PETALING JAYA, Jan 30 — Nine years ago, Los Angeles native Natasha Wang took a leap of faith and quit her 9-to-5 desk job as a publicist.
She hasn’t looked back and has since made a name for herself as a successful professional pole instructor and athlete despite not having any dance or gymnastics training.
The 44-year-old has a list of impressive wins, among them the 2018 International Pole Championship (IPC) pole art champion, 2013 IPC Ultimate Champion, 2011 US pole dance champion and many others.
In an interview with Asian American news site Next Shark, Wang described her first class as awkward and uncomfortable.
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“If you talk to anyone who’s ever taken a pole class for the first time I think very few would be like, ‘I walked into that class and I left feeling like, wow, I really feel comfortable wearing heels and rolling around and touching myself’,” she said with a laugh.
Unlike the popularity pole fitness is enjoying today, things were vastly different a decade ago.
Many students, including Wang, did it secretly.
She finally told friends, family and coworkers about her newfound love when pole became more popular.
Most of them reacted positively but some were confused.
“I had some friends who were like, ‘You went to college, why are you paying money to learn how to be an exotic dancer?’ They didn’t understand. They thought it was like the antithesis of being an empowered woman,” Wang told Next Shark.
At that point, Wang still had her full-time job but she found it hard to stay focused at work while having to juggle touring and teaching workshops.
She eventually quit after a two-year sabbatical.
Like many Asian families who favour steady 9-to-5 jobs instead of the uncertainties that come with a career in the arts, Wang said her father, a computer programmer and kung fu school owner, was “a little disappointed” when she told him she was quitting her job.
“But my mum was always very supportive and oddly they never pressured me to have children,” she said, describing her parents who originally came from Taiwan as nontraditional.
“I think as I’ve gotten older, I realised that the root of a lot of insecurities I have as a performer and competitor, even now, there’s a feeling of… my father never believed in me, so how can I believe in myself?” she said.
While Wang was on the topic of insecurities, she also spoke about ageism female athletes face and the unequal visibility according to age groups that dancers are segregated into.
According to the report, women in their 30s are categorised as “Seniors”, those in the 40s are classified under “Masters” and women in their 50s are placed in the “Grand Master” division.
“One way to combat it is to, embrace the fact that we’re all over 40, compete in the Master’s division and then make that division really badass so that people pay attention to it,” she considered.
“So if we could still beat the women who are younger than us in the regular women’s, then you know, maybe we should just stay,” said Wang.
To date, the international pole icon has travelled to over 60 countries to teach the popular fitness activity.
Wang spoke about the ability of pole dancing to bring women of different backgrounds together, naming Israel as an example.
“I think as somebody who was going to Israel for the first time, you know, you have these sorts of conceptions about the separation of the Jews and the Muslims.”
“And here was this studio that had Jewish pole dancers, and Muslim pole dancers, and Christian pole dancers altogether, stripped of the clothes that they would wear walking out in the streets, so everybody looks completely the same,” she said.
More than just a physical art form, Wang wants to use pole fitness to empower women from all walks of life whether it’s victims of sexual trauma hoping to reclaim their sexual power, exotic dancers and athletes.
“I think a lot of women are initially attracted to pole for reasons such as I want to lose weight, I want to be sexy… So they go into it maybe more for vanity reasons.
“But they learn to embrace their inner strength or they learn to appreciate their bodies for what their bodies can do rather than how their bodies look.
“And so they develop a much healthier relationship with their bodies than they had before,” Wang said.
