I used to think that cheerleaders should be shot on sight, but as I've aged and mellowed, I've realized that's just wrong. It's their parents who should be shot on sight. By the cheerleaders, as part of a therapy program.
If you want to know how deeply these stories scar the American psyche - try reading any of the above and substituting "member of the royal family" for "cheerleader"
unless I badly misunderstand the role of the role family in the English psyche. Didn't see any reactions to the Carolina cheerleader story that weren't some mix of "hee" and "hott!" Of course the Steelers have no cheerleaders, and in my high school cheerleading was considered just a bizarre thing to do, so I may not have the proper perspective here.
Another element (or at least something that bothers me) is that cheerleading has a horrific injury rate; IIRC, more deaths and spinal cord injuries per participant than football. My 16 year old niece has a cracked vertebra and chronic back pain from cheerleading.
Anybody else see the Southern Illinois cheerleader who fell off the pyramid last week, cracked a vertebra, then as she was being taken off on the stretcher started doing all the arm cheers to the SIU fight song?
The announcers started in about how brave and dedicated she was, but my reaction was, "What a fucking idiot." You're immobilized for a reason, dear.
The reaction here was the same as everywhere else. Inner Beavises everywhere rose to the surface and ran aroud the neighborhood pantsless and cackling.
Article somehow missed that G.W. Bush was one too. That Beckerman guy seemed peurile--this week's concept, never out of fashion--to me.
I'm always a bit nervous about trampoline tricks, especially in uncertain environments. I'll bet that's where a lot of the injuries come in. I'd ban that; for now, the guys on the squad have a heavy responsibility to catch well.
I'm in favor of wholesome titillation such as was common in my day. Majorettes too. Come on, people, there are grotesqueries associated with every passtime. My elegant and brilliant sister-in-law was a cheerleader back in Council Bluffs; so were a lot of other good people.
The facts in that article are just strange. Certainly if the royal family had done those sort of things it would be a big deal. The royal family also has three or five orders of magnitude fewer members than cheerleaders in the US.
God, I just love the conventions of mainstream journalism. The obligatory intro blurb for any new speaker, in particular.
...Marty Beckerman, author of the book Death To All Cheerleaders (in which he describes cheerleaders as a "race of loose bimbos with the brain capacity of squirrel faeces"). As a 16-year-old, Beckerman was sacked from his job as a newspaper cub reporter for asking a 13-year-old cheerleader what it felt like to be "a urine stain on the toilet seat of America".
"Hello readers! We interviewed a crazy person. Sorry!"
I think I missed out on some essential American experiences with this whole cheerleader bit- while my high school did have them, they didn't have any overlap with the in-crowd. There was always some annoying condescending pity towards them, as well- in my well-off, partially academic suburb, the cheerleading squad was almost exclusively made up of folks from lower income and minority families, who just saw being a cheerleader as a general marker of status that a good portion of the community didn't share.
Article somehow missed that G.W. Bush was one too.
Uh, no it didn't. "And when pictures of George W Bush in male cheerleading gear started circulating on the web, at least one right-wing blogger was convinced it was a PhotoShop stitch-up concocted to demean Dubya's sexuality."
Beckerman seemed more than puerile; he seemed scummy. It's totally gross for a guy to make a profession out of describing his hostility to sexualized women in graphic, violent terms.
In my small town high school in Texas, cheerleading is still very high status. There is a counterculture though, so it's not like there are no other options for popularity--just not with the same group. (I'm assuming it hasn't changed that much since I attended.)
When I was at the high school Tia went to after leaving the small town one, there was almost no overlap between the people involved in cheerleading and the people involved in dance. Some of the dancers were quite talented; I never went to a sporting event (aside from cross-country, which has no cheerleaders) and do not know if the same applied to any of the cheerleaders.
Cheerleading is a problem in another way. Suppose you're a faculty member at a liberal arts college. (Just suppose.) Like some of your colleagues, you want to be a supportive member of the community, so you join some of those colleagues when they go to sporting events. Halftime cheerleading presents a seriously awkward situation: if you're seen watching the display, you'll look creepy. Solution: feign a fascinating conversation with another colleague.
I was thinking, in regards to the OP, that I hadn't ever seen a real live cheerleader. But that's not true! I must have seen some that time I went to the local high school football game when I was really young. Or is that a screen memory cobbled together from reading Nancy Drew? It's all so dim and archetypal!
I must admit I can't really imagine the sort of place where cheerleaders would have high social status. Growing up somewhere (western canada) with no cheerleaders to speak of the only imagery was from hollywood and other media. Cheerleading was pretty much identified with stereotypes of white/stupid/pretty/slut....
Honestly, I don't know why anyone even gives Marty Beckerman the time of day. He's literally just one of those kids who still gets a cheap thrill out of saying naughty words, there's nothing else there.
The "slut" thing is interesting to me, because when I was growing up, they were generally considered either teases or concubines for relevant team. Could the "slut" association be a symptom of the diminished status of cheerleaders?
Huh. Maybe there's a regional/generational thing going on, but when I went to high school (NC, 82-86), the cheerleading squad was definitely the domain of the most popular girls in the school and there wasn't any assumption of sluttishness associated with it. Or at least, I wasn't aware of it.
Chopper -- in my experience of adolescent vernacular, "sluts" referred to girls who would not sleep with the speaker but would, so it was imputed, sleep with a wide variety of other people.
I claim that a reaction of discomfort is warranted in cases where (e.g.) a faculty member is watching a group of students engage in cheerleading routines that are designed in part to be oogle-worthy. Furthermore, I claim this is obvious.
It's not uncomfortable because of the chance someone else will make the charge of creepiness; it's uncomfortable because it's the wrong way to interact with students. (Similar case: I don't want to see student productions of "The Vagina Monologues" either, mostly because I think it will be dull but partly because I don't want to hear my students talking about their genitalia. It's great for them to have exciting and interesting lives that veer into risque territory from time to time, but it's better that I'm totally not involved in that.) Cheerleading is not the same thing, of course, but you can't tell me with a straight face that it makes no appeal to prurient interest.
I agree with Tia: at my high school, cheerleaders were okay, the drill team was better, but no one really cared.
I also agree, firmly, that there's something bothersome about the virulence with which people hate cheerleading. Some combination of Puritanism/anti-uppity-womanism/somethingorother. It is athletic, after all (and while the idea that cheerleaders get spine injuries all the time bugs me, I also wonder how much of my being bugged by it is sexist--a "oh no, little girls shouldn't get hurt doing sport" kind of thing. Am I as bothered by men getting hurt in football? Or is the problem that we don't see cheerleading as a sport, and I at least want girls to realize the risks when they go out for it? Then again, probably they do, or they learn quickly from the other girls...). I'm bugged by the way that some women's sports (cheerleading, skating, arguably stripping) rely so heavily on cuteness and sexual display, sure. But then again, a lot of men's sports rely heavily on exaggerated semi-sexual displays that we don't recognize as such, too....
