You are thinking only of the huge stadiums for the top programs, and that is only football. That covers about 1-2% of what cheer squads do. And if it is only for objectification, then why have male members? Despite the previous comments, I really don’t think most women attending the games ogle the male cheerleaders.
So no, it clearly isn’t the whole point by a long shot and to the extent it remains part of it, there is no reason to help such antiquated values along.
The UW cheerleaders/dancers are a diverse group, but they still conform to the typical standards of attractiveness.
What bugged me: How does someone with very dark skin get a “beachy glow”? Does a natural or spray tan include those with naturally dark skin? The whole thing was just…odd
I have to say that the infographic cleared up one mystery - why they all have their hair flopping around and not in ponytails. (I’ve sat in the stands and actually asked myself that.) And I guess God forbid you have short hair.
This is a tryout poster with dress code and uniform guidelines. The vast majority of it doesn’t bother me. Those who cheer know what they are signing up for. Many activities and sports have their own guidelines, both for tryouts and for the activity itself. I’ve seen girls pulled from soccer tryouts for not confirming. Different codes and rules to be sure but the basic principle of uniformity so the judging focus can be on those who stand out in that sea of uniformity is by no means new or unique to cheer.
That said, as an alumn, someone who has been through the tryout process back in the day, friends who were Husky cheerleaders I am mortified at the insensitivity and absolute cluelessness (and frankly classlessness) shown in the guidelines of beachy glow and spray tans shown here.
For a school recently profiled recently in the Seattle Times for the lack of diversity in the student body they most certainly didn’t do themselves any favors with this misstep.
For the record though I’ll take loose hair any day over ridiculous high pony tails, heavy overdone makeup on girls too young to wear it and giant oversized bows.
As a UDub alum and long-time Seattleite, I was pretty surprised at this misstep. Seattle women do not take kindly to being objectified.
For those drawing a contrast between football cheer squads and competitive cheerleading, they are generally the same squads at colleges. They perform in front of the student section, which CAN see them in the stadium, but they’re front and center for everyone at pep rallies and pre-game events.
There are schools in the South that don’t wear bare midriffs. I’m a big fan of competitive cheerleading, and as a viewer I much prefer the old school uniforms.
For coed squads, where all the women are flyers, aesthetic body type is not going to be an issue, because you have to be tiny and light to make the stunts work. But for all-girl squads with female bases, there are plenty of great athletes with body types that don’t meet this aesthetic standard. Cutting them for that is wrong IMHO, and the school ought to choose uniforms that are flattering to all athletes. If you watch all girl cheer, you will often see stocky girls on the best squads. They are great at what they do.
Here’s tryout info for the many-time national champs at Kentucky. They do say they judge on appearance, but they wear more modest athletic clothing and put their hair half up so its out of their eyes. No makeup or tanning requirements.
Oh, please.
Completely different situations. Good looking people, men and women, are always going to have some advantages. Why should jocks get all the advantages and attention they do? Is the ability to dunk a basketball or carry a football that important to society?
What did you expect me to do roam the hallways of the school counseling anyone who may have laughed at the cheerleaders who didn’t fit the stereotype? Hi, everyone, public service announcement, please don’t objectify.
I can think of 25 thinks off the top of my head before seven am that I’d consider more serious than this U-Dub poster. A few other schools published similar guidelines. Let’s not criminalize everything.
But, that is okay. I’ll stick my head in the sand and pretend everyone is equal. Some people are genetically gifted just like some people are smarter than a box of chocolates and others are dumber than a box of rocks. You’ve got to play the hand your dealt and try to overcome things like that … or you can cry and mope about it. I guess the choice is yours.
I guess if 100% of a cheerleader’s role is to be eye candy, that’s a valid argument. If there’s something else to the role, maybe an inordinate focus on someone’s adherence to a very narrow definition of “good looks” isn’t the priority.
Broadly speaking, cheerleading squads are free to take looks into account where necessary, because spectators may have an adverse reaction to, say, Donald Trump as a male cheerleader. The UDub poster seems to be preaching a very narrow definition of “good looks.” I wonder how many non-white members the cheerleading squad has, and whether any of them were involved in creating this poster.
That was my first reaction as well. My second was “does UDub not have Asian students?” To take one fairly simple example, would the girl on CC’s front page look better with a spray tan? Or is that a non-factor because “Asians need not apply?”
After that question is answered, all I want to know is what the heck “girl about town” lipstick is and why spectators 50-500 feet away would find a cheerleader’s lack of false lashes an issue.
I just threw up in my mouth a little.
Actually he was a good athlete. And likely would have made a good yell leader at a place like TAMU.
Seriously folks?
To be clear, the UW squad involved here was the UW “spirit and dance” squad. It isn’t considered a varsity team or part of the UW athletic program. It is a club whose primary purpose is to provide pleasing visuals and spirit support at varsity sporting events.
So being good looking (for the guys too I’d guess) would seem to be a core competency. Just as knowing how to play an instrument would be a core competency for a marching band member.
If you’ve ever seen USC’s “Song Girls”, you’d know that they are recruited for something other than their athletic or gymnastic abilities…
@northwesty From the first article:
It definitely seems like they’re talking about the athletics program’s cheerleading squad. The other article mentions that the poster was in fact created by the athletics dept.
