You Keep your Rules, I'll Keep my Gluteal Folds

There is an interesting conversation happening at Studio Veena at the moment.  It's about whether or not there should be a dress code in pole studios.  You know. Whether we should start telling women they need to COVER UP a little more when they are in the studio.  I scrolled through the comments, which range from "hell no" to "yes of course" and came up with my own response to the situation.  Read on.

For the love of God. If I wanted to be a part of a community that was going to tell me how to dress right down to the number of centimeters my gluteal folds are permitted to be "exposed", I would have been a damn gymnast. I would have been been an ice skater. I would have been a swimmer. No, see I became a pole dancer because it gave me freedom - freedom to be who I am in the studio and out, freedom to explore my dance through things like dressing up or down, playing with heels, collars, ties, boots, hoodies and whatever else I found myself drawn to in the moment. Pole is subversive. It's subversive because it challenges the traditional ideas of what a woman can and cannot be, should and should not do when it comes to her body. When you have a woman who is smart, articulate and perhaps works as an engineer by day (like Nadia Sharif) and then who puts on high heels, and dances out the sexy in her free time, you have a woman who is actively breaking down stereotypes. Why yes, I can be smart and sexy and be public about both. Why no, dancing in high heels on a pole does not make me a dumb, desperate woman. And yes, I am CHOOSING to dance like this, to move like this, to DRESS like this because it pleases me. And I really don't care what you think. Because what you think is a reflection of your own values and issues. I'm at peace with my choices, and who I am. 
This is what infuriates me the most about these kinds of "rules" about dress and bodies and exposure in pole: Underneath is a thinly veiled expression of shaming. And shame is what I shed when I started pole dancing. The words "appropriate" and "professional" come up a lot in this thread in reference to clothing. I spend my days working in a place where I have to be appropriate and professional. The last thing I want to do is walk into my studio at the end of the day and get the same rigamarole. As far as getting the mainstream to accept pole, I truly don't think pole will go anywhere if we whitewash the sexy out of it. Why should we change in order to be taken more seriously? If you change yourself to be accepted by another person, what happens? You lose the respect of that person and you lose your identity. That same dynamic exists on a macro level as well. Yes, pole is athletic and it gets you fit and it's beautiful and yes it has many faces, including competition.  And yes competitions and studios need rules for safety, among other things. But forcing pole dancers to look or act or present themselves a certain way just so that "other people" will accept pole as "legitimate"  is just squeezing the very soul right out of our pole culture.  Pole is already legitimate. We make it legitimate just by the simple act of dancing.

Thoughts?