It's not that impressive once you know that her boots are covered in an extremely adhesive resin.
Your mom still has great upper-body strength, Ben.
I once heard about a stripping aerobics program that was rather popular. I don't know if this is entirely on topic, since my Mac cannot view that video.
If it was a man stripping, the Mac would play it.
Macs do encourage homoeroticism, this is true.
I'm also having trouble viewing the supplied video, but I am on a PC.
Is it a downloading or playback problem?
If y'all are having downloading problems, try this link. I was testing something with the other download address.
Ah, that works. Thanks.
Even if she's using some crazy glue on her feet, that's some impressive ab strength.
11 to 7. The original link works for me.
And now I'm off to bed. Do your chin-ups, boys.
Before I go, this is what I'm testing. Very cool idea; even better when they have it working on port 80.
I like that woman's outfit.
And it's not her abs I'm impressed by, it's her upper body strength. I mean, her abs are impressive, don't get me wrong, but at my peak fitness, I would have had to train very hard to manage some of the push-up-derived manoeuvers she does gracefully.
However--and I do realise that this is at least part of the argument ogged set up with his post--this isn't "erotic dancing," as I see it. It seems more like sexy dance-y gymnastics. As the closest I've come to a strip bar was Les Bains Douches back in the late 90s, I may not understand what turns a pole dance into an erotic show; still, everything I've read suggests that this kind of demonstration of skill is not what the punters are looking for.
I suppose my point, tending toward a question, is that this athleticism and skill strikes me as exhibitive rather than inviting, distancing rather than personal, and sexy rather than erotic. And since I'm probably wired up differently from many men, I wonder if they have utterly responses.
THis didn't seem like 'erotic dancing' to me either, but then i don't get off on strip clubs at all. The spuerman pose half way trhough was mint tho.
I generally sexually enjoy females making humping motions though.
The gym I joined a few weeks back does a variety of dance-orientated exercise classes. They seem to alternate -- salsa, jazz, etc -- but one of the options listed on the flyer includes 'pole' ...
I generally sexually enjoy females making humping motions though
We appreciate your candor, yoyo.
Wow, that was impressive. I'm with JM in that my first thought was "gymnastics!". When does this become an Olympic sport?
This is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about here.
What is this, Mormon porn? (Is that the magic underwear?) Are we going to get burka porn or Amish porn here next?
People assume the worst if you know these things, but you know, Playboy publishes a lot of high quality journalism and I read it for the articles. Living, as I did, in the strip club capital of the world (Portland Oregon, where stripping is literally written into the state Constitution) I am willing to report that all those moves are routinely used. The boots arent necessary for the moves. A lot of dancers, gymnasts and track athletes go into the biz.
As far as motives go, you don't need much psychology to explain them. With reasonable luck a recent college graduate can make several times what she would as a barista or waitress. I'd say three to five times as much, and ten times as much on very good days.
I generally sexually enjoy females making humping motions though.
Would that be females of any particular species, or just females in general - mares, lionesses, anglerfish, praying mantises?
I too agree with JM and mrh: awesome gymnastics, but not erotic and scarcely dancing, I'd have said.
It actually did look like a training film, sort of like the figure-skating compulsory figures. I suppose that the biz will soon be credentialized too.
Is this where I sign the Petition to make this an Olympic sport?
Maybe a sport, maybe art? Philip-Lorca diCorcia had some crazy photos of pole dancers in the 04-05 Carnegie International. (No link, they don't seem to be online anywhere.)
Not a sport because it would have to be judged.
I used to work one floor up from a woman who sold, as a side business, "exercise poles for the bedroom."
"They can be as simple or complicated as you want," she said to me. "Some people just want them to work out, some people want the whole cage."
It seems more like sexy dance-y gymnastics.
At first, I thought that it was a dancer or athlete playing around with the pole dancing form. Emerson's 24 makes me unsure.
It did look a lot like Chinese acrobatics, especially the superman move. Very cool.
All y'all need to research more thoroughly.
28: If you do an image search on diCorcia's name a lot of photos of pole dancers show up, not all worksafe. But in those cases, it's the photographer who's doing the art. The dancers are impressively athletic. The performance in Ogged's link is impressively athletic, but not particularly erotic--more like a gymnastic routine than anything else. The eroticism is probably much enhanced when the performer is wearing nothing but a thong.
29: There'll probably be an Olympic version eventually.
impressive, athletic, impressive, athletic. need to edit more carefully.
Yeah, that looked like a cleaned up technical program for use in gym classes. Strippers have various ways of being erotic, including stripping, but they were avoided in this video. The facial expression was pretty clinical, for example: "Tiffany will now show you how to perform the Double Flex Reverse Slide."
