Pole Dancing For Fitness

A friend of mine recently posted this video on his Facebook page.  I believe his comment was, "Wow."

After watching the video that was exactly what I thought, too, though probably not for the same reason. 

Let's be perfectly honest, these women are BUFF.  The moves they perform require an incredible (and I mean INCREDIBLE) amount of upper body and core strength, serious flexibility and they do it all while wearing shoes that are anything but sensible.  I truly am in awe.

I'd never really thought much about what physical ability it must take to be a truly good pole dancer.  It's the kind of stuff usually left to the dank recesses of sleazy strip clubs.  That's not generally the place I go looking for athletes.  But these women are definitely athletes.

Thankfully for those of us not prone to the strip club scene, it seems that pole dancing is making it's way out of the hazy red light districts and into mainstream gyms and health clubs.  Pole dancing for fitness?  That's right.  Pole dancing as a fitness craze is gaining in popularity, and not just for nubile barely-legal women either, but for soccer moms and middle aged women, too.  They are heading to their local gyms (although not quite so scantily clad as the women in the above video) to get a good workout and maybe even feel a little sexy and sultry.

There are pole dancing fitness videos and instructors across the country.  Remeber KT Coates, the woman who made the bodybuilding championship finals just weeks after giving birth? Yup.  She's a pole dancing fitness instructor.  Pole dancing is one way she got rid of her pregnancy weight gain.

But wait!  Isn't this just a way to maintain the women as objects perspective that we women have fought so hard to conquer?  Women are not just sex objects to be ogled. 

There is one thing about pole dancing that you just can't deny.  Physically it is an awesome workout, building both strength and flexibility.  It's hard to deny that a pole could potentially get you in some pretty serious shape.  And just because you use a pole to help attain your fitness goals doesn't mean you have to flaunt your feminine wiles in high heels and a g-string. 

So what do you think?  Great workout opportunity or just another way sex creeps into every aspect of our culture?