Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Sex, Love, and SuperPowers podcast show. I am your host, Tatiana Berindei, and today I am really excited to have with me Roz, the Diva, Mays. We are going to be discussing building confidence in plus size women. If you do not know about this woman, get ready, because she is phenomenal. I’m already deeply in love with her, just from the little glimpses I’ve seen of her. Let me tell you a little bit about her.
She has dedicated many late nights at the gym to becoming a stronger and healthier athlete. Pole dancing is her sport of choice, followed by TRX strength, and conditioning, and flexibility training. Among her finest contributions to the pole world has been creating Dangerous Curves, a celebration of plus size pole dancers.
Her talents have lead to an SAG membership for professional stunt work in Law & Order SVU, The Big C, and That’s My Boy. She loves to teach obnoxiously loud classes at Body and Pole, IncrediPOLE, and Brooklyn Fit Lab in New York City. She’s also the subject of Dangerous Curves, a documentary featured by the New York Times.
When she isn’t half-naked and sweaty, Diva’s usually making pancakes with Beyoncé. I just want to welcome you to the show. I love your bio, I love your work. Thank you so much for joining us here today at SuperPower Expert.
You know what’s so funny is I always laugh when I hear people in the most serious professional tone read the end of my bio where I’m talking about pancakes and Beyoncé. I wrote that, like, it’s a very real dream that I have, but it’s ridiculous. When people say it with a straight face, I’m like, “Oh my goodness gracious.”
I think it’s pretty great. Way to manifest, girl, way to manifest. I’m going to start off with the question that I ask all of our guests, and I’m really curious to hear your answer. What are your superpowers?
My first and most important superpower is paying rent in New York City.
I think my superpowers, my first and most important superpower is paying rent in New York City. Man, let me tell you about the struggle. That’s something that is really, like, I mean, obviously, paying rent is hard anywhere. People know that New York City is just notorious for being expensive for no good reason.
There were times where I could not afford to pay my rent, or I was paying it in pieces. I would send a couple hundred dollars at a time. The fact that I can now pay my rent without having to worry each month, for me, that’s a big deal, and something I’m very proud of.
Mm-hmm, yeah, right. That’s awesome, that’s awesome.
Thank you.
I believe you have another superpower, which is empowering women who our media doesn’t necessarily lift up and celebrate as sexy to feel that way. That’s just, that’s my projected superpower onto you, from what I have seen about your work. I really want to talk some more with you about that, because I think it’s so profound, what you’re doing, and so important, and so needed, which is why I wanted to have you on the show. If you could tell us a little bit about how that journey started for you, I’d be really curious to hear.
Sure. I am a professional pole dancing instructor and a personal trainer. Pole is my sport of choice. It was my gateway drug into doing fitness as a full-time career. It’s nothing that I sought out on purpose. It’s nothing that I knew I wanted to do until it happened. I’m so glad that it did happen, because I love it to death. Teaching is one of the greatest things to ever happen to me, so it really is so much fun, and it’s so important to me. I’m excited that I get to do this all the time, on purpose.
I started pole dancing just about 11 years ago, now. It was just a class at the gym that I was like, “Oh, it’s got the word dance in it. I really like to dance. I should try this.” I tried it, and it was the hardest thing I had ever done in my entire life. I couldn’t move my arms for a week, and I’ve been hooked ever since.
I started teaching pole as a side hustle seven years ago, probably almost eight years ago, now. Wow. I have been doing fitness as my full-time career, AKA the thing that pays my rent, for the last 4.5 years.
Yet, it seems like what’s really getting you notoriety is your willingness to speak out about and just to be up front and public about the challenge of the body image thing we’ve got going in our culture.
Yeah. It’s a ugly thing going on. One thing, you know, since, probably since about puberty, for me, so a solid 20 years, if not a little bit more, I have been ashamed of my weight. I’ve been overweight since, yeah, at the start of puberty. I’ve haven’t found peace with my appearance.
