the anora effect

pole dance originated in strip clubs and has since spun into the mainstream—but has it been gentrified? i spent a month in classes to find out.

Source: IG neonrated

The smell of isopropyl alcohol hits my nose, then worms through my nasal passage with a sharp wasabi rush. I’m holding a spray bottle full of the stuff, misting down a pole, then wiping it clean with a rough hand towel.

It’s Friday night at my local pole dance studio.

An slow rendition of “Feeling Good” by Nina Simone plays like molasses in the background. The dim purple lighting and toasty heaters are so comfy I find myself closing my eyes for a minute or five. I could fall asleep here on my mat, I really could. I peek one eye open and catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirrored wall. I re-do my floppy ponytail. I am wearing a Baserange cotton tank top with a tiny cutout heart on the chest, and these old Alo booty shorts that I hate because they’re the color of boiled hot dogs.

There is a rhythm to the 10 minutes before class starts: people shuffle in, shed their puffer coats and Ugg boots at the door, roll out their mats, spray down their poles, warm up with some downward dogs.

---

Our instructor (I’ve named her Mother Gothel in my head) starts class by turning down the music. I love Mother Gothel and her teaching style. She has long dark curly hair and fairy tiptoes. She always says things like, whatever shape you end up in is the right shape, and I respond really well to that.

We sit in a circle to say our names, pronouns, and share something about our pole journey—like how long we’ve been coming, or what we want to get out of the class. Here is a sampling of my classmates:

A girl wearing a UC Berkeley sweatshirt and Lululemon shorts says it’s her first class. We all clap in unison for her.

A woman with bleach blonde hair, a lip piercing and stomach tattoos says she wants to get stronger for inversions.

Another woman in sweats says that after a long day of working around kids, she wants to feel more connected to her sexuality.

---

The next girl says she is here because she was influenced by ‘Anora.’

I think she is hilariously honest for saying that—it’s probably what a lot of people wouldn’t admit out loud for fear of seeming like a basic bitch. The Anora Effect gave pole dance a huge PR boost.

Upon the movie’s release, Neon actually gave away free pole dancing classes to New York theater-goers who bought a ticket for ‘Anora.’ As reported in IndieWire, you could enroll in an ‘Intro the Pole’ class at Everybody’s Nimble studio and use code ‘ANORA’ at checkout.

While my interest in pole dance was not triggered by ‘Anora,’ it was no doubt influenced by the growing popularity of the sport/art in mainstream fitness culture. Last week I posted a Note on Substack about pole dance and was surprised how many people chimed in saying they’d taken classes before.

This transition from the strip club into the mainstream started in the early 00s and has only grown since. As Courtney Pope wrote for Refinery29 in 2022:

The soccer moms that once huddled in groups with their Lululemon ‘fits and yoga mats are trading them in for spandex, knee pads, and twerk cardio. Yep, twerking, sensual movement, and pole culture have gone mainstream.¹

---

How I Got Here

I’d taken a one-off class here and there in 2023, always intending to go more consistently, but it just never happened. Until my siblings got me a month membership of unlimited classes last Christmas. When friends ask me how it’s going, I struggle to explain why I love it in a succinct way. There are layers to it, but at the core it’s because I love being a student. I’m learning climbs and spins in class, but also I’m learning about the origins and evolution of pole dance outside of class. I think educating yourself on the origins of your new hobby/sport/art practice is always the responsible thing to do. No surprise—the history is loaded with whitewashing within fitness culture, misogynoir, and the erasure of sex workers.

To back up a little, what really brought me to pole dance was a desire to expand my movement practice in a way that de-centered pilates culture. Let me explain. In September 2024, I read this essay—The Long Con of Pilates culture—by

Mikala Jamison

:

This post isn’t a takedown of Pilates Thee Exercise. It’s a critique of the commercial, social, and lifestyle aspects that have developed around Pilates that have potentially damaging implications for women’s ideas of what exercise is for and what it can do for them.

Mikala’s words articulated precisely what I had been observing in the cultural mainstream (though moreso through the lens of fashion/retail): the marketing of “long, lean” muscles and “pilates princess” outfits that really had nothing to do with pilates and everything to do with projecting a thin, white, rich image.

So last month, I challenged myself to try workouts beyond pilates, which landed me in a trial class of judo (this did NOT go well) and pole dance (which I’ve caught the bug for).

---

As a new student of pole, I started paying more attention to depictions of pole (and stripping/sex work by extension) in media and consumer culture.

For example,

Shelcy Joseph

noted the way Hailey Bieber and Kim Kardashian appropriate elements of pole dance and its stripper origins in their brand campaigns—Rhode and Skims, respectively.

I’ll break down the Rhode campaign, because the reference to pole is more overt: it features pop star Tate McRae bent over, hugging a jumbo Rhode lip liner, evoking the stance of a dancer on a pole. The shorts and stiletto heels are also dancer/stripper-adjacent, but they’re not 8-inch Pleasers. It’s ambiguous and the neutral beige-ness of it all reads like a sanitized portrayal of pole as "fitness”—edgy but not too edgy, in line with the constructed purity of white womanhood.

