<p>SS I’m ignoring the last part of your post as everybody has fought that many times before on CC but for the record, mark me down as “opposed”. ;)</p>
<p>SS I’m ignoring the last part of your post as everybody has fought that battle many times before on CC but for the record, mark me down as “opposed”. ;)</p>
<p>“Maybe that’s an option for all the men’s wrestlers & swimmers who have lost their sports to Title IX.”</p>
<p>Or did you mean to say…“lost their sports due to football?”</p>
<p>Do you suppose having all-male cheerleaders cheering for the girls’ teams and all-female cheerleaders cheering for the boys’ teams would satisfy the anti-sexist crowd?</p>
<p>As a ex-highschool cheerleader I can actually provide another point of view.</p>
<p>I don’t remeber my team ever cheering on the girls soccer team or basketball. We didn’t cheer for the boys soccer team either or MANY other sports team.
We cheered for the boys basketball, football and went to a few hockeys games.</p>
<p>It wasn’t that we didn’t care or we were sexist, it was that there were no time. Many of you are forgeting that cheerleading has evolved greatly in last decades. Its no longer about pom poms(we actually didn’t have any) and short skirts. We need to stunt, tumble and dance. Were injured and hurt all the team…</p>
<p>And We GET NO RESPECT. How many times does the basketball team say thanks for spending three hours cheering for us instead of studying? Or how many times have they cheered for us.</p>
<p>If I was still in OCR I would have made the same decision in a second. This is a very easy case.</p>
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<p>Yup. Works for me. (As does having boys who are good enough and want to be a cheerleader on the same squad.)</p>
<p>As to the issue of not having enough time to cheer for anyone other than the boys, sorry, I don’t buy it. Could have easily cheered for girls’ basketball rather than boys’. It starts as early as 6, when Pop Warner has “cheerleaders”. But the girls teams don’t.</p>
<p>The female athletes I know don’t really appreciate the cheerleaders when they do show up.</p>
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No, I am not forgetting. I wish that it was still about school spirit and cheering for the team . Cheer + leading. 2 bits , 4 bits , 6 bits, a dollar, all for real cheerleaders stand up and holler. :)</p>
<p>That other stuff? Sorry. You couldn’t pay me enough to watch while there is a game going on.</p>
<p>(Oh. I do tell ours thanks for being there.)</p>
<p>^That other stuff we do is used in competitions.</p>
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Exactly. Yep. My h.s. boyfriend played soccer, and I never saw a cheerleader at any of his games.</p>
<p>In general, though, how can <em>anyone</em> worry about sexism where cheerleading is concerned? What <strong>ISN’T</strong> sexist about cheerleading? That girls cheer boys on for being athletic? That they jump, tumble, and stand on the shoulders of others in micro-mini skirts? Would their ability to do their jobs (enthusiastically yell and tumble) be affected if they wore something less revealing? If not, then why DO they wear those outfits instead of sweats/shorts and a t-shirt? Cries of “sexism” re: cheerleaders cheering at more boys’ events than girls’ events ring rather hollow and ludicrious to me.</p>
<p>~berurah</p>
<p>I’ve been cheering for six years, and when I read the title of this thread, my only thought was, “Absolutely not.” I can confidently say that every girl on my squad would quit if we had to cheer for girls. First of all, female athletes generally look down upon cheerleaders because we don’t “play a REAL sport.” Please, we work hard as hard as any other female athlete; stunting/dancing/tumbling is as (if not more) physically demanding as many other sports. I’m sorry that we do it in cuter uniforms than any other athlete…but anyways, my point is that female athletes don’t see this side of cheerleading, and don’t give us the respect that we deserve. Thus, I would never want to waste my time and energy cheering for them.</p>
<pre><code> In addition, think about the stereotypical cheerleader- she is flirtatious, confident, and boy-crazy. While this is a generalization and not true for every cheerleader, it is, like many stereotypes, rooted in truth. Most of the girls that I have cheered with fit this mold to a certain extent. Why, then, would we ever want to cheer for girls? The truth is that I don’t think I could ever get as excited about watching girls play as I do when I cheer for boys. Many other girls would agree- almost every girl on my team as a boyfriend on either the football, basketball, or soccer teams. I have nothing against female athletes in general- I like and dislike them on an individual basis. I would just feel so wierd cheering for girls.
Cheering for girls also complicates cheerleading. So many of our cheers are directly related to the fact that we are girls cheering for boys. For example, there’s “It’s hot, it’s hot, it’s hot in here. It must be ___ in the atmosphere,” and “S-I-N-K, I-T. Sink it, sink it, for me.” I guess we could say these cheers for girls, but it would sound kind of…questionable.
