'Different body types have different beauty': How pole dancing helped plus-sized woman regain her confidence

While many believe pole dancing requires a skinny body, that narrative is being challenged as more and more plus-sized women are participating. 

Chen Jiening, a 28-year-old kindergarten teacher, started taking pole dancing lessons at the end of 2019.

In her first class, which was full of slender women, she was afraid of what others might think of her body or if the pole could take her weight. However, they were very welcoming and encouraging, she told 8world in a recent interview.

Since pole dancing involves carrying one's entire weight, Jiening said the difficulty of learning lies in individual muscle mass and strength.

For Jiening, some skills were harder to learn than others — it took her an entire year of practice to do a handstand.

She said: "A very slender girl doesn't necessarily have the same strength as us, people of different body types have different beauty."

Jiening also posted clips of her pole dancing on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, to record her progress.

This quickly made her a target of mockery in April last year, where she received comments like "Eh, the pole so strong? It can carry such a heavy person".

Initially, she was concerned about the malicious comments and worried that her family would feel uncomfortable seeing the videos. She said: "I'm just posting videos of what I like to do. Why do strangers have to leave comments or criticise me?"

It didn't help that as a child, Jiening was also a victim of bullying because of her body shape and suffered from low self-esteem.

However, her mindset began to shift over time. 

Since taking up pole dancing, she's grown to care less about other people's opinions of her body and feels that it's more important to love herself instead.

"Pole dancing allows me to relieve stress, I can remember the dance, and dancing beautifully makes me happy... No matter what others think of you, the most important thing is that you like how you look."

Jiening's teacher, Zhang Fangfang, added: "Pole dancing is a form of art and exercise, it's for everyone to try. You can gain fitness, a sense of enjoyment and even build self-confidence." 

In 2021, a pair of pole dancers, Shermin Lim and Phoebe Chew, also started a project aimed at empowering women of all body sizes and backgrounds to pole dance, named Beautiful Inspiring Girls (BIG).

Although pole dancing can seem daunting for plus-sized women, it's been said that it is actually suitable for any body shape, and Jiening and BIG are a huge testament to that. 

estherlam@asiaone.com