Samantha Holland - Pole Dancing, Empowerment and Embodiment [2010][A]

Book Description
This book provides an international, multi-disciplinary empirical account of pole classes and how they fit into wider discourses about bodies and gender, and age and fitness. In particular, the book explores how women initiate agency and espouse liberation and empowerment through something as seemingly problematic as pole classes.

Review
'This book pays much needed attention to a fascinating phenomenon emerging from striptease culture and the mainstreaming of sex...Holland's cutting-edge ethnography illuminates brilliantly the complexities of feminized and embodied empowerment swirling around these poles, as women from all walks of life explore this new form of exercise and self-expression. 'Poler' is now a new word in my vocabulary!' - Catherine M. Roach, Associate Professor, New College, University of Alabama, USA

About the Author
SAMANTHA HOLLAND is Research Fellow, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK