Behind the Curtain: What Dancing Taught Me

I didn’t start dancing for money. I started dancing to get my body back.

After having a kid and surviving a relationship that nearly broke me, I found myself staring in the mirror, not recognizing the woman I saw. I didn’t hate her..I just didn’t know her. She looked tired but polite, too careful almost. Like she had shrunk herself to survive. All I wanted was for her to take up space again.

Pole fitness was the first thing that made me feel alive again. I felt my femininty.. mainly strong and wild. But it wasn’t until I started auditioning at non-nude clubs that I realized something deeper: I didn’t just want to feel sexy. I wanted to own my sexiness. On my own terms.

Let me be clear: I’m not here to knock nudity. I’m not scared of it. I live in the nude. I’ve just spent too much of my life being stripped emotionally by men who never deserved my vulnerability. So I set a boundary: I’ll perform. I’ll tease. But I’ll decide what stays clothed.

Non-nude clubs are a strange breed. Some of them feel like a high school talent show with better lighting. Others are full of wolves who don’t care that you’re technically wearing a bikini cause they’re still drooling like it’s a buffet. But in the best ones? You become a silent puppeteer of the male psyche. You learn to read energy in seconds. You learn who’s paying to worship and who’s paying to forget. You learn who just wants to talk to someone beautiful, and who sees you as a walking redemption fantasy.

And through it all, you learn about yourself. Your triggers. Your power. Your price.

What surprised me most wasn’t the money (though yes, cash in the thong never hurts). It was the ritual of getting ready. The glitter on the cheekbone. The lashes. The way I’d lock eyes with myself before going on stage like, “Let them watch. But don’t let them touch your worth.”

Dancing didn’t just reconnect me to my body. It gave me a new relationship with privacy. You can show the whole room your curves and still keep your soul locked behind a smirk. That’s power. That’s art. That’s survival.

So no, I’m not just “a mom” or “a dancer” or “some chick at a non-nude club.” I’m a woman who re-entered her body like a haunted house and turned on the lights.

Let them think they saw everything.
I know what I kept for myself.

—anonymous dancer, somewhere near the Mason-Dixon type of line