Up until the '80s, women were instructed not to work out while pregnant. While recent research has revealed that exercising during pregnancy brings many benefits, fear and stigma around doing so has lingered — which is one of the reasons we're kvelling over "Cleo The Hurricane," the two-time winner of the Australian Pole Championships, who was still rocking her pole-dancing heels days away from giving birth.
The 36-year-old has documented her pregnancy on her blog and Instagram, writing on her blog that she originally intended to stop pole-dancing but changed her mind. "I'm so glad I didn't hang up the heels completely during my pregnancy," she shared on Wednesday, seven days before her due date. "I'm not really 'pole dancing' that much — definitely no tricks or inversions — but I have been taking flex-y pregnancy pics nearly every month in my pole gear, as it is such a significant time in my life and what a better way to document it [than] in the splits or on the pole!"
Cleo also opened up about her pregnancy's impact on her self-image: "I absolutely love being pregnant, for the most part," she wrote, "but I have also never felt so unsexy as I do today, especially in the last trimester... I have been craving and loving that feeling of putting on my heels, a sexy song and pole dancing." Power to this mom-to-be.
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