This paper examines how hypermasculinity operates as an ambivalent, tactical practice of care among men in belly dance, using the career of John Compton as a case study. Drawing from gender studies, dance and performance studies, and postcolonial critique, I analyze qualitative interviews and movement practices to demonstrate how hypermasculinity can be used both as protection against heterosexist discrimination and an unintentional mechanism of colonialism. Belly dance, a Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) dance form characterized by its embodied femininity, is primarily performed by women. As such, men’s participation is often seen as transgressive to their gender, despite belly dance’s absence of a gender-segregated movement canon. Therefore, male belly dancers are often expected to signal Western heteromasculinity in their performances, which is fundamentally antithetical to the aesthetic philosophy of belly dance, privileging performative Western heteromasculinity over movement qualities and embodied values of belly dance as a MENA performance tradition. This puts male belly dancers in a double-bind: uphold the embodied femininity of belly dance and risk heightened heterosexism and reputational damage; or mitigate risk as an act of care that necessitates adoption of Western, colonial ideals of masculinity misaligned with the form’s cultural and aesthetic values. In the case of John, his hypermasculine stylization compromised belly dance’s distinctive qualities, yet he is revered in the American belly dance community as a “father” of the style, revealing how this embedded masculinization can become institutionalized as aesthetic authority, simultaneously shielding male belly dancers from discrimination while unintentionally reproducing coloniality. By reframing these acts of hypermasculinity as protective rather than intentional “toxic”acts of domination, this paper aims to contribute to ongoing shifts in men’s and masculinity studies regarding gendered survival strategies in dance and performance.