This is an activity so stylized, so framed, so conventional, and I'm presuming so anonymous/public--how many people at your games, anyway?--that this seems far-fetched to me. A small audience production of "Vagina Monologues" would make you stand out more, although if you were a regular attender/series subscriber I would think you should go if you otherwise wanted to.
Not even the cheerleaders would sleep with apo. Rough.
The cheerleaders would not sleep with me. This much is true. I did, however, get expelled from my prestigious residential school for getting busted having sex with my girlfriend in the dorm, and returned to my old high school with that fact quite widely known.
38: Growing up somewhere (western canada) with no cheerleaders to speak of the only imagery was from hollywood and other media.
Well, no high school cheerleaders, anyway. First time I remember seeing cheerleaders as something other than the ubiquitous abstracted virgin/whore signifiers of American myth was at a Labour Day Classic game in Alberta. The Eskies brought a mixed cheerleading squad so intimidatingly professional and dynamic that they were almost more athletically impressive than the football team they were supposedly "cheering." The idea of cheerleading as a perfectly valid sport unto itself has always seemed plausible to me, since.
Humbert, I think that the role of faculty w/r/t student's sex stuff depends on the sex of the faculty. A feminist prof going to the VM is cool (although I admit I couldn't be bothered). It's not a simple students / faculty divide; it's a question of mentoring. Women faculty can maybe act as mentors to young women in terms of confessions/questions about sex stuff, as long as they keep it on the level of professional discussion, education, information, etc; ditto, perhaps, men. Though I wouldn't know.
I also agree, firmly, that there's something bothersome about the virulence with which people hate cheerleading. Some combination of Puritanism/anti-uppity-womanism/somethingorother.
I don't know -- is it really 'anti uppity-womanism'? Cheerleading seems hardly uppity to me. Its origins are in service to the boys' sports teams -- without that, it's either sexualized gymnastics or a gymastic genre of dance. I think it's possible to think that (1) if it's dance, it's not particularly artistically interesting (2) if it's gymnastics, that sports where competitors are judged on how sexy they are suck and (3) if it's whipping up the crowd for the football team, fine, but surely there are better things to do with your life. I don't know that I hate cheerleading -- there certainly weren't any cheerleaders in my urban high school, but it seems like a pointless and vaguely stupid activity, and I don't think my reasons for thinking so are misogynist.
A feminist prof You mean a prof whose sex/orientation combination rules out having inappropriate dealings with the female students, I take it.
Haha! I can play lefty gotcha too!
I kid, because I love.
You're totally right about the mentoring. There's a sort of frank relationship that can exist between female students and, say, (straight) women faculty that can't exist between female students and straight male faculty. Even if all the intentions are good, the possibilities of self-deception, etc. are too great.
60: it seems like a pointless and vaguely stupid activity, and I don't think my reasons for thinking so are misogynist.
OTOH it doesn't seem significantly more pointless and vaguely stupid than, say, running up and down a field with an oblong ball while other people try to hit you.
Boy, I had a male prof in college who, once before seminar when I innocently speculated as to whether foreplay had evolved or been invented (it was Chaucer, see), launched into a long and enthusiastic description of The Quest for Fire and how it described the invention both of foreplay and frontal sex that lasted ten minutes into seminar. He was not so worried. A lot of people thought he was kind of a dirty old man though, so Labs's point may be proved.
It's not gotchaness; lesbian students are absolutely dying for more lesbian faculty on my campus. But then, as we all know, lesbians are the nearest thing to god on earth, so they can do no wrong.
Re. uppity woman: I realize that cheerleaders exist to support male sports, etc. But there really seems to be a resentment of the *popularity* of cheerleaders, and the cheerleading "type," e.g. in movies like "To Die For" or "Election"--hyper-polished, ambitious, social networking women. I wonder about it.
I went to a suburban high school in the sixties, where this was part of life. I always liked that a kind of stylized sexuality was available and part of the normal range, even if it was pretty tame. And I would have interpreted anyone who went on about it so obsessively as clearly puritanical and given to stereotypes as well. In a school of about 2000, I knew some cheerleaders, most of the football players, all the band and all the majorettes--much sexier in my day because coached by my friend the band director's wife. It was performance, just like plays and concerts and I would have thought everybody knew that.
resentment of the *popularity* of cheerleaders, and the cheerleading "type,"
Okay, I follow -- the difference between thinking ill of cheerleading, and of cheerleaders. Given that cheerleading is a valued activity in high schools, there's nothing wrong with getting involved in it -- I just think it's a dopey thing to be so valued.
Well, from the view of an outsider, the socio-cultural aspects of cheerleading and 'varsity' sports/jock-culture that we were told about in John Hughes movies look like things we ought to disapprove of and for reasons that have nothing to do with 'uppity' women.
Then again, I don't know how the reality connects to the pop-cultural portrayal of US high-school/college culture.
I was wondering about that -- or if viewed as a sport, the fact that it relies heavily on 'cuteness and sexual display' is a flaw? What would an alternative Stripping-Sport be that didn't rely on cuteness and sexual display?
22: aside from cross-country, which has no cheerleaders
Then this is clearly an area which can be developed. A colleague was enlightening us today about going drinking with some footballers whose idea of fun included "naked thorn bush diving" (as in small but vengeful trees). This is a move that could play a big part in Cross Country cheerleading.
71: I would argue that 'we' (American culture generally rather than 'we' the Mineshaft) hates those characteristics significantly more in women than in men.
Yeah, that's the aspect of the media-portrayal of US high-school/college culture that it seems we ought to disapprove of.
It's not a gender issue so much as it's an issue of social class and power that runs somewhat orthogonal to similar problems that do connect intimately with gender.
The UMBC chess team had cheerleaders , plus recruiting violations. They would pay all these 30 year old grandmasters to go to school then not look very carefully whether they went to class or not. The chess team just crushed all opponents.
64: I don't think Tracy Flick in "Election" is exactly a cheerleader type. She's definitely déclassé in that school, and it seems to me that in that milieu the cheerleaders would be very much classé. I may be failing to remember something specific about cheerleading in there, though, so it might be possible to pwn me here.
Also, one of the things that makes the movie interesting is that although Tracy is wronged in many ways, by the social structure of the school and by Broderick's desire to cut her down, she's still awful.
72: I think that's wrong, and it's a species of the "If a man does X, he's consisidered strong, but if a woman does it, she's a bitch," complaint that I also think is wrong. I always wonder where the women were when we were discussing said man, because normally we were discussing what a jerk he was.
