What Actresses Like Jennifer Lopez Have Learned About Pole Dancing and Playing Strippers

Jennifer Lopez’s new movie Hustlers is about so much more than stripping and working the pole to attract the male gaze. The drama, which is based on a true story, is about sisterhood and sticking it to the rich and powerful men who think that they own the world. However, because Lopez had to learn how to pole dance for her role as a savvy stripper who gets horny when she sees hundies, discussions about the flawless 50-year-old's intense training have dominated most of her interviews about Hustlers.

Luckily, Jennifer Lopez doesn’t seem to mind talking about all the work that went into bringing her scam artist stripper character to life, and the former Fly Girl isn’t the first actress who has been asked endless questions about what it was like to work the pole for a movie role. Let’s take a look at some of the important lessons J-Lo and other female stars have learned while playing characters who pay the bills with their pole-dancing skills.

Mastering the pole is much harder than you think

Strippers often get looked down on by society as women who have it easy; they flash their boobs and make some cash, and what’s so hard about that? However, the pros treat pole dancing like an art form, and it’s not as easy as simply learning to spin around and hang upside down. Just ask rapper Cardi B, who worked as a stripper before her music career took off. She also stars in Hustlers, and the “I Like It” singer warned Jennifer Lopez that it took her years to learn all her moves. Unfortunately, Cardi B doesn’t get to show off any of her skills in the movie because she was recovering from lipo and a boob job during filming.

"I was really mad because let me tell you something—when I did the movie, I just got my t**ties done and I got lipo, right? So I was like, 'This is my moment to shine, and I can't shine because I can't climb!'" she told Entertainment Tonight.

Lopez revealed that she spent weeks on the pole preparing for her role. In a video documenting her journey, she sweats while she performs her unusual strength-training exercises in a pair of scary-looking platform stripper heels (I’d like to see a male pro athlete like her boo Alex Rodriguez try getting in shape while rocking six-inch stilettos).

That pole can inflict a lot of pain

In the video above, J-Lo complains about how badly her crotch hurts after squeezing her legs around that slippery pole and spinning around. According to the actress, the pain she experienced was unlike anything she's ever had to deal with before while working on a movie. Harry Potter star Emma Watson also discovered that pole dancing is not for the weak of body while filming her 2013 movie The Bling Ring. She didn’t play a stripper in the film, but she was so dedicated to her craft that she took pole dancing classes to prepare for one short scene.

"I was incredibly ungraceful at first. The upper-body strength and the core strength you need to do it gracefully is crazy," she told British GQ. "I take my hat off to the women who can do it. You have to be incredibly strong."

It sounds like a leviosa spell would have come in handy while she was learning to climb.

You may have to stop wearing shorts for a while

Like many actresses before her, Jennifer Lopez found herself covered with bruises after continuously banging her body against her sturdy, stationary dance partner. When Lindsay Lohan played a stripper in the 2007 movie I Know Who Killed Me, her experiences with the pole also left their mark. According to Lohan, she got so bruised up that she had to temporarily change up her wardrobe.

“I've been in pole dancing lessons, S Factor by Sheila Kelley, every day for four hours. I have bruises all over,” she told People. “That's why I haven't worn shorts.”

It can change your body in unexpected ways

Pole dancing is a great way to burn calories and improve both upper and lower body strength, but Jennifer Lopez’s Hustlers costar Constance Wu also had a few complaints about the way her limbs felt after making so much contact with all that slick metal. In addition to the aforementioned purple roses that have bloomed on other actresses' bodies (which should be considered temporary tattoos of honor, TBH), she said that her training left her covered with rough patches of skin.

“You literally have to have tough skin,” Wu told Refinery29. “Not just your hands—you have [calluses everywhere.] You grip the pole with your inner thighs, you might have them on the backs of your knees, or even the crook of your elbow. There are many different places where you grip the pole.”

It can become a kink

However, the pain inflicted by the pole can become a bit of a fetish. Just ask Kristen Stewart, the actress whose Twilight character was the inspiration for the BDSM blockbuster Fifty Shades of Grey. Stewart played a troubled 16-year-old stripper in the 2010 movie Welcome to the Rileys, and she shot a pole dancing scene in a real strip club after consulting with a professional exotic dancer. Her training also left her legs covered in bruises.

