Good on ya

I'm sure that Harpo and his conservative cronies would be afraid to even look (maybe sneak a peak between the fingers covering their eyes) as they would be ostracized by their partners and colleagues. Pass a law banning such lascivious public behaviour. Muslim fundamentalists would support him on this one. Think of the kids.

Nudism was never about sexuality, rather a quasi spiritual connection with the surrounding environment, including mosquito bites in odd places. But it has to be practiced in private.

The valley gal who went topless on her errands, the "slut walk" and this portable pole dance are all behaviours by women who want the freedom behave in activities that are essentially non-sexual, although some males may disagree and as the more prurient conservatives would have us believe.

So how will society change over the next 10 to 20 years? Should be interesting.

Of course, if Harpo's "desire" to change Canada into a more conservative nation, some big fights will be brewing.

In North America ...

... where women still earn 20% less in the same job as their male counterparts, (http://www.catalyst.org/publication/217/womens-earnings-and-income)
I find pole 'dancing' just simply demeaning and slutty.

There are many other ways for a young woman to earn money. Pole 'dancing' in my opinion does not belong to the street nr do I find this a reputable and respectable kind of 'art'.

RickW - Combining Art & Commerce makes for a stable society - only if that combination comes with common sense and taste. A woman in an underwear rubbing herself around a pole is not what most people would fine tasteful.

Lots of women jumped on the pole-wagon to 'express their feminine side'. Gee, if anyone need a pole to express her feminity - I think there is a much deeper problem then.

Everyone knows where pole dancing came from and I don't think it will ever belong to anywhere else but where it originally came from. It isn't much different from standing on the corner selling yourself.

OwlRol

It isn't about being conservative or not. It is about being tasteful and remembering that the street is a public place and should be respected as such.
What is next? Having sex on the street like animals?

There is such thing as being tasteful and being respectful of sharing the space with others.

Freedom doesn't come from walking half naked on the street. Freedom comes from treated as equals, regardless of skin colour and gender.

OhCanada

Agreed. But have you tried pole dancing? It's a workout and a half! And it doesn't much matter what it's origins were.

Would you (for instance) ban "So you think you can dance Canada"? Have you seen the costumes worn by the participants?

As for "treated as equals", we are not there yet as a society. But then we are also homophobic and xenophobic in varying degrees.....

How does the pole stay up?

This looks like magic -- and to someone who said "we all know where pole dancing came from" I say -- Yep -- gymnastics and modern dance. I want to see this in the next Olympics. How does she perform without getting skin burns? What astonishing athleticism and grace!

"I haven't had any serious propositions yet."

So what is Natalie's home phone number?

Actually, this story reminds me of an article in the Calgary Herald a few years ago, about a woman, a single parent, who started her own business offering phone sex. The article celebrated the positive aspects of a home-run business but it never mentioned the downsides, like what happened if the kids picked up the b usiness line, for example.

Pole-dancing is definitely on the edge; just short of strip-tease or sex-for-hire. Talk as long as you like about art and culture, it is just asking for trouble.

It may appeal to some, and it is guaranteed to offend others as being slutty and provocative. Take your pick. Some people found the movie "A Clockwork Orange" to be intellectually stimulating; others used Little Alex as a model for their own behaviour. Horrorshow!

Seriously ...

this article needs far more pictures.

Just don't..

Whatever you do, don't join the fad for permanent tattoos amongst the ladies. I have no problem with pole-dancing with decorum, but you would look like a carnival freak (or a lady of the streets) if you ruined it with a tatooed body.

RudyRuby

While pole dancing takes elements from gymnastics and acrobatics - it does not originate from gymnastics.

I have no problem with pole dancing as an exercise but there is difference in pole dancing one sees in a circus act - like Cirque Du Soleil. That is art and it is performed in the right atmosphere with style and taste. A woman wrapping herself around a pole on the street is nothing more but slutty and tastelessly inappropriate.

Fish-counter

http://www.olinda.com/ArtAndIdeas/lectures/ArtWeDontLike/entarteteKunst.htm
"Our patience with all those who have not been able to fall in line is at an end. ... What you are seeing here are the crippled products of madness, impertinence, and lack of talent. ... I would need several freight trains to clear our galleries of this rubbish.
...This will happen soon"

Adolf Ziegler,1937
President of the Reich Culture Chamber

Distasteful and degenerate, to who?