I'm sure there are cases where the complaint is true, but generally speaking, I find that there is widespread agreement about who the jerks in any situation are.
Apo, I went to the maine equivalent of your school(named, logically enough, MSSM) and it was widely known that entering the laundry rooms was always a risky proposition. I don't think anyone ever got expelled for it, but there was the time when the matronly 50-year-old executive director walked in on at least 2 couples in various states of undress.
I think class is the main dynamic creating uncertainty about cheerleading's status. Cheerleading used to occupy an unambiguously superior position in the American social hierarchy. A lot of people latched onto it as a way to jumpstart there own social status. Along the way, it got mixed in with feminism and the whole hyper-competitive American dream thing and what we get is this weird mix which confuses all sorts of social identifiers. That's why hating on cheerleading is so attractive to certain people, especially "hip" adolescent boys; it allows them to gratify all of their prejudices in one big orgy of self-satisfaction.
it seems like a pointless and vaguely stupid activity, and I don't think my reasons for thinking so are misogynist
There's nothing misogynist about merely disliking cheerleading--I'd prefer my niece played soccer to cheerleading. It's the virulent hatred of cheerleading Marty Beckerman-stylee that looks like a convenient cover for old fashioned misogyny and a soupçon of homophobia.
I'd never heard of Beckerman before. What the Guardian story doesn't say is that Beckerman self-publishedDeath to All Cheerleaders and is now almost finished with college. He's a loud-mouthed kid who hates cheerleaders and likes controversy; in other words, ideally suited to pontificate for this article.
I always wonder where the women were when we were discussing said man, because normally we were discussing what a jerk he was.
It's the strength of the reaction, though. A female lawyer I knew once was fired for being mean to the staff -- maltreating secretaries and paralegals. She was, genuinely, awful -- really horrendous -- but the maltreatment was confined to saying mean things to them. Nothing bizarre like violence, sexual abuse, or asking them to perform tasks outside their professional responsibilities, just nasty unpleasantness while doing her job.
Bringing her up in this context is weird, because her conduct was, truly, unacceptable, I don't mean to say that recognizing that fact was misogynist. But I can't imagine a male lawyer being fired for the same type of behavior. I've never heard of such a thing. (This is complicated by the fact that she also wasn't a particularly great lawyer -- if she had been, it might have saved her. But I still can't imagine even a male lawyer of her precise level of competence getting fired for being rude to the secretaries.)
Now, it might be a better world if more stringent punishments were imposed on male jerks, rather than female jerks getting more lenient treatment than they do now, but in the world we live in now, punishments aren't the same.
Boy, now I know what gets the Unfoggetariat's juices flowing: tight young bodies suggestively posed in skimpy outfits.
I question the Guardian's motives.
And the "mob of drunken cheerleaders, doped up with malt liquor by their coach, went on a car-trashing rampage" was from an XXXX-rated apocalypse movie.
96: Huh. I know guys who get away with what they ought not, but that's usually a function of their power in the company. Was the woman high up in the firm? I'd think a lower level male attorney would be particularly vulnerable for firing if he were mistreating secretaries and the secretaries were primarily female. But I could be wrong, and I defer to your greater wisdom.
97: The image of rampaging cheerleaders was the one positive image in the piece. And now you tell me it's smutty and (I assume) made up. Thanks a lot, Emerson.
I'd think a lower level male attorney would be particularly vulnerable for firing if he were mistreating secretaries and the secretaries were primarily female.
Why would you think this? I'm not talking about sexual harassment, I'm just talking about saying rude, mean, unpleasant things about their work.
Perhaps because in some places there can be an assumption -- a sexist one, in itself, and no doubt deriving from various pernicious gender stereotypes -- that female staff and particularly female staff in a subordinate position are more vulnerable than male staff in that position and that their male 'superiors' owe them a duty of care, etc.
I've certainly worked places in the past where guys who throw their weight around are scorned for doing so when the person they are being obnoxious to is female (or a great deal younger). It's seen as somehow an instance of metaphorically not 'fighting fair' or not 'picking on someone their own size'.
As I said, I bow to your greater wisdom. My thought was that saying rude things to people who were women might give rise to an inference of "hostile workplace environment," but I know less than nothing about the various anti-sexual harrassment regimes in place.
I think this is the intersection of two different geneder role (for want of a better word) problems. The lawyer was the most junior in the firm (reponding to 98). Her conduct toward the staff was pretty bad, as LizardBreath reports.
I think there is something (although it is overplayed) about women being judged more harshly than men when it comes to rudeness and aggressiveness.
At the same time, there are all sorts of double standards. For example, given the things the associate in question messed up work wise, I think she would have been fired earlier if she had been a man. However, for whatever reason (the soft sexism of low expectations) she got away with mistakes that would have gotten a man fired.
Again, I think this happens more generally (although like the problem of women being judged to a higer standard are far as being rude is concerned, the strength of the effect is overplayed. I think there is a lot of truth to what SMCT says in 90).
Data set: both my sisters were cheerleaders and homecoming queens in small-town MN ca. 1966-8.
Cheerleaders were definitely the elite. No irony in those days; even now, small-town Minnesota is unbelievably deficient in irony and guile.
The secret of being a homecoming queen is in being cute, nice, and popular, but not so cute and popular that everyone hates you. You can be as nice as you want, though.
One of my sisters strongly wished that there were real sports for girls. She didn't like the helpmeet aspect of cheerleading at all.
By contrast, one state down in Iowa, girl's basketball has been a major, closely-watched HS sport for at least 70 years, sometimes outranking boys' basketball. Besides irony, the Midwest is deficient in liberation and wild and crazy fun, but it probably has always been ahead of the curve on gender equality.
One of my sister's colleagues got pregnant by the point guard her senior year. She sucked it in, pretended nothing was happening, had the baby during Xmas break, graduated, married the guy, and lived happily ever after.
That team came within 2 baskets of being the first local team to go to the State Tournament, too.
I think there is a lot of fear about giving rise to an inference of "hostile workplace environment, but in New York law firm culture, this does not seem to extend to not speaking harshly to secretaries and paralegals--it just means that there cannot be any sexual overtones to the words spoken in harshness.
Apo, you're the man. I was just talking with someone this weekend about kids getting thrown out of your prestigious, residential high school. Unfortunately, I had a bad fever, and I can't remember what for. But don't worry, your proud tradition continues.
Not only that, one participant in this conversation was on the board of the maine equivalent, which sounds like it's at the godforsaken end of the earth. What else are you going to do but head for the laundry room?
It was a new principal's first semester there and he was looking to make an example of somebody. Having already been caught drinking early in the year, I then proceeded to stand up and shout, "Me! Me! Make an example of me!"
