Liquid Motion Training Center

After nearly seventeen years as a pole dancer, I’ve experienced just about every emotion related to my body one can have. Through the ups and downs, as my body has changed and feelings evolved, I’ve learned something interesting – you don’t need to love yourself to be good at pole dancing.  

Let me repeat that – you don’t need to love yourself to be a good pole dancer! 

We're all familiar with the pressure to have the perfect body – slim, white, tall, young and healthy. That pressure comes from everywhere – social media, medical professionals, families and friends. The source of the pressure itself isn’t always malicious, but it sure can feel like a punch to the gut when you fall short of others’ expectations. Nobody wants to be gut punched over and over again.  

The body positivity movement is a good counter to this.  Rather than focus on lusting after the ideal body, we’re now encouraged to love the skin we’re in.  We’re supposed to be done with outdated beauty standards and, instead, learn to be our biggest cheerleaders. In theory, this is a positive thing; but in practice, the pressure to love yourself may sometimes feel just as intimidating as the pressure to hate yourself. Either way, it’s so damn exhausting.

This is exactly what I want to advocate for body neutrality. My understanding of body neutrality is that we don’t need to feel a certain way about our bodies; they are merely physical vessels that we live our lives in. Body neutrality doesn’t champion self-hatred or self-love, but rather, takes up space somewhere in between. For someone like me, that’s a dream come true.

You see, I’ve never liked my weight. I think I’m too heavy. I don’t find pride in my size, nor do I embrace it. At the same time, pole dancing and weight lifting have shown me some pretty cool things I can do with my body, even if I don’t like how it looks. Body neutrality says that it’s ok to let that obsession over looks fall by the wayside. I’m allowed to have feelings about my appearance, but those feelings don’t need to dictate my life.

I’d like to see the pole (and fitness) industry move away from an aesthetics first mindset. Here’s how we can do that: 

• Stop promoting pole dancing as a weight loss mechanism.

• Be less worried about what we look like and more excited about completing a difficult class (even if we sucked at everything we tried).  

• No more losing sleep over the fancy tricks we can’t yet do.

• No more obsessing about how out of shape our bodies are.

• Put different types of bodies in the national spotlight and in marketing materials.

• Less pressure to adore every aspect of our physical selves.

What do you think about body neutrality? Is it something you want to participate in? Join the Liquid Motion Movement Project today and continue the conversation.