What was interesting to me was that she would occasionally include a few nods towards eroticism (a hip-sway, or a look over the shoulder - not to mention the boots), which I found uniformly discomforting (I've never liked stripping). But the actual athletic stuff was almost entirely non-erotic (OK, except for some pole-humping while she was 4' off the floor), and really wouldn't have been out of place in a gymnastics routine - just take the parallel-uneven bars and rotate them.
The most amazing thing to me was the fine control she had over her rate of descent, without any jerkiness. I really do wonder what benefit the boots were providing. It's hard to imagine one's calves (calfs?) being able to loosen and tighten their grippiness on polished metal.
"It's hard to imagine one's calves (calfs?) being able to loosen and tighten their grippiness on polished metal."
Nice way to disguise it. I found it HOT too.
28: Link. Those were installed in that impressive Carnegie gallery—does that room have a name? Matt Weiner wrote approximately 40,000 words about this exhibit.
This dancer's clearly a professional erotic dancer. Little moves like the pelvic slap at 1:38 give the game away—it's not just the move, it's the timing of it that seems peculiar to the world of gentlemanly entertainment.
Minus the context, though, isn't erotic dancing just gymnastics? In a place other than her bare apartment, and in an outfit other than trainers, she performing this routine would make them boys go loco.
37: Or like an actor's headshot. (And those of you who didn't manage to find it erotic need to have your imaginations tuned and lubed.)
40.--Hey, I saw those with you and Becks! Or am I hallucinating that?
We never had the pleasure of meeting up in Pittsburgh. Somewhere else?
I think Smasher's right--minus the context, stripping, esp. of the pole-dancing variety, is gymanstics. Or art. A lot of what happens in strip clubs is surely neither. It does make me wonder, though, if it's true that a lot (most?) kinds of women's dancing/performance hasn't suffered from being eroticized (by which I mean, been marginalized and seen as dirty).
I remember during my one visit to a strip club, the absolute sexist thing one of the strippers did (and judging by the shouts that went up in the audience, I wasn't the only one that thought this) was, after a brief dance, sit backwards on a chair with her back towards the audience and drip a little lotion down her spine. It was purely an excuse for the audience to admire her back and think about sensuality while watching the lotion slowly run down, and people went crazy. A really creative and fabulous performance.
gymanstics ... the absolute sexist thing
God, the gender wars never stop with you, do they?
I think that in this case, you're the one flogging it, Apo.
Slightly OT, but the other day I was surfing tv channels and actually watched Fox News for a while. They were talking about this exotic dance school's classes for teen girls: The Art of Attraction. According to Leah Stauffer, co-founder of the company, they teach the same moves to teens (and some pre-teens particpate, despite the name) that they teach to adults, they just remove terms like "exotic", "erotic", etc. when teaching and talking to girls.
Maybe I'm a prude, but this just skeeves me out. Changing the language is a joke. What skeeves me more, though, was seeing clips of teen and pre-teen girls pole dancing...and their mothers reacting encouragingly, as if their girls were their peer students.
It's supposed to be empowering for the girls, btw.
drip a little lotion down her spine. It was purely an excuse for the audience to admire her back and think about sensuality
Really? This doesn't seem refreshingly sensual so much as a jizz shot.
What skeeves me more, though, was seeing clips of teen and pre-teen girls pole dancing...and their mothers reacting encouragingly, as if their girls were their peer students.
I'm with you. Just wrong.
46: I'm at work. I wait 'til I get home to flog it.
I have a colleague in sociology who studies stripping and the men who go to strip clubs. One of the most interesting things (so interesting to me that I've probably babbled about it in this forum before) is that the dancers make most of their money from flirting with clients between dances. Basically, the game is to flirt with clients so that they will start paying for individual lap dances. Although the dance itself is very important to the clients, what draws the customers back again and again is having an attractive, half naked woman sit with them in the bar and flatter them nonstop.
what draws the customers back again and again is having an attractive, half naked woman sit with them in the bar and flatter them nonstop
Fascinating. What will scientists discover next?
Although the dance itself is very important to the clients, what draws the customers back again and again is having an attractive, half naked woman sit with them in the bar and flatter them nonstop.
Gotta love you academics.
"The Art of Attraction" is supposed to be empowering in that by learning to dance the girl becomes more confident. Confidence produce positive vibes that then attract positive people to the girl. I'm all for building a child's confidence, but I'd prefer a 10-year old girl build her confidence - physical and emotional - via a non-sexualized activity.
