Breaking Down Cheerleading Stereotypes

Provocative. Cheerleaders are always seen as the girls in the movies stretching their butts up in the air, shaking it on the basketball court and fooling around with the boys on all the sports teams. Our squad at East is far from the slutty stereotype. We do not offer homework help to the football players in exchange for sexual favors like the cheerleaders on “Friday Night Lights.” We cheerleaders at East prance around in our long sleeve, skin covering, uniforms unlike the cheerleaders in the movies with their crop tops and junk hanging out. We usually spend most of our time talking about butterfly tattoos and pigs’ blood on the sidelines rather than gossiping and stretching and bending over in our short skirts.

In the “Bring It On” movies the girls are usually seen getting in dance battles with the opposing schools’ cheer squads. East cheerleaders, on the other hand, don’t dance. The closest thing we do to dancing is the school’s fight song which just involves a lot of bopping up and down.

Brainless. Now I can’t say everyone on cheer is the brightest of the bright; but it’s rare to find a group of 25 girls that are geniuses. I can say though, that none of us are paying the smart kids to do our homework for us. We have a couple girls in International Baccalaureate and quite a few in all Advanced Placement classes that are on the squad. Now that’s something that you would never see in the movies.

Cliquey. Although it may be assumed that I spend every second of every hour with my “cheer sisters,” that is completely false. Don’t get me wrong: I’m friends with everyone on the squad just like teams are for any other sport, but we don’t travel in a pack. We rarely are all in the same place at the same time other than practices and games. We don’t walk in a cluster through the hallways pushing kids into lockers, and we don’t start battles with the other schools cheerleaders. We actually try to become friends with the cheerleaders at other schools; at home games we usually make goodie bags to welcome the other cheerleaders. The bags contain just simple treats like starbursts and tootsie pops, but I know when our squad receives them from other teams we always think it’s a nice gesture.

Uniforms every day. This always makes me laugh, when I’m watching “Glee” and the cheerios are literally in their same uniform every single day. How many of the same uniform do they have? Do they wear the same one everyday, if so how often do they wash them? This stereotype is just not true at all. We do wear our uniforms to school but only on game days, duh!

Cheer 24/7. This year we actually have one of the most diverse group of seniors on cheer that we’ve had in a while. Both editors of the yearbook, StuCo execs, club leaders, newspaper staffers and photographers, the list goes on and on. While this sometimes interferes with our ability to make it to every practice or game (sorry coach,) it really is a great way to evenly disperse our school spirit throughout every organization at East.

So there you have it East, we aren’t the provocative, peanut brains that the movies portray us as. We’re just 20 some girls trying to amp up the school and make memories while