Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Well, it's about time!

Tue Sep 13 03:28pm EDT

Principal makes cheerleaders don sweats under risque skirts


Okay, so maybe I'm a prude. But I find it very disturbing to see the overt sexualization of young cheerleaders. Many many years ago, when i was attending Cal State, there was some sort of cheerleader camp being held on campus. A bunch of young girls who looked to be in high school or maybe junior high, were being led by a male coach in an exercise that reveolved around the word "gigolo" being used as a verb. It went something like this:



I couldn't believe that no parents were complaining about their daughters being taught this sort of thing. Then a few years later, I joined a softball team that played on a field also used for pop warner football practice. And before our games would start, we would see the little boys practicing blocking and tackling and the little girls  practicing cheerleading. Why the little girls couldn't play a sport of their own instead of having to cheer for the boys is a whole other problem, but the mothers of these little girls seemed only to happy to teach them how to dance like Vegas Showgirls. I don't get it. Why anyone would teach their daughters that the highest level of achievement to which they can aspire is to be eye candy for the boys is just beyond me.
And am I the only one who finds the uniforms these girls have to wedge into disturbing?


http://www.cheerleadingonline.com/blog/chasse-performance-uniforms.jpg 

I know I'm probably being a big old prude, but that is just wrong.

http://i54.tinypic.com/jzbgx5.jpg
What is this girl, like 10, 12 years old? she's too young to even understand what's wrong with this outfit.

If the point of cheerleading is to lead cheers, as the name implies, why should the uniforms have to be all about T&A? You shouldn't have to be a half-naked girl to shout "Give me an A!" You don't even need to be a girl at all.

http://cast.thirdage.com/files/styles/large/public/originals/george-bush-cheerleader-prep-school.jpg

Yeah, I should NOT have done an image search for "Cheerleader + Bush!"

So anyway. . . .

As first reported by the San Jose Mercury News, the move to make cheerleaders wear sweats under their uniforms was enforced so they could fall in line with a dress code that requires all skirts or shorts to
stretch lower than mid-thigh. 
Sounds reasonable.
"This is really unfair to us," Piedmont Hills senior cheerleader Antonia Bavilacqua told the Mercury News. The skirts are still OK for games, just not during school.
Oh come on! Games are when these girls are going to be turning cartwheels and high-kicking, that's the worst time to be wearing these miniskirts!

Now Bavilacqua is leading a charge to try and get Williams to ease up on her enforcement of the rule, citing both a prior case in Florida, common sense (another cheerleader cited the weather concerns, saying "It's 95 degrees outside"), and fashion sense as reasons to allow the cheerleaders to wear their uniforms in school one day a week.
After all, as one of the squad's other senior cheerleaders said, wearing sweatpants under a miniskirt is, "dorky."

You know what isn't "dorky," young lady? Wearing proper clothing.
Okay, I'm officially a prude.

3 comments:

  1. About 8 years ago, a friend and I were watching the Penn State homecoming parade, our 2-year-old daughters were sitting in their strollers. Along comes a dance troupe. Girls 7-16 were "dancing" along to some hip hop song. They did things with their chests and hips that would embarrass a pole-dancer. Our mouths fell open and we vowed we would do whatever we could to keep our daughters (and anyone's daughters) from thinking this was a good and acceptable thing for young girls.

    I'm a prude and damn proud of it! Glad to hear that I'm not alone.

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  2. Prude power!
    Prudes of the world unite!

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  3. the girls who dress in half tops don't even "lead cheers". there is no cheering of any sorts. it is completely athletic and acrobatic. they exert more energy during their 2 minute and 30 second routine than many athletes who play entire games and the halftop uniforms work to keep them cool. The skirts even for those cheerleaders that do participate in sideline cheer allow maximum range of motion and flexibility. You're freaking out about the "oversexualization" of a stomach and the legs of a young woman's uniform, when the real problem is the oversexualization of OUR BODIES. God forbid my stomach shows or you can see the skin of my legs and thats innapropriate, why? Focus on something that you know more about. Parents who allow their cheerleading know what happens see no problem with it so don't attack their positions as a parent.

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