Good one RickW, love that Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art). The movie "Cabaret" touched on the edges of this one. Of course the more prurient will say that this is different from that most evil form of puritanism.

"Tasteful" is surely culturally based and bound up in time. One hundred years ago, Cirque Du Soleil would have been considered both distasteful and immoral, as it still is in certain fundamentalist cultures, both in N. America and elsewhere.

"Freedom doesn't come from walking half naked on the street." You are correct. Freedom comes from having the choice to do so if one wishes.

As I recall, we had a time when showing a woman's ankles or back was considered "half naked".

Bodily exposure, especially female, (although those European men's Speedos, found at many tropical resorts, could be considered distasteful, if not worn by "hunks", by many North Americans), this could be placed along a line, from naturally permissive to fully controlled.

From equatorial and tropical indigenous cultures to Brazilian and French Riviera beach culture to that wannabe western fashion culture to prudent Christian culture, to Hutterite styles to fundamentalist Burka styles, each of these can be made "tasteful" to their own, and view others as odd, distasteful or worst, unacceptable.

Love that slippery slope, "What is next? Having sex on the street like animals?" Although we actually are animals, this isn't really about sex as much as it is about power.

To whom it may concern

I see that some people want to enforce the idea that pole dancing is slutty. I don't go the strip bars -- so I haven't seen it there. I have seen lots of gymnastics, especially competitions on TV. Pole dancing looks like gymnastics to me. I reject the idea that pole dancing must be slutty just because some people have seen it in strip bars and therefore make that association and think everyone else should too. I don't make that association. It looks no more slutty to me than what those men and women do in Olympic gymnastics. It seems mean-spirited to call it slutty.

Sexuality, like power, is cultural

But even sexuality is culturally based. Love that "public" Hindu temple with statues and stone carvings of couples in various sexual positions, that horrified the European Christian "missionary"/explorers. They couldn't reduce that temple to rubble the way the Taliban did to those Buddhist statues in afghanistan, or they would have quickly lost their trade commerce and likely their lives. The temple stands today and the birth rate there was no different than the puritan west until condoms and birth control came into common usage.

Too many people confuse exposure with sexuality, especially given that clothing can often be more suggestive than nudity. Sexuality is there if that's what one is looking for, no matter what is worn.

In "The Prophet" chapter on clothes, Kahlil Gibran writes "Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.

And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy you may find in them a harness and a chain.

Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your skin and less of your raiment,

For the breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind." and

"Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean.

And when the unclean shall be no more, what were modesty but a fetter and a fouling of the mind?

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair."

Getting back to that very good question, how does that pole support anyone's gravitational mass and movements that causes considerable centrifugal forces? How is it anchored not to tip?

Fish-counter

My apologies if that's the impression my post created. I only meant to show that this pony has been around the ring many times before.

OwlRol

I read sometime back where it's been suggested that the first clothing wasn't worn for warmth or protection, or for modesty's sake, but was worn to emphasize attractiveness - somewhat like the peacock......

Off topic, Tatoos and piercings

Okanagan O., many cultures have admired and promoted, (western sea men included) tattoos and piercings for many centuries.

Western women being tattooed is a newer phenomenon, as is the recent fashion fad of filing a gap between the two top front teeth. Appearance is a fickle endeavour among wannabes and keeps the money flowing in that industry.

My take is different. Our skin is a remarkable organ that does a great job at protecting our internal parts from environmental nasties.

We have seven natural and necessary gaps in our body skin's barriers, nine if you consider breast feeding, each of which give us problems at some point during our lifetimes. So be it, we need them, but...

Why would anyone add to those gaps, be it frequent addict injections, ear, tongue and other piercings or the tattoo needle, other than some sort of vanity or obligation.

Perhaps the latest, more subtle but equally dangerous, commercial trend is the use of nano technology in various cosmetic products to "absorb"/penetrate through the skin with a variety of questionable, long term chemical effects, these not being labelled on the product container, supposedly for "proprietary" reasons.

Looks great, feels like s***. So great to get home and take off, oh oh, it won't come off, now what to do?

Rick W:

No worries. This pole-dancing thing; I would like to see it in Nanaimo. We need a bit of light entrtainment here and Natalie could be it. I only wish I could do it.