[Sirin Kale | Broadly.]

“Pole is not a synonym for “stripping”: In fact, the sport requires the level of training and skill more commonly associated with high-level gymnasts or contemporary dance, neither of which are viewed as sexual pursuits.”

Eleven-year-old Paige Olson sits in a south London recreational center, too shy to talk. She has clear blue eyes, a matching streak in bobbed dark hair, and feathers sewn onto the bottom of her black stage costume. Her mother, 44-year-old Jennifer Balow—who is raising Paige, her only child, alone—speaks for her when the nerves get too much, which is often.

They’ve flown here from Tucson, Arizona, so that Olson can perform in the 2016 International Pole Sport Federation (IPSF) World Championships. The competition is in its fifth annual year, with dozens of competitors flown in from around the globe to compete. Olson, I find out, is the current favorite in the ten-person strong novice final: a prodigious talent in a room full of ten to 14-year-old competitors able to defy gravity while whipping themselves around poles four meters in height.

Many are horrified by the idea of pre-pubescent girls swinging around an apparatus more commonly associated with suburban strippers. As a result, the sport has struggled to gain mainstream legitimacy—and the fact that a children’s league exists has compounded the controversy. The competitive pole dancing community emphatically insists that pole is not a synonym for “stripping”: In fact, the sport requires the level of training and skill more commonly associated with high-level gymnasts or contemporary dance, neither of which are viewed as sexual pursuits. And indeed, the majority of athletes I talk to at the competition have detoured via the world of gymnastics, contemporary dance, or calisthenics en route to pole.

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