Which he did. He was a total asshole to boot and I still tell myself that anybody that douchebaggy probably had to pass walnut-sized kidney stones for the rest of his life. That's my hope, anyhow. Not that I'm bitter about it or anything.
While I wasn't exactly among those social circles that would really know much about all of this, I can say this: many (maybe most) of the cheerleaders at my high school were regarded as, or at least reputed to be, sexually available to those who were willing to play the right dating/seduction game. But only one had a reputation as a slut. It was probably because she was the only one that actually made passes at guys. Being sexually assertive (as opposed to available) female made you a slut.
Which seems like good progress, but still far from ideal.
1) The Dallas Cowboys are now and forever will be America's team.
2) I assume you've heard about the cheerleading bill in Texas? Though it's aimed at curbing sexually suggestive moves (which in itself suggests some Labsian prurience on the part of legislators; does nothing else come to mind in the way of actionable items related to TX's flagging schools?), it's widely understood to target primarily black schools, whose cheerleaders typically employ different dance moves than their white counterparts.
Really, truly, I promise you, there are things about Texas that don't suck.
B, you don't really think that stripping is a sport, do you?
No, which is why I said "arguably." But if you think about it for half a second, it's a damn difficult thing to do well, especially if there's a pole involved; it certainly involves a level of physical strength and fitness beyond what most people are capable of.
This makes me think about the "performative" aspect of so many high-profile "women's" sports, which is what I think I was getting at with the cute/sexy thing. I find it problematic (obviously), and I wonder if there is, or should be, a distinction between sports as performance and sports as direct competition. And then I wonder how that would impact things like horseback riding, or diving....
I would tend to argue that that would be a good thing for actual women's sports -- attention previously paid to ice dancing might be transferable to softball. But I'm not certain of that.
you suddenly declare most high-profile women's sports as non-sport
That's because they are competitions, not sports.
I do know that this year's UNC women's basketball team is the most exciting women's basketball team I have ever seen play. They got totally screwed by the folks making the brackets, though.
Ok, I'm in agreement then. From here on out, ice dancing and stripping are performances and, if prizes are being awarded, competitions. But not sports.
If I were the present justice department and shared their preoccupations, I'd have people closely watching the crowds in all women's gymnastics competitions for overenthusiastic members of the audience.
They need the help of my age-of-consent-obsessed mind in order to do their jobs more effectively.
To my mind, though, gymnastics is the toughest of all sports. It's really gruelling and requores a lot of strength, but it requires unbelievable finesse too, and sometime is very dangerous.
126: agreed. a long time ago in a previous life I did gymnastics seriously for a little while. There were some pretty impressive athletes (both genders) in that gym. Far, far beyond anything I'd seen in the same age group for team sports or other individual sports I knew anything about.
I used to think that cheerleaders should be shot on sight, but as I've aged and mellowed, I've realized that's just wrong. It's their parents who should be shot on sight. By the cheerleaders, as part of a therapy program.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 8:30 AM
This is absurd:
unless I badly misunderstand the role of the role family in the English psyche. Didn't see any reactions to the Carolina cheerleader story that weren't some mix of "hee" and "hott!" Of course the Steelers have no cheerleaders, and in my high school cheerleading was considered just a bizarre thing to do, so I may not have the proper perspective here.
Note also that the Dallas Cowboys are evil.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 8:31 AM
Note also that the Dallas Cowboys are evil.
So noted.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 8:32 AM
Any privileged access to how the Carolina story played out in state?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 8:33 AM
Another element (or at least something that bothers me) is that cheerleading has a horrific injury rate; IIRC, more deaths and spinal cord injuries per participant than football. My 16 year old niece has a cracked vertebra and chronic back pain from cheerleading.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 8:34 AM
Anybody else see the Southern Illinois cheerleader who fell off the pyramid last week, cracked a vertebra, then as she was being taken off on the stretcher started doing all the arm cheers to the SIU fight song?
The announcers started in about how brave and dedicated she was, but my reaction was, "What a fucking idiot." You're immobilized for a reason, dear.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 8:37 AM
how the Carolina story played out in state
The reaction here was the same as everywhere else. Inner Beavises everywhere rose to the surface and ran aroud the neighborhood pantsless and cackling.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 8:40 AM
Apo, I saw a guy on the train with a Tar Heels cap and a Cowboys jacket and wondered what you'd think of him.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 8:45 AM
Article somehow missed that G.W. Bush was one too. That Beckerman guy seemed peurile--this week's concept, never out of fashion--to me.
I'm always a bit nervous about trampoline tricks, especially in uncertain environments. I'll bet that's where a lot of the injuries come in. I'd ban that; for now, the guys on the squad have a heavy responsibility to catch well.
I'm in favor of wholesome titillation such as was common in my day. Majorettes too. Come on, people, there are grotesqueries associated with every passtime. My elegant and brilliant sister-in-law was a cheerleader back in Council Bluffs; so were a lot of other good people.
Posted by John Tingley | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 8:47 AM
The facts in that article are just strange. Certainly if the royal family had done those sort of things it would be a big deal. The royal family also has three or five orders of magnitude fewer members than cheerleaders in the US.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 8:47 AM
"than cheerleaders" should be "than there are cheerleaders"
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 8:49 AM
As I've said before, if you're going to let your daughter be a cheerleader, just go the whole way and buy her the stripper pole.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 8:49 AM
God, I just love the conventions of mainstream journalism. The obligatory intro blurb for any new speaker, in particular.
...Marty Beckerman, author of the book Death To All Cheerleaders (in which he describes cheerleaders as a "race of loose bimbos with the brain capacity of squirrel faeces"). As a 16-year-old, Beckerman was sacked from his job as a newspaper cub reporter for asking a 13-year-old cheerleader what it felt like to be "a urine stain on the toilet seat of America".
"Hello readers! We interviewed a crazy person. Sorry!"
I think I missed out on some essential American experiences with this whole cheerleader bit- while my high school did have them, they didn't have any overlap with the in-crowd. There was always some annoying condescending pity towards them, as well- in my well-off, partially academic suburb, the cheerleading squad was almost exclusively made up of folks from lower income and minority families, who just saw being a cheerleader as a general marker of status that a good portion of the community didn't share.
Posted by Moleman | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 8:50 AM
Article somehow missed that G.W. Bush was one too.
Uh, no it didn't. "And when pictures of George W Bush in male cheerleading gear started circulating on the web, at least one right-wing blogger was convinced it was a PhotoShop stitch-up concocted to demean Dubya's sexuality."
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 8:51 AM
Beckerman seemed more than puerile; he seemed scummy. It's totally gross for a guy to make a profession out of describing his hostility to sexualized women in graphic, violent terms.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 8:51 AM
8: I would ignore the jacket and think, "What a fine choice of headgear."