48: Well, it was, obviously. But the audience was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop for several minutes. Rapt fascination, and the shout and applause at the end didn't have any kind of "hey baby," edge to it at all; just genuine enthusiasm, the same kind I've heard at fabulous musical performances, say.
Clearly, it being a strip club, the point was to be hawt (which it was). What impressed me, though, is that it was hawt *and* beautiful/creative, all at the same time. I dunno. I felt much the same way I've felt after seeing a good dance or listening to a good symphony performance: impressed by technique, originality, and creative conception, and emotionally overwhelmed, at the same time.
Plus, it defines her worth via her ability to be viewed. She's more confident because she's more capable of achieving the goal of male attention.
Ok, I just made my colleagues results sound lame, there was actually a lot more to them than that. One of her big claims was that the men who consistently fall for this sort of thing are masochists. They are looking to get their hearts broken by becoming emotionally dependent on someone who they know deep down is being insincere. This is a big deal, because a lot of the feminist scholarship up to that point had painted them as dominating, even sadistic.
55 - fair enough. I see how it could achieve that.
56: Absolutely. I think there's already quite enough emphasis in our society on womens' worth via appearance, attractiveness, etc. that there's no need to pile on more at such a young age.
Re. kids and pole-dancing, just for the sake of argument: what "girl's" performance activity *isn't* sexualized? Cheerleading? Drill team? Gymnastics? Ballet? It seems to me that the primary difference between these and pole-dancing is that the four things I've named retain a kinda-sorta deniability about whether or not they're sexualized activities--gymnastics and ballet, especially, perhaps because they're sorta coed?
Confidence produce positive vibes that then attract single dollar bills. This program seems astonishingly misguided. Dance inspires confidence, but stripping is commerce and—well, it's just wrong.
I'm not sure what direction the learning is going. I saw someone describing the freak dancing which is forbidden at HS dances, and it seemed like stripper moves, except that it was new-style stripper moves, not the traditional stuff. So maybe the HS girls are corrupting the staid, traditional, old-school strippers.
attractive, half naked woman sit with them in the bar and flatter them nonstop.
With sadness, I note that Steven den Beste's explanation of how strippers are the only women who treat him like a real man seems to have been scrubbed from the internet.
I miss the old HS dances, with the propeller-pasties.
the men who consistently fall for this sort of thing are masochists
Ok, that's interesting.
"Why can't you girls just pole dance like we used to do back in high school?"
They are looking to get their hearts broken by becoming emotionally dependent on someone who they know deep down is being insincere. This is a big deal, because a lot of the feminist scholarship up to that point had painted them as dominating, even sadistic.
So a lot of feminist scholarship up to this point operated with an unduly unkind view of men? Will there be film at 11:00?
Further to 61: And don't you think that when places like Fox News get all moralistic about those Bad Mothers who encourage their daughters to pole dance, that a big part of what they're doing is basically triangulating so that we, the average viewers who think cheerleading and drill team are wholesome activities and that Those Feminists have Gone Too Far, can feel secure in denying that teaching girls to be girls is essentially sexualizing them? After all, we would *never* send our daughters to pole-dancing class.
69 is right on and insightful.
68: Or, you know, perhaps if one thinks of the issue *from the point of view of the strippers*, the experience *is* like being dominated.
Oops, sorry. Does talking about what it probably feels like to have to pretend to be a sexbot for dollar bills not paint men in a good light? Mustn't do it, then.
68: Is describing them as masochists less kind than calling them sadists? Everyone out there who's happier being pathetic than evil, raise your hands.
Everyone out there who's happier being pathetic than evil, raise your hands.
I've learned to accept this about myself.
64: No, wait! The Wayback Machine has a copy from an older address that wasn't blocked by robots.txt.
I think that most guys in strip clubs know that for one reason or another their odds on normal relationships are not so good. There may be some dreamers. One thing that I did not research was prostitution in strip clubs. It does happen, and there are also strippers who will date customers who seem to be fun.
In Portland the alt music and strip scenes overlap. Courtney Love was a Portland stripper. One PDX stripper, Liv Osthus, has published a book and has written something for the NYT. She's a Williams College grad whose Lutheran minister father disapproves. (I'm not outing her, she writes about this). There used to be a magazine by and for strippers, Danzine, but I think it closed down.
Well, me too actually.
I'm just saying that as between an image of strip-club attendees that treats them as callously exploiting the women dancing there, and one that treats them as, oh, Ste/ven den Be/ste, I'd think most people would be happier being placed in the first category.
43.--Hm. The photos were shown at some Chelsea gallery, but clearly, I did not view them with you.
