Cheerleading: Classic or Dud?

And she once was a cheerleader, too.

That's why I disapprove of it so much.

And then they all lez up!

I'll never tell...

Saw that, she was about a foot taller then the rest of them otherwise she didn't look that out of place. Only caught about 5 minute of it when she was all nervious about going on the field.

Somebody should have been yelling, "Shake ya ass!" and everyone ont the stage could have broken into a dance routine.

Classic if only for absurdism.

good rhythms...

http://www.synchroskating.com/50.jpg

http://www.synchroskating.com/pictures-2000/pictures4.shtml/46.jpg

http://www.synchroskating.com/pictures-2000/pictures3.shtml/50.jpg

So wow, like, 30+ posts and no mention yet of the male cheerleader issue. Who'll be the first to touch that?

George Bush was a cheerleader at Andover and Yale.

Trent Lott, bottom row, second from right, was a University of Mississippi cheerleader.

http://www.infoshop.org/octo/cheerleaders.jpg

Mumia was framed
The judge should be shamed
A new trial is needed
Our pleas are not heeded
The people will rise
Til the decision's revised
And we shall unite
To fight for his rights
It's all about class
Justice my ass!

that's an ugly blanket statement (and no, I wasn't a cheerleader).

That said, they're fucking hot.

Yeah, I realized after I posted that that "tease out" was a telling choice of words.

Answer to Nabisco's question: no.

Unfortunately, these aren't as cheesy as the other ones, but you get the picture...

just check here:

http://www.synchroskating.com/pictures-2000/pictures4.shtml

-what i heard the cheerleaders saying at school

generally, i couldn't care less, some of them are nice, but running around in those short skirts, without stockings, in MIDWINTER has GOT to be dud.

Our school's cheerleaders were quite horsey compared to the dance line, the Parkettes, who were all over-made-up schluts overly impressed by their proximity to achieving men (they really did see this as the real reason they did the activity). Parkettes were/are official Minnesota Vikings cheerleaders and boy, weren't you supposed to remember that at all times. Luckily their looks went to shit/pasture/moo! by the time our 5th reunion came around (and as I had v. glamorous British boyfriend at time, of course I rubbed it in).

http://www.satanscheerleaders.com/events/momos/0029_SubMoMo.jpg

I got along pretty well with the cheerleaders at my high school for some reason. I was their punk rock mascot.

I was sentimentally attached to the Ascension Eagles cheerleaders in Anna's story b/c I too was a cheerleader for our team, the Eagles, in junior high school. Eagles sounds like such a quintessentially American mascot, doesn't it? Is Eagles a common team name in England or was this something special because of cheerleader culture?

Trident! Mentos!
Dentyne Ice!
Birds are hosts to
Ticks and lice!
Gooooooooo team!

It's not often that a NYT article leaves me furious - like absolutely furious

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/22/magazine/cheerleading-jeff-webb.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Uk4.BKrI.CHVJUFfY2m-r&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&tgrp=cnt

Nationwide, just over a million children, mostly girls, participate in cheer each year (some estimates are even higher), more than the number who play softball or lacrosse. And almost every part of that world is dominated by a single company: Varsity Spirit. It’s hard to cheer at the youth, high school or collegiate level without putting money in the company’s pocket. Varsity operates summer camps where children learn to do stunts and perform; it hosts events where they compete; it sells pom-poms they shake and uniforms they wear on the sidelines of high school and college football games. Each year, Varsity ships 4.6 million pieces of apparel, from $80 leopard-print “Cheer Mom” fleeces to custom uniforms covered in Swarovski crystals.

Critics like Matt Stoller, an antitrust expert and the research director of the American Economic Liberties Project, claim that the cheer giant is a monopolist whose dominance in its area rivals that of Google in tech and has had negative impacts for participants and their families. Varsity, based in Memphis, generates hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, with gross profit margins at times topping 40 percent, making the company a cash cow for a series of private-equity owners. Parents have reported spending upward of $10,000 a year per child in competitive cheer, with Varsity controlling, by some estimates, more than 80 percent of that market.

Jeff Webb, the man who founded Varsity, has been called “John D. Rockefeller with glitter” and the “Dark Sith Lord” of cheer by some of his detractors. Webb, now in his 70s, pioneered the gravity-defying acrobatics of modern cheer. He paired his innovations with a desire for control over every facet of the sport, which he pursued over the course of more than four decades.

To maintain his influence, lawsuits have alleged, Webb lobbied against categorizing scholastic cheerleading as a sport at the high school and college levels. Had the N.C.A.A. recognized cheer, it might have protected Jennings in college, limiting her practice hours and ensuring that she got a hearing if her scholarship were threatened because of an injury. Instead, Varsity founded governing bodies whose representatives sometimes downplayed safety concerns in the media as flyers like Jennings returned to the mat again and again after serious concussions. Competitive cheer is shockingly dangerous: In the past 40 years, the number of catastrophic injuries sustained by cheerleaders is greater than those sustained by female athletes playing all other high school and college sports combined. For many years, those same governing bodies failed to comprehensively track and ban problematic coaches, who bounced from gym to gym. Sometimes they did more than yell or throw things: Cheer is now dealing with a sexual-abuse scandal with parallels to that of USA Gymnastics.

Varsity’s market power has made the cheer world a paranoid place. In my reporting for this story, dozens of people spoke about the company in conspiratorial tones better suited to a spy thriller. My sources were at least right that the company was paying attention. Not long after beginning my reporting for The Times, a managing director from Teneo — the high-powered public-relations firm whose clients have included Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical and Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund — contacted me. I soon found myself dealing with separate P.R. agencies representing two private-equity firms, Varsity and Jeff Webb himself, who invited me to interview him. “I don’t think I’ve done a great job marketing myself,” he told me. “I would rather let the deeds speak for themselves.”

Varsity had been hit with a raft of antitrust and personal-injury lawsuits, which provided an unprecedented glimpse into Varsity’s operations: Thousands of pages of documents and emails showed how Webb, a former cheerleader himself, built a company so powerful that its market position has not been meaningfully challenged by the many lawsuits and controversies. In July, KKR, one of the largest private-equity firms in the world, bought Varsity and its affiliate companies from Bain Capital for a reported $4.75 billion, a clear bet that Varsity’s control of cheerleading will survive the current scrutiny. Since the KKR sale, a sense of foreboding hangs over the world of cheer: Is there any scandal big enough to shake Varsity’s grip on American cheerleading?

That got some discussion on the dystopia thread.