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 8:54 AM
I sure do wish our trackback function worked correctly.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 8:56 AM
#14: Okay, I missed that. By that far into the article I wasn't reading carefully or sympathetically; I wonder why not?
Posted by John Tingley | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 8:57 AM
In my small town high school in Texas, cheerleading is still very high status. There is a counterculture though, so it's not like there are no other options for popularity--just not with the same group. (I'm assuming it hasn't changed that much since I attended.)
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 8:59 AM
At the small town high school in California I went to before I went to eb's, there was a male cheerleader who was well regarded.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:01 AM
Cheerleading may be weird/creepy/sexist/etc, but "Bring It On" was a great movie.
Posted by Matthew Harvey | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:06 AM
When I was at the high school Tia went to after leaving the small town one, there was almost no overlap between the people involved in cheerleading and the people involved in dance. Some of the dancers were quite talented; I never went to a sporting event (aside from cross-country, which has no cheerleaders) and do not know if the same applied to any of the cheerleaders.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:08 AM
"Bring it On" was a good move. "10 Things I Hate About You" was a great movie.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:08 AM
But an even greater movie was "Can't Hardly Wait."
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:14 AM
Cheerleading is a problem in another way. Suppose you're a faculty member at a liberal arts college. (Just suppose.) Like some of your colleagues, you want to be a supportive member of the community, so you join some of those colleagues when they go to sporting events. Halftime cheerleading presents a seriously awkward situation: if you're seen watching the display, you'll look creepy. Solution: feign a fascinating conversation with another colleague.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:17 AM
Hey, Labs, are you coming to our meetup?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:18 AM
24: Also good, not great. But the only movie in which Hewitt is really appealing.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:18 AM
Sadly, no, Tia, but I'm hoping you'll take this opportunity to make more vaguely suggestive comments.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:20 AM
If you're seen watching the display you'll look creepy?
Maybe if your tongue hangs to the floor like the wartime Warner Bros. cartoon character "Wolfie," otherwise, I doubt it.
Posted by John Tingley | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:21 AM
I don't make vaguely suggestive comments.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:23 AM
You could always watch intently with a look of horror, Labs.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:25 AM
Just be prepared to deal with that awkward moment when something has been misconstrued in a firm and adult manner.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:25 AM
You could always watch intently with a look of horror, Labs.
True, this has never dissuaded me from flirting before.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:26 AM
You could always watch intently with a look of horror, Labs.
This is a good strategy for not having people around him think he looks creepy.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:27 AM
It's nothing if not firm and adult.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:28 AM
I was thinking, in regards to the OP, that I hadn't ever seen a real live cheerleader. But that's not true! I must have seen some that time I went to the local high school football game when I was really young. Or is that a screen memory cobbled together from reading Nancy Drew? It's all so dim and archetypal!
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:30 AM
Honesty compels me to admit that I took the text of 32 from a comment on the mentorship thread.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:31 AM
I must admit I can't really imagine the sort of place where cheerleaders would have high social status. Growing up somewhere (western canada) with no cheerleaders to speak of the only imagery was from hollywood and other media. Cheerleading was pretty much identified with stereotypes of white/stupid/pretty/slut....
Posted by soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:31 AM
What's "OP"?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:32 AM
Honestly, I don't know why anyone even gives Marty Beckerman the time of day. He's literally just one of those kids who still gets a cheap thrill out of saying naughty words, there's nothing else there.
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:34 AM
The "slut" thing is interesting to me, because when I was growing up, they were generally considered either teases or concubines for relevant team. Could the "slut" association be a symptom of the diminished status of cheerleaders?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:34 AM
Ocean Pacific--it's this totally cool brand of t-shirts and jams.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:36 AM
41 -- How is "concubines for the team" not == "sluts"?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:36 AM
Sluts are the ones that sleep with you, TMK. It's bitches that won't.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:37 AM
Huh. Maybe there's a regional/generational thing going on, but when I went to high school (NC, 82-86), the cheerleading squad was definitely the domain of the most popular girls in the school and there wasn't any assumption of sluttishness associated with it. Or at least, I wasn't aware of it.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:37 AM
Cheerleaders were very high status in my high school in small town South Dakota, 87-91.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:39 AM
Chopper -- in my experience of adolescent vernacular, "sluts" referred to girls who would not sleep with the speaker but would, so it was imputed, sleep with a wide variety of other people.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:39 AM
Or at least, I wasn't aware of it.
Not even the cheerleaders would sleep with apo. Rough.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:39 AM
I claim that a reaction of discomfort is warranted in cases where (e.g.) a faculty member is watching a group of students engage in cheerleading routines that are designed in part to be oogle-worthy. Furthermore, I claim this is obvious.
It's not uncomfortable because of the chance someone else will make the charge of creepiness; it's uncomfortable because it's the wrong way to interact with students. (Similar case: I don't want to see student productions of "The Vagina Monologues" either, mostly because I think it will be dull but partly because I don't want to hear my students talking about their genitalia. It's great for them to have exciting and interesting lives that veer into risque territory from time to time, but it's better that I'm totally not involved in that.) Cheerleading is not the same thing, of course, but you can't tell me with a straight face that it makes no appeal to prurient interest.
Posted by Humbert Labs | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:40 AM
Cheerleaders were very popular girls in Modesto '84-'88. Many of them were also assumed to sleep around.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:41 AM
I read him as genuinely uncomfortable with cheerleading.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:42 AM
H.L, that is, not TMK.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:43 AM
I agree with Tia: at my high school, cheerleaders were okay, the drill team was better, but no one really cared.
I also agree, firmly, that there's something bothersome about the virulence with which people hate cheerleading. Some combination of Puritanism/anti-uppity-womanism/somethingorother. It is athletic, after all (and while the idea that cheerleaders get spine injuries all the time bugs me, I also wonder how much of my being bugged by it is sexist--a "oh no, little girls shouldn't get hurt doing sport" kind of thing. Am I as bothered by men getting hurt in football? Or is the problem that we don't see cheerleading as a sport, and I at least want girls to realize the risks when they go out for it? Then again, probably they do, or they learn quickly from the other girls...). I'm bugged by the way that some women's sports (cheerleading, skating, arguably stripping) rely so heavily on cuteness and sexual display, sure. But then again, a lot of men's sports rely heavily on exaggerated semi-sexual displays that we don't recognize as such, too....
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:45 AM
Humbert:
This is an activity so stylized, so framed, so conventional, and I'm presuming so anonymous/public--how many people at your games, anyway?--that this seems far-fetched to me. A small audience production of "Vagina Monologues" would make you stand out more, although if you were a regular attender/series subscriber I would think you should go if you otherwise wanted to.
Posted by John Tingley | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:47 AM
Not even the cheerleaders would sleep with apo. Rough.
