There's this feeling right when you do it, it feels like you're almost about to fall, but then you don't, and you can just feel the momentum carrying you around, like being a little kid on the playground when you just like throw yourself at like the jungle gym and go like we are out of the circle. So it's kind of that feeling um, but a little more controlled. Ah, Welcome to another Ausy Confidential. I'm your host, Eugene S. Robinson, and today we got something special. We got Renee. Now.
You know, stories come to us a lot of different ways. I love how this came to me via somebody else who said, Hey, at Microsoft, I was working with this genius engineer. One day she stood up at a meeting and said, fuck this, I'm leaving become an to National Proofs. Sexy is something that is like everybody has a vision in their head of what sexy means to them, and there might be overlapping pieces amongst different people's definitions, but
there's also many differences. And I think sexy as a as a feeling, as like a theme as a concept is very very vague, and it's very big, and it can be many different things. So, yeah, I was working at Microsoft for a bit and I was pretending to be an engineer. So but what would you would you degree? I got my degree in physics, so I was um. I got my undergrad in physics, and then I have a master's technically and applied physics. I had started a PhD program, and then I quit the PhD program because
at Stanford. So uh, bachelor's at cal Tech and then PhD ended up as a master's at Stanford, which is how I ended up in this area in the first place. Is why I moved here. Where'd you go to high school? Hong Kong? So I grew up in Hong Kong. Uh. I went to one of those international schools. So it's like they took an American school and transplanted it into Hong Kong. And so I was there from kindergarten all
the way through high school. Which is why I speak English as as an American, because I was surrounded by a whole bunch of expats. But you also speak So I speak Man's are In because my families from Taiwan, and so we spoke Man's are In at home. And then I picked up Cantonese from just living in Hong
Kong for seniors. I was good at math and science growing up, and so I assumed that I like it because no, when you're little, you like the things you're good at, and you never stopped to think about why you like it. You're just like, I'm good at it, therefore I must like it. That just carried me all the way through until you know, you're one of grad school when I realized, wait, I don't like and I
realized that ass like quick, don't miss it. I started teaching pole around when I started working at Microsoft, because my two jobs picked up at the same time, and so at the time I quit Microsoft, I've been teaching for a while, but that was still when I had no real uh plan to have poled b my like actual job. Like Pole was still just a hobby. It was a hobby that like, you know, I got paid to teach other people. How did you get into that? Um?
So I tried pole because I was at Stanford and looking for some form of dance to do because I've always been a dancer, and so when I googled what you did l sports? Yeah, so I did dancing gymnastics basically from the ages of like six onwards, all the way through the end of high school. UM So, I've always been dancing and I kept dancing all the way through college. And so when they moved up here for Stanford, so, okay,
I need to find myself a dance studio. When I googled dance studios near Stanford, UM, potential popped up, and because because it is one of the few places with adult classes that is within like a half hour raised to Stanford. And so I was like, I've never done hole before, but I was like, why not, I'll try it came, I loved it from like the very first seconds,
and I just never left. But yeah, So I was at Microsoft UM and then I decided that I don't want to be an engineer anymore because I was looking at my peers and they all were excited about science. They were excited about the research they were doing, come up with new ideas, and like the actual day to day process of it. And I was just like, wow, I am not like you guys. And so so that when you left this create with your parents cool whatever, or did you or did you already have a job
lined up in UM? So when I left UM, I was totally excit see my parents to freak out, because I mean, of course they would they go to people Asian parent, right. They were totally cool with it. It was baffling, actually, I was like, wait, you guys are so okay right now? Were they cool because you already had the job? No? I had no job. So that goes into this funny thing is not from the US, right. I was born in Taiwan, I was raised elsewhere, and so it only came to college so I was on
the student visa. And so then that brought up the other part of if I quit school by by student visa, I need a way to stay in this country. So I had been together with uh then boyfriend now husbands for a couple years now, and like we had already planned on getting married. It was just kind of like, okay, so I know we were going to get married like four years later, but how haven't we do this now? What about we get married like right now instead of four years later in this country? I was, yeah, I
was honestly a little bit surprised. I was definitely um expecting some kind of resistance or some questioning of like are you sure this is a good idea? But they have been nothing but super supportive the whole way. And um, I think what they tell me is that they see how much happier I am now versus like when I was in grad school, when I was working at Microsoft, and so seeing that helps reassure about that, like I definitely made the right choice, because they're like, yeah, you're
you're a different person. You're a much happier person and this is a good thing. And so like, even though you are now doing something that's very different than what we all expected, like this is good. So the first move that I was ever taught how to do is called a roundabout or a zip spin. It's still my favorite move. And so what we start almost all beginners with, you just like hold onto the pole and you like
make a little circle around. I don't want one hand on the one hand on the pole, one foot on the floor, so you're not even in the area, yeah, and you just like rotates big circle around the pole and you can just feel the momentum carrying you around,
and that feeling is just it's so much fun. And there's something about it that just like really clicked and like resonated within me where I just felt like this is what I want to do, and then you know, it turned out that I was like reasonably good at it, and so I was like, now' here, I've never been shy about my body. Um. Again, somehow, lucky enough, I didn't really grow up with those body of his issues. Um. And I think that is because good parenting. I think
great coaches, because my gymnastics coaches. There are a lot of gymnastic coaches who really push people on, a lot of ballet teachers right who really pushed their students of like you're too fat, you need to be thin. There. I was lucky that I had amazing teachers and coaches who didn't like put any of that on us when we were kids and in staid, the focus was always on like what you can do, just what we tell people here and that right, you focus on what your
body can do instead of what it looks like. And I guess I've just been lucky that I've always grown up with that idea, and so to me, it's never been a big deal. So like when I started to pull too, and you'll see this, when people first started, Paul, They'll start with like clothes and the first time you tell them like you gotta take those pants off. They're kind of like are you sure, or like the first time you like you have to get rid of the shirt,
are you sure? Even some of our other instructors they'll tell you like the first time they went to the poll, they're like, oh, no, I'm keeping all my clothes on, and now they're like everything right. Um. But like when I first started, like that wasn't like a hang up for me. It was just like I was like, Oh, it's functional, therefore I will do it. And so I think like when it goes on stage, as long as it's functional, Like if nudity is important to the performance
of doing, it's gotta do it. This is what it's going to have to be. So unless you think that what happens at these competitions is very much what happens at the strip club, you're wrong. It's not. These things take a better part of a day and they have uh polls that are kind of opinioned to the floor, huge stage, and a judging panel that's as unforgiving as any judging panel ever. And these are moves that a lot of times if you're on a sixteen ft pole or sixty ft up high off the ground on a pole.
