Why are we so obsessed with cheerleaders? Seriously, is it just because they're hot?
We're definitely a culture obsessed with youth and beauty -- so it makes sense that we're taken by cheerleaders. I do think there's more to it than that, though. For Americans, cheerleaders are one of the most recognizable high school stock characters, the ones who are synonymous with popularity. It's interesting to look at some of the cheerleaders you see in movies, on television, and in ads. They fall pretty distinctly into two camps -- the chaste, good girls who are worshipped from afar and then the slutty, snobby queen bees. As icons, cheerleaders really toe that virgin/whore dichotomy. They're a recognizable female symbol, so I think we as a culture project some very contradictory views about women onto them.
Tell us about male cheerleaders. What don't the cheerleader-clueless among us know? The outside perspective is that they're, you know, grinning chorus boys (or George W. Bush). But at schools where cheerleading is integral and respected, do the men get homophobic bullshit, or are they considered true athletes? (Perhaps even more so than the girls?)
First of all, most people don't know that in college cheerleading, 50 percent of cheerleaders are guys. The stereotype out there is that guy cheerleaders are either gay or very effeminate. But that's just not what I encountered for the most part. Here's what I did see about male cheerleaders. First of all, they are enormous -- the aesthetic is to have guys who weigh two to three times as much as their female stunt partners. These guys typically come from other sports -- football, wrestling, basketball, weight lifting -- and had some type of injury that took them out of their first sport or they didn't get the athletic scholarship they were hoping for. A huge percentage of the guys give the same explanation for how they first got interested in cheerleading: for a girl. Once they've gone to a few practices, they kind of get hooked. Overall, while there are definitely all kinds of guys who become cheerleaders, it's a surprisingly manly-man, beer-guzzling culture.
And yes, even at schools where cheerleading is huge, the guys definitely have to deal with the stereotype. One of the guys at Stephen F. Austin University told me that they often invite football players to parties or practices, so they can see firsthand what cheerleading is all about. And James, a captain at Southern University, says that every time he meets a girl and tells her that he's a cheerleader they always say, "Can I ask you a question?" He automatically knows what they are going to say…
What's it going to take for cheerleading to really, finally be considered a true sport?
A lot of people make the argument that cheerleading isn't a sport because there's no ball and no way to objectively score it. But, and I'm going straight to the dictionary here, a sport is "an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature." So I just don't get how cheerleading wouldn't count.
I think what it will take is more people becoming aware of the intense athleticism it takes to be a competitive cheerleader. And that's definitely starting to happen. A big issue here is that cheerleading has a split personality; while there is this intense, die-hard athletic side, there is still the cheering at games, the makeup, the big hair. I think at some point we may see a split off of these two types of cheerleading; the University of Maryland and the University of Oregon have already created separate teams -- one that focuses exclusively on competition and is a varsity sport, and a second spirit squad that cheers at games. There is also a small movement to get cheerleading into the Olympics. Hey, Ping-Pong is in, why not cheerleading?
Were any of you cheerleaders? How about your children? What stereotypes have you encountered?
I admit, I avoided the cheerleaders at my high school. Actually, I was friends with one Spanish exchange student who joined the squad as she saw cheerleading as this all-American sport and a way to assimilate. But I teased her, calling cheerleading “cheesy.”
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