71: Except that lots of them report their experience as indicating *they* have the power (to cloud men's minds like the Shadow, I suppose). You had better talk to them about how to re-calibrate.
68: Or, you know, perhaps if one thinks of the issue *from the point of view of the strippers*, the experience *is* like being dominated.
Oops, sorry. Does talking about what it probably feels like to have to pretend to be a sexbot for dollar bills not paint men in a good light? Mustn't do it, then.
Osthus NYT piece is behind the pay wall:
MODERN LOVE; A Reality Show for Couples Therapy? Sign Us Up
By LIV OSTHUS
I' m a stripper with a delectable boyfriend and a rock ' n' roll band. I should be having more sex than anyone.
April 23, 2006 Style
Sorry for double post.
79: Yes, I believe that's true--there *is* a power in being able to use one's body/sexuality to manipulate people. And it isn't just strippers who know this; I use the "hawt feminist" shtick all the fucking time when I teach. Nonetheless, that power is essentially manipulative and hence dependent, a lot like the "power" of the daddy's girl. Be cute, and daddy will give you the keys to the car.
Daddy, though, is the one with the ultimate decision-making power.
What are all these female persons doing on my blog?
For a friend's bachelorette party, we all took a striptease dance lesson. Twenty female grad students, being very silly with feather boas. The woman who taught the class had a regular gig at one of those gyms that offers striptease classes as an elective; she was very cool. I wouldn't describe what we learned as in any way a feminist or even really female-empowering exercise, although we did have a good time.
79: There's more too it than that, though. Women who work in strip clubs also know that their power is short lived. Another sociologist who works on this subject pointed out in an interview in Salon that the dancers are downwardly mobile, but the customers are still upwardly mobile.
The dancer has more power in the short term within the boundaries of the club. The customer has more power in the long run and in the rest of society.
61: Oh, I agree that there are girls' activities that have been sexualized. I just don't think they need more options in the sexualized activity department. I particularly dislike cheerleading. I'm not getting much sexiness (sp?) from gymnastics or ballet, although both could be sexed up if desired. But then, I suppose most activities could be sexed up. I actually don't know what a drill team does, so I can't comment on that activity.
OTOH, if someone learns erotic dancing and finds it satisfying in and of itself, makes them feel good and confident bco their mastery of their body and ability to dance well...that seems like a good thing. I don't think erotic dancing is age-appropriate for teens and pre-teens.
69: Sounds good. I'm trying to focus on what Stauffer, the teacher, claims bc Fox News does indeed suck.
Wrt relationship between men and strippers: this blogger writes rather straightforwardly about his strip club hobby. I came across it a year or two ago, probably via unfogged somehow.
Oops, sorry. Does talking about what it probably feels like to have to pretend to be a sexbot for dollar bills not paint men in a good light?
Maybe this is a disagreement about the word "sadism," which I thought referred to mental state of the sadist. I'm not sure why the women would be best positioned to know what the men were getting out of it. Maybe as a proxy for bad self-reporting, I suppose.
I think you're kidding yourself if you think that pole dancing for pre-teens is just the same as gymnastics for pre-teens because it's only due to a cultural context that one is coed and one isn't and one is explicitly for sexual tantilization and one isn't.
Strippers have to turn around the sort term cash flow into something more real. Some of them do it.
A fair number of strippers are students, and if they're not fucked up they can buy houses. On the other hand, if they have a no-good boyfriend and a habit, their life does not go well.
Depending on the club, the audience isn't necessarily high-rollers. Most clubs are full of ordinary guys with no place to go, including masochists.
90: But it's possible that the difference between them isn't in cheerleading's favor. I'm not making this argument, because I don't know enough about cheerleading/gymnastics/whatever to back it up, but I can imagine arguing that it's less fucked up to learn how to dance in an explicitly sexualized way for the explicit purpose of titillation, than it is to learn how to dance/whatever in an implicitly sexualized way because successfully being titillating will get you praised for being strong/skillful/pretty/popular. If you see what I mean.
I think we're back in age-of-consent territory. Preteens pole dancing is different than 17-year olds pole dancing.
The sexuality genie is really out of the bottle, no? What kids do voluntarily if not watched closely is pretty far out there, it seems. Who knew?
92
But where would the little girls be taught that they need to be supportive of the boy's activities?
Military organizations have drill teams, but the drill team at my (Catholic!) h.s. was more like this. The uniforms were *slightly* less overt, though--flippy short skirts and tight sweaters instead of can-can costumes.
