When my friend Bea took up pole dancing, she enthusiastically tried to convert everyone she knew to it – a common trope, I’d later find out. As a childhood gymnast and dancefloor enthusiast, I was scouted as a potential recruit, so along with my sister in 2023 we joined her for a class.
The class was packed and the studio felt overly commercialised. The friction of the metal pole against my skin was straight-up painful and spinning around made me so dizzy I had to sit down to reorientate myself several times.