“I tore myself up doing it. It sucked,” she said. However, Kristen Stewart eventually learned to embrace the pain and the blood-filled marks peppering her body, which seem like exactly the sort of thing a vampire would be into (When Bella wanted to bring Edward back, maybe she should have tried turning herself into bloodsucker bait by taking up pole dancing).

"The more I saw it, the more I wanted it. It was like a weird self-hating kind of thing."

If the cameras are rolling, you need to make sure your undergarments are secure

Jennifer Lopez isn’t the first actress to prove that women over 40 can work the pole. When she was 44, Jennifer Aniston filmed a pole dancing scene for the comedy We’re the Millers. However, the Friends star took extra precautions to make sure that her sexy strip scene was family-friendly.

“I had no taping. I really just doubled my bras,” she said. “I had a thong and then two pairs of underwear. Why I thought that was going to help protect anything is beyond me. Because, that’s just like ridiculous. ... I was like, ‘No, I need three bras! I need three bras because God forbid that one, if it’s gonna escape!’”

Unfortunately, critics were not a fan of Aniston's decision to layer her look, with many of them complaining that it was inauthentic. The Hollywood Reporter wrote that she performed her strip routine wearing “far more than most soccer moms usually wear at public swimming pools." But who cares if she was covered up? She still looked amazing.

Being a pro dancer doesn’t make it easier

Like Jennifer Lopez, former Dancing with the Stars pro Julianne Hough has been dancing for decades, but her years of experience keeping her feet moving on the floor didn’t prepare her for how difficult pole dancing would be; it sounds like learning to spin around upside for her stripper role in Rock of Ages was harder than getting partnered with a D-list celebrity with two left feet.

"It is ridiculously hard. I was ripped when I was doing it because it's, I mean, it is an art. It's really tough," she told Access Hollywood. However, Julianne confessed that there was one big perk of playing a stripper: Her ex-boyfriend Ryan Seacrest really "appreciated the research" that she had to do for the role.

Mastering the art can lead to job offers

For her role as a sexy stripper in the movie Butter, Olivia Wilde only had two days to learn how to pole dance. However, the actress told USA Today that she did so well during her crash course that she received an offer to strip full-time.

"I got there and they flew a trainer in from S Factor and she taught me at an actual strip club, called Action Central, and got me to the point where they offered me a job there. So if all else fails, you can find me at Action Central."

Jessica Biel is another star who received praise for her work on the pole. Justin Timberlake's boo impressed her pole dancing trainer so much while practicing for her role in Powder Blue that her coach proclaimed that she could be a professional dancer. Unfortunately, Biel's fans were probably in too much of a frenzy over her stripper character's topless scenes to truly appreciate her amazing acrobatic skills.

Pole dancing classes can feel like running through a train platform wall into a magical secret world

Well, not exactly, but when Emma Watson traded her magic wand for a stripper pole, she said that her training felt “surreal.” She was attending college at the time, so she lived her life in two totally different worlds (does this plot sound familiar?).

"I had this surreal experience where I was studying the modernists, writing about Virginia Woolf on Friday night, then driving to London for pole dancing classes on Saturday morning," Watson said of her experience. It sounds like a time-turner really would have come in handy.

It’s not just about being sexy

Many actresses who have learned pole dancing for movie roles have been surprised to discover that there’s a lot more to it than attracting the male gaze. When she was 43, Marisa Tomei played a stripper in The Wrestler, and her decision to do all of her own stunts in the film led to her taking pole dancing classes from a “masseuse-yogini” friend. Tomei also did a lot of research for her Oscar-nominated role, which led her to question her preconceptions about stripping and pole dancing.

“I thought that [stripping] wasn’t very sensual or erotic, like really coming from inside someone’s being. I thought it was all performance and shallow,” she told Women's Wear Daily. However, she eventually learned that many of the women who enjoy pole dancing are anything but shallow.

“There’s a lot of really creative women who do it for a living, people who are artists and they’re very expressive, kind of free spirits,” Tomei said.

According to Jennifer Lopez, she had conflicting feelings about pole dancing in front of a crowd in Hustlers. But while it was a bit nerve-racking baring her body and exposing her sexual side onstage, she also found the experience empowering.

“There’s something liberating and empowering about it,” she told the Evening Standard. “But you’re really out there, physically, emotionally and psychologically.”

Hustlers hits theaters on September 13. You can check out the trailer below.