Pole-Dancing and The De-Evolution of Feminism

What compels a woman to take pole-dancing classes?  I understand the concept of exercise and being in shape, I understand the concept of wanting to be sexy.  What I don’t understand is why a woman would choose a degrading, dehumanizing and objectifying activity, that was created for the sole purpose of entertaining perverts.

Now, I understand these women aren’t taking off their clothes and grinding on strangers, but they are making a very damaging statement.  They are normalizing the objectification of women...not only normalizing it, but contributing to it, encouraging it.  They are idolizing the behaviour of a sex industry worker.  How did female empowerment turn into nothing but sexual expression?  Why do so many women feel the need to take the power they have over themselves, and use it for self-objectification?

I believe that every woman can make her own decisions for her own life, but I believe that women are participating in the destruction and degradation of our gender.  Somewhere along the line feminism became a bad word.  Suddenly, all feminists were accused of being militant, or prudish. 

So, we have women fighting for their rights around the world.  Women in Saudi Arabia who are fighting for the right to drive a vehicle; women in Africa who are fighting for the right to not have their genitals mutilated as children; women in Asia fighting to avoid human trafficking.  There are women in Afghanistan who have to fight for the right to go to school.  There are women in Iran, who have to fight against being stoned to death, when their only “crime” was being raped by someone who wasn’t her husband.  There are women in Canada, being enslaved, abused, beaten and killed.  We have all these women, fighting for their dignity...and some still choose to throw theirs away.

And now, there is a fitness gym in the US, that is offering pole-dancing “gymnastics” to...little children.  They have even gone so far to post pole-dancing pictures of these 7, 8, 9, 10 year old girls on facebook...as though it were something to be proud of. 

The fact is, every woman is worth more than the value society has put on her; worth more than the value she has put on herself.  Pole-dancing is not an exercise; it’s a form of erotic entertainment where a woman is stripped down, and objectified by dirty men throwing money at her.

Jeez...whatever happened to Jazzercise?