Pole-dancing for soccer moms

Pole Dancing Parties Catch On in Book Club Country -- by TINA KELLEY/NY Times

KINNELON, N.J. — Johnna Cottam was showing a group of her girlfriends how to do a move called the Fireman.

As music by Shakira played, she strode up to grab the portable pole in the living room of her well-appointed lakefront home here, wrapped her right leg around it, swung wide with her left, and spun. When she reached the bottom, Ms. Cottam, in a pink “Got Pole?” tank top and black workout pants, tossed her hair back, mudflap-girl style.

“Kick it right out of the ballpark, just kick it,” she encouraged her five friends and neighbors. Making way for the women to try the move, Ms. Cottam backed into a rocking chair draped with pink and purple feather boas that partly covered her twin sons’ two teddy bears.

Pole dancing, once exclusively the province of exotic dancers, has flared up as a much-hyped Hollywood exercise craze, and has seeped into the collective unconscious through shows like “The Sopranos” and “Desperate Housewives.” A variant called motorized pole dancing, which occurs in stretch limos, has raised eyebrows as far away as Britain, where some female university students pole-danced as a fund-raiser for testicular cancer. And mini-poles have even been spotted as dance props at over-the-top bat mitzvah parties in suburban precincts.

Now the pole — think ballet barre turned vertical — is the new star at racier versions of Tupperware parties in well-heeled (if high-heeled) areas like this one in the northwest hills of Morris County, about 33 miles from Manhattan. Billed as “femme empowerment,” such at-home pole dancing lessons are taking place in the realm of book clubs, with mothers — and grandmothers — learning slinky moves for girls’ nights in, bachelorette send-offs, even the occasional 60th birthday celebration.

“I want the women to feel strong within themselves,” explained Ms. Cottam, 29, who teaches pole dancing at a local gym as well as at home parties. Noting that some middle-aged suburban women lose themselves and their sense of sexuality as they are consumed by the responsibilities of motherhood, she added: “When you come to my class you are beautiful, you are. I want to show them that strength inside, and unleash that sexual kitten.”

At the party here, Karen Schotanus, a 42-year-old dental hygienist who met Ms. Cottam at a neighborhood garage sale, encouraged Carolyn DaCarolis, 52 and also a hygienist, as she practiced a tentative strut around the pole.

“Pull out the hair tie and throw those glasses,” said Ms. Schotanus, who had such a good time that she promised to soon plan a pole party of her own.

This intimate Friday-night soiree, where spinach dip and crudités were served and Ms. Cottam sent guests home with homemade banana muffins for their families, was for no particular occasion. She did not charge for the lesson, but had poles — spring-loaded and adjustable from 8 to 10 feet — for sale ($450), as well as a variety of feathered or rhinestone platform shoes ($19.99 and up).

Though Ms. Cottam operates independently, more than 350 pole-dance instructors in 34 states and Canada have signed up since August 2006 with an international company, EPM EmpowerNet, to run their own businesses in the model of Tupperware or Avon sales. The company provides DVDs that teach the instructors dance moves, pole safety and party etiquette, and sells them the equipment; they keep the fees they charge each participant — $25 to $30 in this area — plus any margin on the poles.

At-home pole parties are also offered by gyms that teach exotic dance, and several local companies run similar operations.

In its mission statement, EPM, based in British Columbia, sets lofty goals like reducing the divorce rate and having “a dramatic effect on improving relationships.” Tami Huitema, the company’s office manager, said most of its instructors were stay-at-home mothers looking to earn a little extra at night after their children were in bed — though one man signed up with his wife, she said.

“He knows how the men benefit after the party,” Ms. Huitema said.

Rachel Shteir, author of the 2004 book “Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show,” says pole dancing can provide “a welcome release” for suburban stay-at-home mothers.

“Their entire world is reduced to caretaking, and this is sort of the opposite of that,” she said. “It taps into this kind of exhibitionism, or show-womanship, among younger women who did not grow up with the gender politics of the sexual revolution.”

Some say exercise that echoes the acrobatics done by women who take their clothes off for a living is exploitative rather than empowering. But Ms. Shteir and Joan Price, the author of “Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk About Sex After Sixty” (Seal Press, 2006), see a clear difference between middle-class, middle-aged women choosing to give parties in their homes and women pushed by poverty into potentially dangerous or demeaning work.

“If we were to limit what we do in the realm of affirming our sexuality because it has been used against us in the past,” said Ms. Price, who tried pole dancing in 2005, “we would then be buying into the idea that we don’t own it.”

At Ms. Cottam’s home the other Friday, the women pole-danced for a couple of hours, a black light placed in front of the hearth to set the mood (as opposed to the upturned red wagon that one of Ms. Cottam’s 2-year-olds had left behind). Before the lesson, Ms. Cottam poured white wine into glasses, and toasted: “To the pole dancer in each and every one of you, cheers.”

As her husband entertained their boys in the basement, Ms. Cottam taught the women tricks to try at home, with or without a pole. Every so often, she wiped the accumulated hand lotion from the pole with Windex.

She wrapped herself around the pole in intriguing ways, then flowed onto the floor like fast honey. When Ms. Cottam gave pointers on how to do a striptease using a man’s shirt put on backward, there was much nudging and winking, and murmuring about lucky husbands.

“If you’re doing it at 10 p.m. and have a nice little one-man audience, you can think, ‘I am getting in shape,’ ” she told her friends.

Though some exercise professionals have questioned pole-dance promoters about the efficiency of the exercise, Miriam E. Nelson, director of the John Hancock Center for Physical Activity and Nutrition at Tufts University , said research supported creative approaches to getting people up and moving around.

“It doesn’t matter what it is,” Dr. Nelson said, “if you’re getting warm, and your heart rate goes up, you’re sustaining it and doing it on a regular basis.”

Yolanda Matos-Moran, 49, said she was sore the day after attending a pole-dancing bachelorette party for a friend of her daughters in West New York, N.J. “I said to my daughters, ‘This is good; there are muscles you haven’t used,’ ” Ms. Matos-Moran recalled. “It has given me that encouragement to start exercising again.”

At Ms. Cottam’s house, there was talk about getting the local Fayson Lakes women’s club, whose activities normally run more to progressive dinners and Lifeguard Appreciation Day, involved in a pole-dance session.

“It was great fun,” said Ms. DaCarolis, who spent much of the lesson complaining about being left-handed, and who left with a pair of red marabou platform pumps. “But I need a lot of practice.”