The cheerleaders would not sleep with me. This much is true. I did, however, get expelled from my prestigious residential school for getting busted having sex with my girlfriend in the dorm, and returned to my old high school with that fact quite widely known.
Apostropher was the hero.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:47 AM
All booty-shaking must glorify God! Only God!
Posted by Puritan | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:48 AM
Speaking of Western Canada,
38: Growing up somewhere (western canada) with no cheerleaders to speak of the only imagery was from hollywood and other media.
Well, no high school cheerleaders, anyway. First time I remember seeing cheerleaders as something other than the ubiquitous abstracted virgin/whore signifiers of American myth was at a Labour Day Classic game in Alberta. The Eskies brought a mixed cheerleading squad so intimidatingly professional and dynamic that they were almost more athletically impressive than the football team they were supposedly "cheering." The idea of cheerleading as a perfectly valid sport unto itself has always seemed plausible to me, since.
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:48 AM
51: Low blow by implication. Nice.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:49 AM
Humbert, I think that the role of faculty w/r/t student's sex stuff depends on the sex of the faculty. A feminist prof going to the VM is cool (although I admit I couldn't be bothered). It's not a simple students / faculty divide; it's a question of mentoring. Women faculty can maybe act as mentors to young women in terms of confessions/questions about sex stuff, as long as they keep it on the level of professional discussion, education, information, etc; ditto, perhaps, men. Though I wouldn't know.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:52 AM
I also agree, firmly, that there's something bothersome about the virulence with which people hate cheerleading. Some combination of Puritanism/anti-uppity-womanism/somethingorother.
I don't know -- is it really 'anti uppity-womanism'? Cheerleading seems hardly uppity to me. Its origins are in service to the boys' sports teams -- without that, it's either sexualized gymnastics or a gymastic genre of dance. I think it's possible to think that (1) if it's dance, it's not particularly artistically interesting (2) if it's gymnastics, that sports where competitors are judged on how sexy they are suck and (3) if it's whipping up the crowd for the football team, fine, but surely there are better things to do with your life. I don't know that I hate cheerleading -- there certainly weren't any cheerleaders in my urban high school, but it seems like a pointless and vaguely stupid activity, and I don't think my reasons for thinking so are misogynist.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:53 AM
A feminist prof You mean a prof whose sex/orientation combination rules out having inappropriate dealings with the female students, I take it.
Haha! I can play lefty gotcha too!
I kid, because I love.
You're totally right about the mentoring. There's a sort of frank relationship that can exist between female students and, say, (straight) women faculty that can't exist between female students and straight male faculty. Even if all the intentions are good, the possibilities of self-deception, etc. are too great.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 9:57 AM
60: it seems like a pointless and vaguely stupid activity, and I don't think my reasons for thinking so are misogynist.
OTOH it doesn't seem significantly more pointless and vaguely stupid than, say, running up and down a field with an oblong ball while other people try to hit you.
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:01 AM
Boy, I had a male prof in college who, once before seminar when I innocently speculated as to whether foreplay had evolved or been invented (it was Chaucer, see), launched into a long and enthusiastic description of The Quest for Fire and how it described the invention both of foreplay and frontal sex that lasted ten minutes into seminar. He was not so worried. A lot of people thought he was kind of a dirty old man though, so Labs's point may be proved.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:05 AM
It's not gotchaness; lesbian students are absolutely dying for more lesbian faculty on my campus. But then, as we all know, lesbians are the nearest thing to god on earth, so they can do no wrong.
Re. uppity woman: I realize that cheerleaders exist to support male sports, etc. But there really seems to be a resentment of the *popularity* of cheerleaders, and the cheerleading "type," e.g. in movies like "To Die For" or "Election"--hyper-polished, ambitious, social networking women. I wonder about it.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:05 AM
I went to a suburban high school in the sixties, where this was part of life. I always liked that a kind of stylized sexuality was available and part of the normal range, even if it was pretty tame. And I would have interpreted anyone who went on about it so obsessively as clearly puritanical and given to stereotypes as well. In a school of about 2000, I knew some cheerleaders, most of the football players, all the band and all the majorettes--much sexier in my day because coached by my friend the band director's wife. It was performance, just like plays and concerts and I would have thought everybody knew that.
Posted by John Tingley | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:08 AM
resentment of the *popularity* of cheerleaders, and the cheerleading "type,"
Okay, I follow -- the difference between thinking ill of cheerleading, and of cheerleaders. Given that cheerleading is a valued activity in high schools, there's nothing wrong with getting involved in it -- I just think it's a dopey thing to be so valued.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:08 AM
B, you don't really think
some women's sports (cheerleading, skating, arguably stripping)
that stripping is a sport, do you?
I can't wait for this thread to bend from cheerleading to the later Wittgenstein.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:08 AM
Well, from the view of an outsider, the socio-cultural aspects of cheerleading and 'varsity' sports/jock-culture that we were told about in John Hughes movies look like things we ought to disapprove of and for reasons that have nothing to do with 'uppity' women.
Then again, I don't know how the reality connects to the pop-cultural portrayal of US high-school/college culture.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:10 AM
I was wondering about that -- or if viewed as a sport, the fact that it relies heavily on 'cuteness and sexual display' is a flaw? What would an alternative Stripping-Sport be that didn't rely on cuteness and sexual display?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:11 AM
22: aside from cross-country, which has no cheerleaders
Then this is clearly an area which can be developed. A colleague was enlightening us today about going drinking with some footballers whose idea of fun included "naked thorn bush diving" (as in small but vengeful trees). This is a move that could play a big part in Cross Country cheerleading.
Posted by chris | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:12 AM
hyper-polished, ambitious, social networking women
This is the mistake - to the extent we hate those characteristics in women, we hate them in men, too. See, e.g., "Chet."
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:12 AM
71: I would argue that 'we' (American culture generally rather than 'we' the Mineshaft) hates those characteristics significantly more in women than in men.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:14 AM
I can't wait for this thread to bend from cheerleading to the later Wittgenstein.
Was he a stripper then?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:15 AM
re: 71
Yeah, that's the aspect of the media-portrayal of US high-school/college culture that it seems we ought to disapprove of.
It's not a gender issue so much as it's an issue of social class and power that runs somewhat orthogonal to similar problems that do connect intimately with gender.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:15 AM
#68:
I don't know how the reality connects to the pop-cultural portrayal of US high-school/college culture
In a recognisable but obviously distorted way.
Posted by John Tingley | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:16 AM
73: sadly, the reports of him seeking rough trade in the parks seem to be exaggerated, but one can dream.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:17 AM
It's not a gender issue so much
I'm not convinced of that:
"race of loose bimbos with the brain capacity of squirrel faeces"
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:18 AM
It would be cool if debate teams had cheerleaders.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:19 AM
Of all the things debate team cheerleaders might be, I do not hesitate to express my sincere doubt that they would be 'cool'.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:23 AM
I perceive a clear distinction btween it would be cool and they would be cool.
