My cousin Sherri was a stripper. She was an aerial expert on the steel poles. Naked the slender brunette would swirl around the metal column like an Aztec skydiver. her mother never came to a show, but I always told Aunt Mary, “You’re daughter is the best.”
“That’s because you’re family.”
“Maybe a little, but also she is better than good.”Of course there was nothing social redeeming in her shows in Times Square. Men came to see a world-famous XXX actress and Sherri never disappoint her fans. She showed them all without ever telling them the tricks of the trade. Pole-dancing was an art for women only, although gay go-go dancers have also experimented on the poles only to have their member collide with the pole in a less than harmless fashion.
Fast-forward twenty years and pole-dancing has lost its negative aura and even females in puritanistic China have taken up pole-dancing as an aerobic exercise at Shanghai’s Marco Polo Pole-Dancing School. Women in their 20s feel sexy and this strip show technique allows them to fantasize about performing to a dark room filled with panting men and fantasy is all they have, since the Chairman Mao’s wife banned go-go dancing during the Cultural Revolution.
Pole-dancing was introduced to China by a 39 year-old woman. Her parents are firmly against her mission, but frustrated in her pursuit of careers she bucked their disapproval and opened the school several years ago.
“People here have never seen a pole dance, and for that reason they don’t associate it with stripping or women of ill repute.”
Mostly because the Chinese are so square.
When I visited Cheng-Du in 1995 couples were ballroom dancing to disco.
So times are changing in China and it’s only a matter of time before someone teaches the girls to lap-dance.
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