I’m not trying to offend anybody with this post. It’s just that, as a cheerleader, there’s something that just feels right about cheering for the boys. We give them our complete support (from cheering, to decorating their lockers in school before big games, to baking cookies for players’ birthdays), and they appreciate it more than the girls would (they even buy us roses at the end of every season.) If we wanted to cheer on our friends at the girls’ games, we can do that, too- as spectators. I don’t think there’s any need to break the mold for the sake of being overly (almost annoyingly) “fair.”
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<p>I read that article this morning, and I was surprised that there was so much negative reaction to the cheerleaders cheering at the girls games. My D cheered all four years in high school – at a big, southern public school – and as a varsity cheerleader, she cheered at all varsity girls and boys basketball games – both home and away. In our area, many of the away games in our conference are at least an hour’s drive on a rickety activity bus. The varsity squad (which had at least one boy every year she cheered) also competed at competitions and needed many hours of practice to work on stunts, tumbling and dance routines. It was an extremely time consuming schedule, but I never heard any gripes about cheering at girls games. My D had friends on both the girls and boys teams, and I think she enjoyed being there for them.</p>
<p>I’ll also add that until my D announced at the end of eighth grade that she wanted to try out for the high school cheerleading squad, I had held a near lifelong “anti-cheerleading” bias and thought it was pretty silly. I still think some aspects are silly, but I do have a great deal of respect for the skill and athleticism it requires, and I am much more aware of the tremendous time commitment it requires. It was essentially a three season sport, because after cheering for all home and away football and basketball games, including playoffs, they competed and began preparing for tryouts for the following season.</p>
<p>I suppose the year any changes are implemented there will be some complaints, and whether the changes go over smoothly will depend on how well the coaches, captains and to some extent parents handle them.</p>
<p>Ours wear traditional cheerleading outfits. They don’t dress like Laker Girls or Cowboy cheerleaders. The skirt IS short but they are wearing tights or “bloomers”. </p>
<p>{quote]That girls cheer boys on for being athletic?
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I have literally never looked at it that way. I always thought they were cheering for their school.</p>
<p>I think cheerleaders are “lame.” (Go ahead, boo.) My kids attended a public magnet which doesn’t have cheerleaders. Truth is that nobody cares about ANY of the sports teams. Only a few “famous” athletes have come out of this school. The majority are in track and field and more than half of the few are female.</p>
<p>One of my favorite stories is about U Maryland-Baltimore County, which has a top chess team and a heavy minority enrollment. The cheerleaders showed up to cheer on the chess team which was in the running for the national championship. The cheerleaders were actually kind of surprised that the media made a big deal out of it. Their attitude was “It’s a team. It’s in the running for a national championship. Why wouldn’t we be here to cheer them on?”</p>
<p>That’s what OUGHT to happen. It rarely does–but if cheerleaders are about “school spirit,” they ought to be cheering ALL of the students representing the high school or college in any endeavor.</p>
<p>Chedva- It wasn’t that we picked the boys team to cheer for we picked the teams that had the most people went to. And we only went to at most ten games for all teams combine. Because time was an issue. We were worried about our own competitions. And also we were STUDENTS and had to do school work. On top of that lots of the team members, boys and girls we’re co-ed, were on other teams and had other responsibilities. Also none of the coaches voiced there opinions. If they had invited us I’m sure a few of us would have put on our uniforms and cheered.
But honestly it did come to time and we weren’t give ours out for free.
We went to games with most people so that we could SELL and Raise MONEY.We sold bake goods and such and the coach gave us some of the door money. We needed the money as we didn’t get any from the school.
I speak to other cheerleaders and that was it all comes down to time. How could you expect 16 and 17 year old to do school and cheer every night?
I feel no sympathy for the girls team that we didn’t cheer for because when the last time they game to our competition and they can’t use location…because we hosted on in our gym last year, but did they show up, no.</p>
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I think I’m going to hurl. Please tell me that you are joking.</p>
<p>behruh( I think that how you spell it)- I have to agree with the outfits a bit. At many times I felt uncomfortable. But I understand for the form fitting. Its VERY DANGEROUS to stunt in t-shirts and baggy material. The skirts are short for tumble purpose. However at times I’ve seen some REALLY short skirts, to short in my opinion.</p>
<p>I was on the cheerleading squad in college, and we happily cheered for any sport which asked us (football, basketball, hockey, soccer, water polo, rugby… probably a few more that I can’t remember). The women’s teams never asked us, and when one of the captains asked the women’s basketball captain if she’d like us to come, she was politely but emphatically told not to bother.</p>
<p>I don’t know that short skirts are the greatest thing to ever happen, but squads that stunt have to have arms, ankles, and calves of flyers clear for gripping, so the uniform has to be at least shorts and a t-shirt or tank top.</p>
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<p>Yup, that’s the kind of school activity I want my high school supporting!</p>
<p>We’re<em>going</em>down_swinging, you are your own worst advocate in that post. Might want to rethink your arguments.</p>
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<p>In other words, your cheers are full of sexual innuendo. Nice.</p>