Posted by John Tingley | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:25 AM
re: 77
I meant that the problems sane non-misogynistic people might have with cheerleading are not necessarily about gender.
That's not to say that lots of people who do have problems with cheerleader don't have them for misogynistic reasons.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:27 AM
The UMBC chess team had cheerleaders , plus recruiting violations. They would pay all these 30 year old grandmasters to go to school then not look very carefully whether they went to class or not. The chess team just crushed all opponents.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:27 AM
Bah @ grammatical/typo errors.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:28 AM
64: I don't think Tracy Flick in "Election" is exactly a cheerleader type. She's definitely déclassé in that school, and it seems to me that in that milieu the cheerleaders would be very much classé. I may be failing to remember something specific about cheerleading in there, though, so it might be possible to pwn me here.
Also, one of the things that makes the movie interesting is that although Tracy is wronged in many ways, by the social structure of the school and by Broderick's desire to cut her down, she's still awful.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:28 AM
Watch it Matt -- by having problems with cheerleading you are associating yourself with Beckerman. Lie down with dogs, wake up with cats.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:29 AM
How would you cheer on the debate team? Subtle hissing and applause?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:29 AM
Ox-box pyramids!
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:29 AM
85 -> 81
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:30 AM
Hissing at the other team, that is. Cheerleading by denigration.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:30 AM
72: I think that's wrong, and it's a species of the "If a man does X, he's consisidered strong, but if a woman does it, she's a bitch," complaint that I also think is wrong. I always wonder where the women were when we were discussing said man, because normally we were discussing what a jerk he was.
I'm sure there are cases where the complaint is true, but generally speaking, I find that there is widespread agreement about who the jerks in any situation are.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:30 AM
Re: 55
Apo, I went to the maine equivalent of your school(named, logically enough, MSSM) and it was widely known that entering the laundry rooms was always a risky proposition. I don't think anyone ever got expelled for it, but there was the time when the matronly 50-year-old executive director walked in on at least 2 couples in various states of undress.
I think class is the main dynamic creating uncertainty about cheerleading's status. Cheerleading used to occupy an unambiguously superior position in the American social hierarchy. A lot of people latched onto it as a way to jumpstart there own social status. Along the way, it got mixed in with feminism and the whole hyper-competitive American dream thing and what we get is this weird mix which confuses all sorts of social identifiers. That's why hating on cheerleading is so attractive to certain people, especially "hip" adolescent boys; it allows them to gratify all of their prejudices in one big orgy of self-satisfaction.
Posted by Glenn | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:31 AM
BTW, "Get It On" is pretty much the canonical example of what I'm trying to get at. It's also surprisingly hilarious.
Posted by Glenn | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:33 AM
it seems like a pointless and vaguely stupid activity, and I don't think my reasons for thinking so are misogynist
There's nothing misogynist about merely disliking cheerleading--I'd prefer my niece played soccer to cheerleading. It's the virulent hatred of cheerleading Marty Beckerman-stylee that looks like a convenient cover for old fashioned misogyny and a soupçon of homophobia.
I'd never heard of Beckerman before. What the Guardian story doesn't say is that Beckerman self-published Death to All Cheerleaders and is now almost finished with college. He's a loud-mouthed kid who hates cheerleaders and likes controversy; in other words, ideally suited to pontificate for this article.
Posted by Paul | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:42 AM
92: I think it's "Bring It On," first mentioned in #21. The word "cheerocracy" always makes me smile.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:46 AM
"Bring It On" is a good movie.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:47 AM
I always wonder where the women were when we were discussing said man, because normally we were discussing what a jerk he was.
It's the strength of the reaction, though. A female lawyer I knew once was fired for being mean to the staff -- maltreating secretaries and paralegals. She was, genuinely, awful -- really horrendous -- but the maltreatment was confined to saying mean things to them. Nothing bizarre like violence, sexual abuse, or asking them to perform tasks outside their professional responsibilities, just nasty unpleasantness while doing her job.
Bringing her up in this context is weird, because her conduct was, truly, unacceptable, I don't mean to say that recognizing that fact was misogynist. But I can't imagine a male lawyer being fired for the same type of behavior. I've never heard of such a thing. (This is complicated by the fact that she also wasn't a particularly great lawyer -- if she had been, it might have saved her. But I still can't imagine even a male lawyer of her precise level of competence getting fired for being rude to the secretaries.)
Now, it might be a better world if more stringent punishments were imposed on male jerks, rather than female jerks getting more lenient treatment than they do now, but in the world we live in now, punishments aren't the same.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:48 AM
50+ posts / hr.
Boy, now I know what gets the Unfoggetariat's juices flowing: tight young bodies suggestively posed in skimpy outfits.
I question the Guardian's motives.
And the "mob of drunken cheerleaders, doped up with malt liquor by their coach, went on a car-trashing rampage" was from an XXXX-rated apocalypse movie.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:49 AM
Life imitates art.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:53 AM
96: Huh. I know guys who get away with what they ought not, but that's usually a function of their power in the company. Was the woman high up in the firm? I'd think a lower level male attorney would be particularly vulnerable for firing if he were mistreating secretaries and the secretaries were primarily female. But I could be wrong, and I defer to your greater wisdom.
97: The image of rampaging cheerleaders was the one positive image in the piece. And now you tell me it's smutty and (I assume) made up. Thanks a lot, Emerson.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 10:57 AM
and (I assume) made up
Nope.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 11:00 AM
I'd think a lower level male attorney would be particularly vulnerable for firing if he were mistreating secretaries and the secretaries were primarily female.
Why would you think this? I'm not talking about sexual harassment, I'm just talking about saying rude, mean, unpleasant things about their work.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 11:02 AM
re: 101
Perhaps because in some places there can be an assumption -- a sexist one, in itself, and no doubt deriving from various pernicious gender stereotypes -- that female staff and particularly female staff in a subordinate position are more vulnerable than male staff in that position and that their male 'superiors' owe them a duty of care, etc.
I've certainly worked places in the past where guys who throw their weight around are scorned for doing so when the person they are being obnoxious to is female (or a great deal younger). It's seen as somehow an instance of metaphorically not 'fighting fair' or not 'picking on someone their own size'.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 11:07 AM
As I said, I bow to your greater wisdom. My thought was that saying rude things to people who were women might give rise to an inference of "hostile workplace environment," but I know less than nothing about the various anti-sexual harrassment regimes in place.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 11:08 AM
re: 96 and 98
I think this is the intersection of two different geneder role (for want of a better word) problems. The lawyer was the most junior in the firm (reponding to 98). Her conduct toward the staff was pretty bad, as LizardBreath reports.