87: I hate cheerleading, too, b/c of the fake wholesomeness of it at least as much as b/c of the sexification. The problem is that if you want to avoid sexed up activities, that pretty much means avoiding almost anything "girly." Which is kinda sad. E.g. this parent-made video of a very cute little girl doing ballet.
90: I don't think that's what I said.
Will no one think of the ballerinos? (Ballerini?)
I can imagine arguing it, LB, and I'm aware there's something skeevy, like the Hooter's thread argued, of saying 'this is implicitly sexual but good' while decrying porn. And that maybe our ideal should be to say, if we're going to have our daughters dance, we'd best make sure they're dancing erotically explicitly, because at least they'd be more honest about it.
I submit, however, that that's pretty fucked up.
Is it fucked up, or does it just lay bare the fuckeduppedness of things like Hooter's and cheerleading?
I do wonder about ballet. I don't remember any of my sister's little-girl ballet recitals as remotely sexualised -- admittedly I was pretty young when I attended those but cheerleading seemed obviously sexualised to me in a way that ballet did/does not. Ballet is very femme -- it's an exaggerated hyper-femininity -- but it doesn't seem obviously sexualised to me. Even now.
91: According to a friend who worked a chain of clubs, the working-class neighborhoods were more generous than the up-scale places, and yes, several were making good money, banking it, had plans, and a very good grasp of needing a get-out-of-the-biz date set.
86 & 82: Exactly. It's just like programming. I'm god, but only as long as my login is valid. Seriously tho', what human interaction not involving brute force or the near threat thereof is NOT manipulative in some sense? Re strippers and dancers, who is being "exploited" more, the guy who pays his $20+ for a few minutes of fantasy or the gal who triggers that fantasy?
I don't think cheerleading is as fucked up in the same way (I'm thinking collegiate cheering, not NFL/NBA.)
Also, kind of pissed off I didn't take up my parents offer to go to ballet lessons at the same time as my sister [but, hey, I was 8 ...].
101: Ballet is weird on this axis because it's such a common little-girl activity, and so few people stick with it past puberty: my impression is that someone over twelve in a ballet class is very likely someone who believes they have a shot at being a professional. I'd guess (although Jack should weigh in) that kid ballet and teen ballet are fairly discontinuous.
re: 106
Yeah, my sister stopped when she was about 11 or 12 as well. Although there were older kids at the recitals I went to. My friend's sister went on to go to the Royal Ballet school, I believe. Although she never became a dancer (as far as I know).
105: We had Sally and Newt in ballet together for a year or so, and he loved it. But the teacher we liked moved back to Minnesota, and they both decided they'd rather do TKD.
I have known more than one guy who would have been happy to strip if they could have. There aren't many Chippendale's jobs, and the standards are very high.
103: Agree entirely. Strip clubs are sad places.
re: 108
I can see that. It's something of the same skill set too -- bodily movement, athleticism, co-ordination, being in a group, etc.
Doesn't JM have an anti-ballet thing, with the bloody stumps of her feet jammed into her ill-fitting ballet clogs uphill in the snow both ways? Maybe pole dancing is better.
Oh, 103 was actually to 100.
Seriously, I don't think there's much of any question as to whose life most people would rather have -- a stripper or a strip club customer.
100: Exactly.
Re strippers and dancers, who is being "exploited" more, the guy who pays his $20+ for a few minutes of fantasy or the gal who triggers that fantasy?
You're kidding, right?
This is kind of killing me. Yes, there's a fucked-up, sexually exhibitionist element in the way that some dance techniques are taught to young girls. However, it is not a necessary, inherent componant of dance.
Erotic dance doesn't need to be considered as a separate technique. Everything that every erotic dancer does--except maybe for some of that wild upper-body pole work--can be done by a competantly trained dancer, even a ballet dancer, if she's had a modicum of cross-disciplinary training, which of course they all have. There are only two reasons to take an erotic dancing class: either you're honing your skillz to go pro, or you want to titallate yourself by imagining titallating others.
My memory is of JM saying that ballet is essentially about teaching dancers to internalize the male gaze. Which seems about right to me.
I'm not saying that's all there is to it. I'm using it as an analogy to say that that's not all there is to, say, pole dancing, either--or at least, it needn't be (e.g., the video in the original post that led to this discussion).
111: Right, and with less potential for body-type trauma for Sally if she gets good at it. I kind of hated the thought of her getting attached to ballet and getting told to buzz off when they start getting selective about builds, and notice that she's a broad-shouldered solid kid likely to develop a lot of height and mass.
But if either of them wants to go back to dance, we'll let them.