Nope.
This is for a sideline spirit and dance squad. It is a student club. Like the club that tends to school mascot during football games. Or the marching band. It is not a varsity sport or a sports team that is part of UW’s athletic department.
Some schools have tried to make “competitive cheer” into a real competitive varsity sport. Mostly as a way to provide additional female athletic opportunities that would assist in title ix compliance. But even those squads (which are different than the ones that hang on the sidelines at football games) as of now, have been ruled (for title ix purposes) to not constitute a sport. Google up “Quinnipiac title ix case” if you want to get the details.
“Dance/spirit” is one thing (entertainment on the sidelines of football and hoops games). The competitive sport usually calls itself something “acrobatics and tumbling” to make the distinction. They would compete at their own cheer tournaments, not perform on the sidelines of other sports’ games.
That just made me throw up in my mouth a little.
Yeah, #33, the world would be a better place if we outlawed pleasing visuals. No wonder the cops are so busy. I knew as soon as I saw this U-Dub thing online someone here would post about it in over the top outrage. Some things are just too predictable.
@GoNotes85, I look forward to the day when someone considers your daughter a “pleasing visual”. You will probably punch them if they say it out loud.
Interesting thread. I can totally understand the outrage, although my feeling would be more disappointment, at the poster. When I first saw it, in the news, my reaction was not as strong as others. At least they didn’t say you had to be a size 5 or less. Pointing out that it excluded people of different ethnicities did not immediately occur to me. That made me realize that, wow, I really do see things as a person with white privilege.
I get where GoNote85 is coming from. And I actually am glad to see a contrary opinion on CC. Do not see that nearly enough. It’s the usual- "That’s the way the world is, now move on to really important issues, " mantra is to some extent true. Good looking people have and have had an advantage for all of recorded history it seems. There have been have and have nots as well.
But I also understand that the human race is intelligent and has made major strides in technology, medicine and agriculture. We can also make great strides in sociology!
D1 was a cheerleader. By any standards she is considered very pretty or beautiful and is thin. She is also the strongest feminist I know!
Well, in his defense, he said “pleasing visuals and spirit support”. Anyone who thinks cheerleading isn’t at least partially about “pleasing visuals” has their head in the sand. But then, I’m a guy.
I’m not sure what to think. Members of dance squad often need to be as similar as possible. Long ago, a dance coach told us we should have trouble picking out our individual dancers when the group performed. The d that did dance was under 5 foot and an ethnic minority, but darn it if the coach wasn’t right. So, I get some of the standardization (black clothes, same shoes, hair down, no heavy make-up), but I did find the tan thing confusing.
Both my girls were (are) college cheerleaders–flyers, in fact. Body type/size mattered a lot, more than it ever did in gymnastics, where the girls with the bigger builds had the advantage of power in certain events. The “bow” was often part of the uniform, which means the d with the pixie cut is often out of uniform. I’d like to say if never kept her off a team, but I think it did. Well, that and not being white. Naturally, every coach denied that and pointed to some other very white-looking minorities who made it.
As an activity, cheer has many benefits, but its focus on appearance (style over substance) is still alive and well, as that UW poster illustrates. Wonder if, on some level at least, it’s still a popularity contest, too.
The definition of over the top = wanting to punch someone in the face for saying (as opposed to thinking, of course) my daughter is a pleasing visual.
I have sons not daughters, however, if I had a daughter, I’d teach her to accept herself and her strengths and weaknesses and to try to improve herself as much as she can and to constantly grow and yada yada the same thing I did with my sons. I would not raise her in a bubble. I wouldn’t wrap her in shrink wrap so that we could go outside the house and, God forbid, sounds of plates crashing, someone her age looked at her.
Looking at other people is kind of normal.
I’d let her grow up and deal with love and sexuality and the whole enchilada. I will freely admit that I had some goofy and wrong headed thoughts when I was a young man about how to treat women and all that. I’ve posted about it on this board before briefly basically saying that I thought to be a man I had to get women in the sack as much and as often as possible. I look back on myself at that age and I realize I just wasn’t smart. I didn’t get it. I also noticed that all the guys who treated women as friends and focused on making sure the girls they were with were respected and protected and had a good time did pretty well in other departments with the ladies so I passed that life lesson along to my sons. It seems to have worked.
Back to this topic, I honestly get the feeling that some folks would like it if the government opened up an agency that forced all attractive people to shave their heads bald and wear potato sacks to make them less attractive so that unattractive people could feel better about things. We could also monitor thoughts about attractiveness by reading people’s minds and using artificial intelligence and attaching sensors in certain places. If anyone had an impure thought we could zap them with low levels of electricity. That would make things fair and even. That way no one has an advantage. Doesn’t that sound lovely?
I used to work in a bar. One of the bartenders would often say, late at night as he was diving up the tips, that attractive people got better tips. No one disagreed. I don’t know how the unattractive cocktail waitresses felt about his comment. There were no unattractive cocktail waitresses. Every one of them could have moved to Hollywood and worked as a lingerie model. That’s the way it works.
Red herring. The UW poster is about putting together a squad which draws the male gaze. That is not the same thing as “looking at people.”