I think there is something (although it is overplayed) about women being judged more harshly than men when it comes to rudeness and aggressiveness.
At the same time, there are all sorts of double standards. For example, given the things the associate in question messed up work wise, I think she would have been fired earlier if she had been a man. However, for whatever reason (the soft sexism of low expectations) she got away with mistakes that would have gotten a man fired.
Again, I think this happens more generally (although like the problem of women being judged to a higer standard are far as being rude is concerned, the strength of the effect is overplayed. I think there is a lot of truth to what SMCT says in 90).
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 11:11 AM
You probably want a historical dimension to this.
Or not.
You're welcome.
Data set: both my sisters were cheerleaders and homecoming queens in small-town MN ca. 1966-8.
Cheerleaders were definitely the elite. No irony in those days; even now, small-town Minnesota is unbelievably deficient in irony and guile.
The secret of being a homecoming queen is in being cute, nice, and popular, but not so cute and popular that everyone hates you. You can be as nice as you want, though.
One of my sisters strongly wished that there were real sports for girls. She didn't like the helpmeet aspect of cheerleading at all.
By contrast, one state down in Iowa, girl's basketball has been a major, closely-watched HS sport for at least 70 years, sometimes outranking boys' basketball. Besides irony, the Midwest is deficient in liberation and wild and crazy fun, but it probably has always been ahead of the curve on gender equality.
One of my sister's colleagues got pregnant by the point guard her senior year. She sucked it in, pretended nothing was happening, had the baby during Xmas break, graduated, married the guy, and lived happily ever after.
That team came within 2 baskets of being the first local team to go to the State Tournament, too.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 11:14 AM
she got away with mistakes that would have gotten a man fired.
I can't say that I'm certain that this is false; given the relevant standard of comparison, I'm not certain it is true.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 11:14 AM
SMCT
Southern Methodist College of Technology?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 11:14 AM
re: 103
I think there is a lot of fear about giving rise to an inference of "hostile workplace environment, but in New York law firm culture, this does not seem to extend to not speaking harshly to secretaries and paralegals--it just means that there cannot be any sexual overtones to the words spoken in harshness.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 11:16 AM
105: Speaking of historical dimensions, did you ever click on these links?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 11:16 AM
Apo, you're the man. I was just talking with someone this weekend about kids getting thrown out of your prestigious, residential high school. Unfortunately, I had a bad fever, and I can't remember what for. But don't worry, your proud tradition continues.
Not only that, one participant in this conversation was on the board of the maine equivalent, which sounds like it's at the godforsaken end of the earth. What else are you going to do but head for the laundry room?
Posted by cw | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 11:19 AM
It was a new principal's first semester there and he was looking to make an example of somebody. Having already been caught drinking early in the year, I then proceeded to stand up and shout, "Me! Me! Make an example of me!"
Which he did. He was a total asshole to boot and I still tell myself that anybody that douchebaggy probably had to pass walnut-sized kidney stones for the rest of his life. That's my hope, anyhow. Not that I'm bitter about it or anything.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 11:47 AM
#55:
Did the girl get busted or only you? Was it plausible for you to be considered more responsible?
Posted by John Tingley | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 11:55 AM
I got expelled due to the prior alcohol violation. She got suspended, since it was her first time in trouble.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 11:58 AM
"which sounds like it's at the godforsaken end of the earth."
Indeed!
Posted by Glenn | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 12:24 PM
While I wasn't exactly among those social circles that would really know much about all of this, I can say this: many (maybe most) of the cheerleaders at my high school were regarded as, or at least reputed to be, sexually available to those who were willing to play the right dating/seduction game. But only one had a reputation as a slut. It was probably because she was the only one that actually made passes at guys. Being sexually assertive (as opposed to available) female made you a slut.
Which seems like good progress, but still far from ideal.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 12:42 PM
1) The Dallas Cowboys are now and forever will be America's team.
2) I assume you've heard about the cheerleading bill in Texas? Though it's aimed at curbing sexually suggestive moves (which in itself suggests some Labsian prurience on the part of legislators; does nothing else come to mind in the way of actionable items related to TX's flagging schools?), it's widely understood to target primarily black schools, whose cheerleaders typically employ different dance moves than their white counterparts.
Really, truly, I promise you, there are things about Texas that don't suck.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 1:05 PM
Labsian
I read this as "lesbian" the first time through, which kinda works, too.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 1:07 PM
B, you don't really think that stripping is a sport, do you?
No, which is why I said "arguably." But if you think about it for half a second, it's a damn difficult thing to do well, especially if there's a pole involved; it certainly involves a level of physical strength and fitness beyond what most people are capable of.
This makes me think about the "performative" aspect of so many high-profile "women's" sports, which is what I think I was getting at with the cute/sexy thing. I find it problematic (obviously), and I wonder if there is, or should be, a distinction between sports as performance and sports as direct competition. And then I wonder how that would impact things like horseback riding, or diving....
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 2:37 PM
a distinction between sports as performance and sports as direct competition
Agreed. The distinction, as we've discussed previously, should be that the former isn't sport and the latter is.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 2:45 PM
Well, but the problem there is that then you suddenly declare most high-profile women's sports as non-sport. Which might be okay, but I'm not sure.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 2:47 PM
I would tend to argue that that would be a good thing for actual women's sports -- attention previously paid to ice dancing might be transferable to softball. But I'm not certain of that.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 2:48 PM
you suddenly declare most high-profile women's sports as non-sport
That's because they are competitions, not sports.
I do know that this year's UNC women's basketball team is the most exciting women's basketball team I have ever seen play. They got totally screwed by the folks making the brackets, though.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 2:52 PM
Ok, I'm in agreement then. From here on out, ice dancing and stripping are performances and, if prizes are being awarded, competitions. But not sports.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 2:53 PM
Ice stripping, though: total sport.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 2:57 PM
They got totally screwed by the folks making the brackets
Shouldn't that be a massive scandal? It's way beyond prurience.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 3:07 PM
If I were the present justice department and shared their preoccupations, I'd have people closely watching the crowds in all women's gymnastics competitions for overenthusiastic members of the audience.
They need the help of my age-of-consent-obsessed mind in order to do their jobs more effectively.
To my mind, though, gymnastics is the toughest of all sports. It's really gruelling and requores a lot of strength, but it requires unbelievable finesse too, and sometime is very dangerous.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 3:18 PM
126: agreed. a long time ago in a previous life I did gymnastics seriously for a little while. There were some pretty impressive athletes (both genders) in that gym. Far, far beyond anything I'd seen in the same age group for team sports or other individual sports I knew anything about.
Posted by soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 03-17-06 4:23 PM