Oh, and this kid ballet and teen ballet are fairly discontinuous is very true. I'd say that at about ten year old, the weirdness begins.
I'd also say that there's a difference between 'wow, that's a leotard, men might find that hott' and 'make sure you writhe here because that's what men find hott.'
To the extent that cheerleading emulates the latter, that's bad. My limited experience with ballet and gymnastics is that while they're both visual sports, the message they're having the girls internalize, as opposed to 'take this erotic dance' class is very different.
LB, if the kids want to go back to dance, take them to see good modern dance. Alvin Ailey is great for kids, and the company seems to be coming back from the dead.
And modern dance is less rigid, body-type wise, right?
This is all pretty complicated, isn't it? Roughly, I see three ways for these activities to appear sexualized.
1. Bodies on display will always be in some way sexualized, so insofar as anything, ballet, cheerleading, basketball, swimming, shows bodies, particularly when dressed in a way that accentuates the body, it will be partly sexual.
Then there are the more culturally determined things...
2. The participants explicitly draw attention to their own sexual characteristics, so a stripper slaps her own ass, or rubs her crotch. But there are gray areas. The high leg kick in cheerleading is partly meant to express enthusiasm and partly to show athleticism, but it's also sexual in that it shows the crotch.
3. Activities are "coded" as sexual or not, and this seems like the most malleable and controversial scale. Basketball, though the players can be quite sexy, is coded as non-sexual, which is to say that we're not supposed to watch it to get off. (You hear me, Timbot?) Whereas stripping is all about getting off. Gray areas abound, and differ from person to person: does any guy watch ballet for anything other than the hot bodies? But it's an art and a skill and can be appreciated that way. Some people watch beach volleyball because of the athleticism and skill and excitement (it really is exciting) and some people watch just because the bodies are so, so hot. And this is where you also get the baggage of women's activities being much more likely to be considered sexual than men's. Etc.
Wow, rambly.
114: Actually, I'm looking for an operational definition of "exploit" that's widely applicable and at least somewhat independent of current cultural norms or would-be norms. If such a definition can't exist then I'll agree, strippers are generally exploited by the guys, and the guys are being exploited by the club owners.
re: 117
TKD seems pretty perfect for kids, actually. The flashiness of a lot of the moves and the general lack of a hard-core mentality [in sparring or training] in a lot of schools (which attracts a fair bit of opprobium from some quarters) are exactly the sort of things that seem tailor made for children. And, as you say, it's something anyone can do, which doesn't have restrictive aesthetic body-standards, and where they can keep going into their teens, unlike ballet.
My memory is of JM saying that ballet is essentially about teaching dancers to internalize the male gaze. Which seems about right to me.
At a very high level of abstraction, though. It's worked into the form as part of its language and history, and there are a LOT of strands to it.
To make a shitty analogy (sorry, ogged), modern ballet:male gaze :: tai chi:killing people.
re: 122
"does any guy watch ballet for anything other than the hot bodies?"
Yes. Or at least part of the pleasure I get from watching ballet when I see it on TV* derives as much from the athletic skill and elegance of the male dancers as it does from the female.
* I'm not a big fan but if I'm flipping channels and there's ballet on, I'll watch it ...
does any guy watch ballet for anything other than the hot bodies?
Edward Gorey probably did.
I've heard ballet dancers described as sexless dance machines. Same for figure skating and gymnastics, I think.
The big figure-skating audience isn't pervy guys, it's dreamy women who wish they were princesses. hat's why figure-skating is supposedly the most popular single sport on TV, -- it brings in a whole new non-sport-fan audience.
I do wonder about guys with an excessive interest in women's gymnastics, though, granted that the ideal age for that is about 14.
3's what I'm getting at. Implicit in 3, I think, is 3a: ballet is an art and a skill and can be appreciated that way--and this fact means that people deny that it's sexualized *at all*. Which is a problem. But, like most traditional girl's sports/activities, there's a pretty major emphasis on looks, appearance, etc. (e.g., the body type thing). Basketball players aren't tall and thing b/c it "looks more graceful"; if a short fat guy could score points, he'd be on the team. But if a short fat girl were a fantastic ballet dancer, she wouldn't.
And I know at some point we talked about the short shorts that volleyball players wear.
And modern dance is less rigid, body-type wise, right?
I'm not going to lie: some schools of modern (Graham and I think Taylor) have weird ideas about body-type. Other bigname schools (Cunningham, Ailey) are going to have a bunch of hyper-athletic people who might seem to have been selected for body-type, but they're just insanely fit. And others have freakishly talented dancers in all kinds of shapes (Mark Morris), and that's especially the case when you get into the more postmodern and experimental stuff I like.
