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.
When and how did cheerleading as a culture/pursuit shift from peppy pom-pom shaking to hardcore acrobatics?
It started to change in the early 1980s when the first cheerleading championship was held -- before then it wasn't necessarily a competitive activity. At the same time as cheerleading competitions were catching on, a lot of school gymnastics programs were being shut down because insurance costs were rising and it was getting harder to find well-trained coaches. So a lot of competitive gymnasts started funneling into cheerleading. With those things together, it's sort of snowballed into the high-flying, daredevil sports that Fox Sports and ESPN2 air now.
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?
About the writer
Lynn Harris is the author of the novel "Death by Chick Lit" and the co-creator of BreakupGirl.net. She also writes for Glamour, the New York Times, Babble.com and Nextbook.org.
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