Weekend Crush: Pole Dancing Professor, Lisa Faulkner

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Lisa Faulkner, PhD, embodies a lot of what Flexines is about. She definitely brings her dash of sexy to the pole world and has just the right touch of nerdy pole dancer. I love that there is a constant undertone of deep thought and empowerment to everything she writes on her site, poledancingprofessor.com. In fact, I think she is the perfect example of who pole dancers are. There is a recurring thread on StudioVeena about what we pole dancers do for a living and the responses are resoundingly both diverse and impressive. We are doctors, machinists, nurses, social workers, and yes, pole dancing professors.

Here's what caught my attention: the call of the Siren. I first noticed Lisa's celebration of herself and this playful, sensual spirit in the images she shares on her Facebook page. What is a siren? What is the call of a siren? I think this image
(below) does the best job demonstrating both of these. It is compelling because she looks so free. Playing on the beach as an adult makes you vulnerable but letting yourself go makes you powerful. It reminds me of the way pole transforms women by giving us a medium to be vulnerable--from dancing for a departed loved one to letting someone see our sexy side--and yet own it. It is expressive and empowering.

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Lisa's message is that all women have a siren inside of us and we can empower ourselves by expressing our inner siren. She talks about feminism and what the call of the siren means. The way I look at it, yes, women have closer to equal rights than ever before but there are some glaring examples that we are still on a journey to true equality. On La Vie Sirene, Lisa writes about appalled her response to society blaming an eleven-year-old for being gang raped in 2011. Another example from my Women, Health, and Medicine class is that there are more women doctors than ever before--even more than men--and yet there are extremely few women in higher paying, higher prestige specializations. There is equality in a sense but something is stifling it. I think answering the call of the siren is about expressing our whole selves and by doing so becoming empowered. Lisa encourages women to reach out in sisterhood and stoke our feminine fire. Could you imagine how these scenarios would change if we did that? I think if we were really free to as intellectual, sensual, and powerful as we choose without repercussion it would change the way society looks at rape. It would change the way we look at women in high powered positions.

I love the idea of sisterhood. We so often hear about how many professions are "a boy's club" and there is something to that. I notice that women tend to vie against each other in competitive industries more than men. Maybe we feel like we have something to prove and we can not look "weak." Except that this mentality is weak. I also notice that in pole dance, especially compared to other forms of dance like ballet or lyrical/contemporary dance, women tend to bond. We are vulnerable together, expressive together, and we stand together. We answer the call of the siren.

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