To add onto 122, there's also a difference in the sports in whether men find it hot (i.e., omg, the cheerleaders have crotches) and whether the performer is very consciously creating that (i.e., let me rub myself.) From recent threads around here, you guys can be turned on by breathing.
Maybe we should have an all-analogy thread one of these days. An all analogy thread would be like skipping church and going to a bar.
The big figure-skating audience isn't pervy guys, it's dreamy women who wish they were princesses.
Much like the people taking pole-dancing classes are women who want to think of themselves as fit and sexy.
I don't think that very many men watch ballet for sexual reasons. The movements are too athletic and stylized.
113: I agree with that, too. Like I said, sad places.
134: That works if we collapse the performer/audience distinction completely.
I once got together with someone who mentioned that he'd been to one of my dance performances, and that throughout my solo, he'd been transfixed and utterly turned on by a hole in my tights. (The hole was about 2/3rds up my thigh, if I recall correctly.) It was a weird moment for me because of course I shouldn't have worn hole-y tights even for a small informal performance, but also because I had been sexualized in a completely unintended and uncontrollable way. All of the athleticism and stylization I was so proud of wasn't the turn-on; it was that damned hole in my tights.
I know that in figure skating, irrelevant femme characteristics like looking winsome and batting the eyes seemed to influence judges. I'm not saying Tonya Harding was right, but she felt she was being cheated for that reason.
138: Good point, but isn't the distinction fairly fluid, especially when you're talking about women signing their daughters up for whatever it is?
I'm not saying Tonya Harding was right, but...
Great, great lead-in Emerson.
I don't think that very many men watch ballet for sexual reasons. The movements are too athletic and stylized.
I've watched a lot of ballet, and I would put it differently: both athletic and stylized could be sexual, but in my experience aren't, that is not directly. On the one hand, sexual feelings are often what's being expressed, as in Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, on the other the abstraction removes it from that plain, or seems to.
Sausagely: "At any rate, in the nicest possible way I'd sort of rather keep my page oriented toward brick and mortal IRL friends."
Note the patented Sausagely misspelling. Also note he hates most of us, except for the ones who made it to the DC party. Sniff.
B, not really. What I take myself to be saying is that there's significant differences between ballet & gymnastics & figure skating and pole-dancing, and one of those differences is the message that the performer is expected to internalize.
To just say 'well, it's all male gaze' collapses some pretty important distinctions, and one of them is surely that the four-year-old or the ten-year-old in the gymnastics class who is learning a split isn't doing so because it's sexy, even if the sixteen-year-old Olympian knows that guys perv on tiny chicks in leotards. I'm not sure the ten-year-old shaking her ass in the pole-dancing class is getting the same message.
Sure, it's on a continuum, but where you are on that continuum can be decisive.
Those who've said that eroticism in entertainment is about context are right, IMO. Most eroticized forms of entertainment can be stylized and rendered more or less asexual through formalization and ritual (cf. the recent mainstream vogues for things like pole- and belly-dancing). Likewise, pretty much any stylized and formalized activity, or sporting event for that matter, can be easily eroticized depending on the social codes, myths and expectations that surround it (cf. cheerleading, which in many forms is as aggressively sexualized an activity as you could ask for, precisely because of the erotic mythology surrounding it).
Ballerinas don't tend to be sex symbols largely by chance, because the culture has happened to focus its attention on other kinds of figures. The same with modern dance, which can involve a lot of nudity and forthright eroticism (Manon Oligny's work is a good example) but is nevertheless not particular sexualized in mainstream imagination.
It should be noted at this point that Rudolf Nureyev is a white-hot sex machine.
At age 80 my late mom said "Baryshnikov can have me any time". The sexualizing female gaze.
Pavarotti and Placido Domingo were also eligible.
Open to a broad range of body types, was she?
147: I'm not collapsing, I don't think, b/c I'm not saying they're the same. What I'm saying is that we tend to pretend that distinctions along a continuum are absolute, and if you look at the thing itself, it becomes incredibly clear that not only aren't they absolute, they're not inherent in what you're looking at, either. All I'm trying to do is say, okay, if you strip away the way we're "supposed" to think about these things (Ballet is Art, and Stripping is Smut), you'll see some fairly important similarities, both good and bad.
Re. men not watching ballet b/c of teh sex: this is surely true, now, b/c ballet is "high art." I'd be pretty willing to argue, though, that for about four hundred years, ballet was about teh sex. Women on stage weren't at all respectable until sometime in the twentieth century.