I think one of the reasons why I’m slightly obsessed with helping other people to feel strong and to feel positive about their appearance is because I’m trying to do that. My hope is that if I can be someone else’s light, then maybe a little bit of that light will rub off on me. Even though, you know, I have yet to believe the things that I tell other people and put that into practice myself, I’ve been crazy fortunate, because other people have not hesitated to be my light, especially when I couldn’t do that for myself.
How have people showed up for you? What has that looked like for you, in those times when you weren’t believing it for yourself? Who was it? How’d they show up? What’d they say? What’d they do?
Sure. I think the people who showed up, it was a variety of people, but they came in just in time. I would say one of the first ways is that, just something as simple as liking and commenting on my early social media posts. I’m talking about when I had 35 people like my page. I was related to half those people. When I was just starting out, trying to figure out what on earth I was doing, how I was going to build a career, a real career, out of doing these kinds of fitness, and things were looking bleak. Not because I thought it couldn’t happen, but just, it takes time. You don’t say, “I want to start this career,” and then, a month later, you’ve got to set up. You’ve got bills, and you’ve got enough clients. Like, man, it was a good two years, really, to get into a groove. I think two years is still being generous, depending on the industry that you’re in and the kind of work that you’re trying to do.
During those times when I had maybe three or four people who just liked my posts, you know, that meant a lot. One of them was my mom. I must say, my parents, Mom, Dad, Lindsay, and Grammy, and my cousin Beyoncé in there, they’re the original team Diva. They have supported absolutely everything that I’ve ever done. They’re amazing.
I think before I even knew to talk about a light, those four, those five, excuse me, those five people have been there all day, every day.
That’s very amazing. There hasn’t been any … I would think that, you know, to choose pole dancing as a career, there’s a lot of stigma around that. Parents could have a issue with it, or I could see that being a problem for some people, right?
Absolutely. I’m pretty sure I would have kicked my ass at some point and, I guess, like, there’s a real … I actually, for a while, now, I think it’s now dissipated, but for a good year and a half, two years, I carried so much guilt with me, because, not just because of pole dancing, I wanted to make that a very viable part of my career, but just fitness in general. Not because I think anything is wrong with it, but it’s difficult when you’ve gone to private schools your whole life, and especially, you’ve stood out in those schools, and stood out as one of the few people of color, and then you did well. Everyone’s like, “We can’t wait to see what you make of yourself.”
Putting external, not undue external pressure, but it was like, I was excited. I thought I was headed to Wall Street. I thought I was going to be somebody’s Chief Diversity Officer, at this point. I was on that career path for a while. It was cool until it wasn’t.
I know multiple people with PhDs under the age of 40.
I had the guilt, like, when all my friends were running around with advanced degrees, and they’ve got their PhDs, and they’ve got their master’s. I know multiple people with PhDs under the age of 40. Like what… That’s some higher, hardcore overachieving. Then, here’s me, with my regular-ass bachelor’s degree, and I’m sweating for a living with no benefits, no insurance, no paid time off, and a regular paycheck.
All those things, as I mentioned … My parents, I gave them a lot of opportunity to freak out and to question what I was doing, but they never took the bait. I don’t know why.
That’s awesome.
They were like, “Great job, keep going!” I was like, “What?”
That’s really awesome.
I would much rather take that than have to fight my family. That would be absolutely miserable. I recognize this as a huge win. I know, because there are so many people in pole, even those who aren’t even teaching, they just take pole, where all they want to do is have the support of the people that they really care about, and they don’t always have that. I’m incredibly lucky that I do have that and that my parents didn’t freak out.
Yeah, absolutely. We’re lucky about that too, because you might not be doing it so powerfully.
Yeah, yup.
We have to go to a quick break. We’ve been talking with Roz Mays about building confidence in plus size women. When we get back, we’re going to dive a little bit deeper into that topic. Before we go to break, will you tell our listeners where they can go to find out more about you?
Absolutely. Feel free to stalk me at rozthediva.com.
Stay tuned, everybody.
Great.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Music Credit: Words and Music written and performed by David Delmar. Engineered and produced by John Keenan.
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