Source: Rhode IG

The copy on Rhode’s Instagram campaign photos featuring McRae and the jumbo lip liner “pole” include the ballet slipper emoji.

As far as celebrity style goes, Bieber is the face of balletcore, so I want to unpack this dynamic (racialized and classed power imbalance, really) between ballet culture and pole culture:

Modern pole dance originated in the strip club, and did not enter the broader fitness industry until the early 90s.

Strippers—predominantly Black women— pioneered the spread of pole dance into the mainstream by teaching colleagues and women outside the club. The 2000s then gave rise to the opening of pole “fitness studios,” many of which tried to distance themselves from the stigma of sex work.² For example, when Sophie Badger opened her UK-based pole studio, Constellations Fitness, she was told by her landlord that her business shouldn’t mention ‘pole dancing’ because they thought it would send out the wrong message (whatever that meant). “I fought with myself about calling it ‘Fitness’ because it is pole dance, I learnt pole dance from strippers and sex workers, but I was made to feel like I should in order to keep the locals happy,” she explains.³

The value system of ballet aesthetics have also crept into pole technique and training curriculum. In her post “A Letter to the Pole Community: It’s time we talk about toe-point supremacy,” pole dancer and blogger Marlo Fisken reflects on the way pole is often only taken seriously when compared to ballet:

For many pole dancers, if they want to convincingly show their families videos of pole and say, "Look, it IS art!" Quite often, the videos they choose feature dancers with extensive ballet training. They must. Otherwise, they won’t be heard.⁴

Fisken continues, “if you grew up in Western society, you’ve been exposed the perspective that not only are balletic aesthetics better and ‘cleaner’, they are more desirable (particularly on white cis-gender women).”

Dance forms, especially those with non-Western or nonwhite origins, should not require comparisons to ballet to be respected or seen as legitimate.

---

Guidelines for Pole Dancing Responsibly

‘Anora’ is probably going to win big at the Oscars in a few weeks. Interview clips of Mikey Madison talking about her pole training are already going viral online. Pole culture will continue to gain visibility in the fitness mainstream, as people (I count myself in this) have more opportunities to engage with it.

Heather Berg, a USC researcher on labor policy and sex work, explains that “the push to reframe pole dancing as an edgy—but not too edgy—form of exercise is part of a bigger story of non-sex working women appropriating sex workers’ cultural and theoretical innovations while at the same time doing all they can to distance themselves from sex workers.”⁵

This is all happening at the same time that Trump’s policies and a fascist political regime are further endangering sex workers and their livelihood. After spending the past month reading about pole culture and taking to classmates/instructors, I think there are some key ways to approach pole dance responsibly—not an exhaustive list:

• Recognize pole’s strip club origins. While classes are obviously not a history lecture, some instructors have sprinkled it in organically into their teaching style. In a recent class, the instructor handed out read feather boas to each student while explaining the ways pole choreo emerged from striptease.

• Acknowledge the privilege of doing it for fun rather than it being your livelihood. Pretty straightforward, I think.

• Support pole dance spaces that resist the erasure of sex workers. I can’t speak to how studios are run beyond the one I attend, which offers comped classes for sex workers as an accessibility policy. There is also a big “codes of conduct” poster that says to respect strippers and sex workers in this space as we owe this art form to them.

---

At the end of each pole class, we usually go around the room again to share one thing we learned.

I’ve been keeping track of my favorite “lessons”—some from me, and some from my classmates. These are not just dance lessons, but nuggets of life lessons as well, so I’d like to pass them onto you :)

1. sometimes trying to be sexy can end up feeling very awkward…and that’s ok

2. law of assumption: if you believe you are sexy, then you will be sexy

3. having rhythm is a result of emotional intelligence

4. pole can look very fun and effortless, but it’s also very difficult and your body will hurt a lot

5. the more skin contact you make with the pole the better you will stick. this is why scanty outfits are actually the most practical

6. think of who your performer persona is—we all have one

7. sometimes letting your hair down fixes your whole dance flow…it’s the little things

8. you are in control

xoxo

viv

If you have any questions about trying pole—what to expect, what to wear, etc—leave a comment and I’ll try my best to answer it!

1. https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2022/08/11086102/poletic-justice-pole-dance-instructor-mona-marie

2. https://bloggeronpole.com/2021/07/a-history-of-modern-pole-dance/

3. https://glorioussport.com/articles/desexualising-pole-fitness-sport-history/

4. https://flowmovement.net/poleflowblog/2020/06/alettertothepolecommunity

5. https://www.vice.com/en/article/pole-dancing-sport-offensive-to-strippers/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20push%20to%20reframe%20pole,a%20lecturer%20at%20USC%20who