Cheerleader Addendum

When I wrote my Johnny Weir post last week I originally went off on a pro-cheerleading rant in the middle of it which I subsequently erased. But Lily Stark White expressed sadness at my doing so, so here it is in all its ranty glory.

*The point is made very well in Bring It On. In the film, Eliza Dushku's character, Missy, cheers because her school doesn't have a girl's gymnastics team. But none of the girls in that film give much of a shit about football or whatever. They have their own (maligned) sport. Hey. Have you seen what those girls can do on ESPN? If curling qualifies as a sport, so can cheering. Another thing I find kind of interesting about cheerleader hatred, is that it seems somewhat divorced from jock hatred in that many people who loath jocks and were victimized by them in high school, enthusiastically watch football and basketball and baseball. With cheerleading, the skill of the girls who participate is pretty much dismissed, and all that remains is a pretty broadly felt contempt. The images of both cheerleaders and football players have been highly sexualized by our culture, the difference being that with the boys who play football, these perceptions are pretty solidly tied to what they do, i.e. play a sport. With the cheerleaders, the sexy mean girl image is seen more of a state of being centered around the heavily fetishized outfit, rather than tied to the activity itself.

/Rant.