I took your 61 as saying that pole-dancing isn't so bad for kids because other dancing activities also involve appearance. I think that in this world, the difference are significant enough that you can say, yes, they both involve visual elements, but not of the same kind given this broader cultural context.
I don't think I need to make arguments about the state of ballet and stripping in all possible worlds in order to make this go through. I'm sure ballet is risqué somewhere; and in that world, they shouldn't teach it to ten-year-olds.
Right. 19th C novels, 'ballet girls' are understood to be sexually available -- that was who rich men had as mistresses.
That's a mixed bag, LB. The corps de ballet was a little more sexually available, but even back in the 19th c. there were female solo dancers who were real professionals. You go back further in the history of ballet, and you get to the dances at the French royal court, in which both genders were preening for attention and importance.
Oh, I didn't mean that all dancers were whores, just that 'ballet girls' was a recognizable category of available women. And I honestly don't know the history -- I'm just picking up language from novels of the era.
Yes, but those recognizable categories of available women in 19-c novels also include seamstresses, writers, factory workers, milkmaids, servants...
158: Sure, and there are strippers nowaday who are real professionals, too. I really suspect that the *primary* difference is simply one of social class.
156: No, I wasn't saying pole dancing for kids is good. I was saying that I dislike the uncategorical condemnation of people whose kids take pole dancing, because if you think about it a little bit, people who sign their kids up for cheerleading or ballet or child pageants or birthday parties with pedicures and makeup--all perfectly respectable activities--are doing so for many of the same reasons; it's just that the latter activities are coded as respectable because we like to pretend that encouraging girls to learn to be graceful or whathaveyou isn't, ultimately, about sex.
160: Still, there's a real difference between a seamstress, who is available b/c of her social class and attractive because she's coded as domestic and modest, and a dancer, whose attractiveness is linked directly to her being on public display.
Given there's an article today about the increasing use of weight-loss surgery for kids and teens, we should be encouraging pole-dancing for everyone. Sheesh!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16981527/
161: And I'm saying I disagree with that characterization of ballet and gymnastics. And I have thought about it a little bit! I just don't think you can 'well, basically' your way into saying 'extremely formalized and stylized grace that most men don't find erotic is exactly the same as slapping your own ass.'
156: But of course, recognizing that the sexualization of ballet was transitory involves recognizing that pole dancing can undergo a similar kind of transition, and perhaps is doing so. (To mass culture in this case, rather than high art.) I think the fact that it's going mainstream reflects other trends in the cultural context -- the sleazy original context of pole-dancing, for example (the strip club), is a cultural phenomenon in decline. Similarly, burlesque has resurfaced as a relatively mainstream entertainment (albeit a bit more hipster-specific) precisely because the kind of cultural context in which it originally signified doesn't exist any longer.
I just don't think you can 'well, basically' your way into saying 'extremely formalized and stylized grace that most men don't find erotic is exactly the same as slapping your own ass.'
Agreed, which is why I didn't say that.
What I'm saying is that stripping and pole-dancing can *also* be extremely formalized and stylized and graceful. And that, historically, a lot of men *did* find ballet erotic. Not that they're exactly the same, but that they're not as far apart as most people want to pretend. That's all.
Sexual, family, and class rules were a lot stricter in the XIXc than they are today. No free love except a little bit in the highest most liberal / radical elite. Even there scandal was infinitely more likely than today, women ruined and disgraced, etc.
So I think that then any single woman (outside the highest elite, maybe) who was willing to have sex without the expectation of marriage was considered whorish. Especially if there was more than one guy, and especially if she expected to be taken care of.
The world of Islam is still like that. Virgins, wives, whores, nothing else. There were aspects of that in Taiwan when I was there in 1984, though it was changing. Also Japan.
In a lot of fiction guys fall madly in love with these women, but the guys' parents still thought the women were whores.
the latter activities are coded as respectable
Yeah, but that makes a difference: whether someone chooses an activity that's coded respectable or trashy tells you something about them, and whether they're likely to be respectable or trashy--whether those activities are inherently one or the other is beside the point, or at least a different level of meaning.
169: Exactly. And by "trashy" we mean "lower class," and by "respectable" we mean "middle class." That's what it tells us.
And that's why I object to condemning the former as beyond the pale while defending the latter.
Why? We should all aspire to be lower class?
"100: Exactly.
Re strippers and dancers, who is being "exploited" more, the guy who pays his $20+ for a few minutes of fantasy or the gal who triggers that fantasy?
You're kidding, right?"
I'd be interested in hearing this, if the distinction is something other than "since women are doing this job it must be really shitty"