If you’ve ever felt an iota of shame about not having a perfect body (and if you’re female, there’s a good chance you have), you need to meet teacher and pole dancer Cami Arboles. Her Instagram is a celebration of the beauty of the human body, trading the myth of the supremacy of thinness for the reality of the stunning beauty of strength. In our interview, she chats with PLAYBOY Senior Content Editor Colette Bennett about her career, her dreams for the future, and more.
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PLAYBOY: What does your body tell you on the pole? And how has that changed since when you first started to use it versus today?
Arboles: I’ll be really honest – I would call myself a self-proclaimed late bloomer. I grew up going to Catholic school until I was 18, and then I went straight to Yale. And it wasn’t until I graduated Yale in the pandemic that pole dancing really took a major focus in my life. I think by that time when I was 22, just graduating, I had finally let myself take a good look at my body and realize that I was in a woman’s body and what that meant to me. In earlier parts of my life, I had just placed my values elsewhere. I was really focused on school, I was really focused on extracurriculars. I just hadn’t given myself the time and space to think about [it], to have a body. What does it mean to explore sensuality—not even sexuality, but literally just being embodied.
“I don’t need to apologize for existing in a body.”
And it’s also funny because I went to an all-girls school for high school. So I spent so much time around feminine energy, and it was such a great place to spend those formative years of my life because I didn’t get taught to really value my intellect and working hard in school and think about my values outside of the male gaze. I spent most of my formative years completely out of the male gaze. For my formative years, I was really thinking about life outside of the male gaze. And then I went to Yale, a very intellectual place, and then I was thrust into this world of pole dancing.
PLAYBOY: What made you consider pole dancing to begin with?
Arboles: I definitely have an intense personality. When I really like something, I can’t do it halfway. I have to learn everything about it. I want to immerse myself in the world. So what actually happened was, in undergrad, one of my best friends was a member of the circus club and I would go train there. But one of the studios in the area that you could take circus classes was primarily a pole studio. In the back of my head I was like, it would be so cool if I tried pole, but I’m definitely not sexy enough. I definitely am not confident in my body enough. I don’t want to wear shorts and a bra.
Then when the pandemic hit, I really missed training and moving my body. But the only thing I could install in my house was a pole. I just started following so many different types of dancers on Instagram. I thought, I want to try this. I have nothing else to do. The world might be ending, you might as well just try something new.
PLAYBOY: Do you feel play is a key factor in pole dance?
Arboles: I’m just thinking about this because I’m so fresh off of teaching so much this weekend, but in the workshop settings, it really is a setting of play. It’s 20 strangers in a room and we play music and you’re dancing around a pole. But instead of being a five-year-old in your body, you’re now a fully embodied adult and you’re just rediscovering what play is. I think we forget that it can be any creative discipline, but especially pole dance and movement is rooted in that sense of play and awe and wonder and curiosity.
I think as adults, we’re so risk-averse. We don’t want to feel silly or stupid or embarrassed. And when you’re a kid, you don’t care about those things. There’s such a great book that I feel like really changed the way I think about my work called The Body Is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor. She talks about how we are brought up in these systems and society that instill a sense of shame around the body. So from a young age you’re apologizing for yourself or feeling shame around yourself for existing in a body that’s not white or thin or this or that and the other. Pole dancing or any movement practice instills that mind/body connection, instills play, helps you be a little less risk-averse. It’s helping you to say, I don’t need to apologize for existing in a body.
PLAYBOY: It takes it one step further to not only have that body, but to show that body in a form like this, where you’re openly embracing sensuality and expression. That is radical, to be honest.
Arboles: It is quite radical. I’m so deeply inspired by classical art the Renaissance. You see even in those depictions of women and angels and deities, they’re these very full voluptuous bodies. It’s so interesting because now a body like that walks down a runway and people are like “Why would you have this out in the public eye? Take this down right now immediately.” So again, it goes back to the central argument. Beauty standards are always going to fluctuate.
PLAYBOY: Speaking of teaching, let’s talk about how that work started and how it’s changed for you (find Cami’s schedule here).
Arboles: It was a very natural progression for me. I have always really enjoyed teaching. It started when I was in high school in my summer job, tutoring chemistry to middle schoolers. I really like the process of taking something that seems complicated and then making it accessible, just giving that gift to someone.
So [teaching] just happened quite organically. I was posting my pole journey on social media because that’s what I spent so much of my time doing during the pandemic. And as I was posting, I was also doing live pop-ups, yoga classes on Instagram Live. People started requesting: I want to try this trick that I saw in a video, or do you teach pole, do you teach yoga? How do I get more flexible? So then I was just like, let me create a more organized course. And it grew little by little. Baby steps.
PLAYBOY: How do you feel when you look back at what you’ve put into the world up to this point?
Arboles: What a great question. I had so many discussions recently with friends and colleagues in the entertainment industry, specifically about the resurgence of the Victoria’s Secret show, and how this new addition of it was groundbreaking and that it included different body types than were previously included, such as trans bodies, plus-sized bodies. Women, all beautiful, stunning displays of what womanhood can be, especially in this day and age. When I look back on my work, and at least the work that I choose to share on social media and the work that I’m proud of, it’s always a reminder that beauty standards are something that are so subjective and that will constantly be changing.
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I spent a lot of my time traveling for work teaching. My career brings me all around the world which is something I’m so grateful for, and from that, meeting people from different cultures. I’ve really discovered that the body type that is considered beautiful or prized across different cultures and countries varies so greatly. So, I think it’s our job as humans to just learn to accept whatever body that we’ve been placed in and embrace it and have the opportunity to view it as art, which I think is what pole dancing and movement allowed me to view my body as. The body is a medium. As I get further in this path of my life I think the answer, or the thesis statement, is revealing itself.
Photographer: Mia André
Lighting Director: Khalil Bowens
Hair and Makeup: Shideh Kafei
Management: Jelena Grozdanich/Guardian MGMT
