind her and decided to take poledancing classes when it became the new hit craze. She’s learned in a formal class environment.
But poledancing was developed by strippers in a stripclub environment. Many of those strippers also had a lot of dance and gymnastics and cheerleader training behind them and they developed pole moves partly as a way to kill time when the club was quiet. They taught each other in an informal setting and innovated and created for themselves. Without getting paid explicitly to do so.
Their talent at being able to do things like this has never been recognised. Even though the first pole schools were opened by strippers and taught by strippers, it has now been appropriated by hundreds of people who have never done sex work and who have no respect for sex work, who think it is “sad” that poledancing has a history inextricably entwined with sex work, who only view poledancing as a legitimate artform once it becomes detached from its sex work context despite the fact it was conceived and built in a sex work environment by sex workers.
Poledancing is not “overly sexualised”. It IS a sexualised dance/athletic art and rightly so - it belongs to strippers and it is strippers who made it. Its beauty and athleticism and skill doesn’t change because it was used in a sexualised environment to help its practioners make more money (although now it is seen as just for middle-upper class non-sex workers to pay big bucks in a formal class environment to learn to titillate boyfriends and husbands whilst staying appropriately fit!). That’s a part of its history. Sexualised things are not inherently worth less because of their sexual nature. To believe so is just to devalue the hard work of the sex workers who innovated it and that is done more than enough as is.
Poledancing is still cool and amazing and requires great skill and talent to execute even MORE SO when it is sexualised. Just being able to perform it impressively is one thing; being able to make it a fluid part of a character performance (which is what stripping entails) is another. If you can’t appreciate that, you don’t understand it, so STFU.
this fucking commentary is perfect
“When you say “no,” and you mean “no,” and the other person, regardless of whether it’s in a situation where somebody wants to attack you or a situation where somebody wants to change your opinion…
When you say no, and the other person continues, you should think immediately — not “how do I make it nice, how do I make it better” — but immediately think why is this person trying to control me because “no” is a complete sentence.”
Oh Em Gee. I needed this today!
Wisdom.
Anonymous
“You aren’t on our minds, and we don’t care what you think is attractive or unattractive. We aren’t trying to be beautiful for you. If we were, we’d walk around in Victoria’s Secret fashion show lingerie all the time… actually, that would be kinda fun.”
I love this video.
Click through to watch the video too, it is brilliant.
(Although an additional point needs to be made that sadly many people, particularly women, do feel pressured to dress for others instead of for themselves. People do wear make-up, and wear certain clothes, and have cosmetic surgery to fit in with the very narrow standard we’re told is “beautiful”. People also do these things because they themselves think they’re beautiful and that’s how they want their body to look.
Body mods and beauty practices aren’t the problem, the pressure for people to conform to a certain set of standards is. - Becca)
[IMAGE: The first image shows a poster advert for Dr Pepper TEN, depicting a grey background with a can of Dr Pepper TEN in front of a glass of the soda with ice, and the slogan “IT’S NOT FOR WOMEN.” to the right hand side.
The second image shows a moving GIF of John Green and Hank Green, two white males wearing glasses, captioned with the text “Dr. Pepper Ten: it’s not for women. It’s for, apparently, misogynists.”]
[GIF SET: Taken from a video of John Green reviewing Twilight and New Moon. Five GIFs show a white male with glasses and a beard talking to camera. Text across the images reads:
“You almost get the feeling from reading the books that, like, a woman can’t be whole until she has a strong indepent man to take care of her.”
“When of course, the fact is a woman needs a strong man to take care of her like a fish needs a bicycle.”
“I mean, just ask the Yeti (the speaker’s wife). Hey, Sarah!”
“Do you need a man who can bench-press your body weight in order to feel whole?”
“Sarah (speaking from off camera): …Obviously not.”]