There's only one part of your body touching the pole, preventing you from plunging to your death below. So it is not without its risk, but to win you have to be a combination of skillful, strong, graceful, all while making it look slick as snot. Some expressions of sexy are easier to learn than others, and I think this is well in terms of like um movements and like
what movements convey as sexy. Some move are easier to learn on the body, like for somebody who is new to dance to some form of like physical expression, Certain styles of movement will be easier for a beginner to pick up than other styles to me at least, And
this is just like my interpretation of it. Sexy stems from confidence, and so it can be fast, it can be slow, it can be aggressive, it can be shy, but there's this underlying confidence and like um, the sense of contentment with yourself and like your own energy, and it's that when it's transmitted outwards that gets read as sexy. At Friday for a play the unofficial model of Friday four play right, someone somewhere finds it sexy no matter
what you do someone somewhere find the sexy. There are some people who very much do truly believe, like in their own mind, that what they do has nothing to do with dripping, nothing to do with trip clubs. To me, I'm glad to see that it seems like that's getting
slightly less common. Those people still exist. There are still people out there, and I think that is like in response or in reaction to the social stigma that's out there, because even here where most people are pretty chill with it, right, like, um, I worked at Microsoft, and nobody ever like questions the fact that I did both they all knew and how some of them had looked at my videos, and nobody like look down on me for it, Like nobody like made any remarks about it. Because in the Bay Area
we're pretty lucky. People are pretty calm about this stuff. But even here we have some students who worry about, like what do I tell my friends? What do I tell my family? Because they will tell their family and their families not happy, their family is not okay with it, and they go like, I can't believe you do that,
and so I can okay. So the use of the word that what do they mean, what do you think they mean when they see I think for those people who have that impression, I think it is because they they only have um this mental image of Poll in relation to sex work and stripping, and because they maybe haven't had very many interactions with sex workers of any form, They've made up this image in their head of what
that seems to be to them. And unfortunately, is the case with most things, if you're just making up something in your head, you tend to assume the worst. I think. I think probably one of the most damaging things to the sport or to the endeavor had to be Chris Rock. Do you remember his routine where he was talking about contemplating being a parent and making the right parental choices, and he goes, you know, any choice that keeps your
daughter off the pole. It's things like that, right that like feed into that impression where if you don't know, if if that's your only context by which you've ever heard of poll, then of course do you associate negatively with it because you have no reason not to. Do you think that this in general has improve the quality of of poll? There's just in strip clubs. In other words, do you is it is it is it neither fish
nor foul thing? Do you find I'm wondering, like, how many people who actually do it pull start strip clubs? A lot of the moves that we take for granted now we're made up by strippers who were just you know, at work doing their own thing, and they made up these things and they spread and then you know, now we officially teach them. But now it's got it's got to the point where people are not talking about it.
And they do this with new sports. A lot of times they talk about, well, should we get in the Olympics, Try to get in the Olympics. And I'm feeling that there's this kind of you know, push to legitimize it. There there is another push inside the community to like separate it from the strip club routes, right to say, yeah, yeah, you know, it's it was a strip club thing, but it's not, you know, there's no and it feels to me like the truth is somewhere in the middle. So
much happening now. There's so many people who do poll now that like how many, Oh, I have no idea. You'll hear a lot of people say like this is their therapy, but like what they're seeking therapy from. I think that is where it differs in person to person, and for me at least that is part of why, like a big part of this for me is bustering the kind of community that encourages that, because this is that like safe happy space you can go to where
you can learn to feel good about yourself. You can learn to feel proud about yourself and be okay with that and not feel ashamed of like yourself, your body, your abilities, Like you don't have to try to hide and pretend that you're not as good as you are.
You don't have to try to fake humility. I Here we encourage people to be really confidence and be like, yes, I know I am good, I know I am great, I know I'm beautiful, I know I am strong, and to be okay with that, because that's not something that
women especially get a lot. There's a higher chance that like a lot of times, you know, when I meet somebody new, when they asked what I do UM and I told them I own the pole an aerial studio, they go, oh, yeah, I've heard of that, or I've seen that, or it's like oh I thought about maybe trying it, or I know somebody who has tried it, And it's always easier when there's just more general awareness of what it is that you do right. And so, for sure, ten years ago, very different story would have
been much harder than than it is now. Do do you do you miss physics? Now? Now? Next up next week. Javiermendous What yeah, look, he is like the Bill Belichick of m m A Mixed Martial Arts. It runs a place called a K a American Kickboxing Academy. The winning ist fight Jim like in the world and uh, we're excited to get kick to him. You want to hear me?
Fanboy out next week. Ozzie Confidential. Ozzie Confidential is produced by who Else May Eugene S. Robinson, an executive produced by Robert Coolos, and this episode was sound designed, edited and mixed by Nick Johnson. For more Ozzy Confidential, check us out on azzi dot com. That's o z y dot com slash Confidential