Stuff your pompoms. This isn't sport
According to this report, over a third of schools offer 'cheerleading' as a sport. I would hazard a guess that this doesn't include boys' schools. I see no mention it on the website for my old school, or for the prestigious St Paul's Girls School.
I can't think anything more pointless than cheerleading. People are trying to prove it's a 'sport' but their arguments are unconvincing. Being - allegedly - strenuous doesn't make it a sport, but it's not an art, either. There are so many different types of dancing a child can pursue, from classical ballet to Capoeira. All of them worth pursuing for their own sake, but also for fitness, poise, self-confidence, goals to work towards, the chance to shine in exams and competitions. Elite dancers are no less fit than elite athletes; a child or teen that dances is fit, hard-working.
And then there is cheerleading. I had a discussion with someone just a few years ago who was giving up ballet/tap/modern for 'cheerleading'. She was getting sick of ballet/tap/modern, which is fair enough having done then since she was a toddler. I just remarked, is that what she wanted from life, to be there on sidelines cheering on the boys as they set out to achieve things. She said something like 'You would say that, wouldn't you'.
I do find it depressing that even before puberty, girls are being hammered with a message that their identity is all about supporting and nurturing boys to achieve. Don't get me wrong, good relationships - partners, friends, family - are built upon mutual support, and there is nothing intrinsically wrong in cheering on someone on their big day. But to make that an activity in itself is beneath contempt. I suppose the girls get to cheerlead the boys on in 'their' activity whilst the boys ignore the girls activities, extending the myth that boys matters and girls don't.
I suppose these schools are just responding to the parents who want their girls to be 'girlie girls', whose only skill in life is getting dressed up and parading before a selection of young men. Young men who are seen as the meal ticket and the guarantor of wealth from their semi- or no-skilled job. Never mind the fact that many of those mothers are the main wage earner because they were abandoned by their perceived meal-ticket, or semi-skilled work abandoned the dutiful father.
A while ago I was perusing the websites of some of the new schools in my area. They all have a similar message: it is no longer acceptable for any child to leave school unequipped to enter the workplace, that the age of unskilled work is long gone. Their stated goals seem unobtainable - good luck in keeping some kids in school beyond 14, let alone up to 18 - but it beggars belief that there are schools who don't share those goals. And parents who want their schools actively to perpetuate disadvantage.
Victoria Coren says
Even if you don't think it's sexual – and I do; I think these girls might as well be bent over a rock, waiting to be mounted by whichever caveman gets back first with a rabbit in his hand
and several commentators respond, look, healthy teenagers are very sexual, and it's normal/natural for mating games to happen, so we might as well put it on the curriculum.
Isn't that a bit like saying, teenagers like computer games and junk food, so we might as make them a fundamental part of school life? Or saying that healthy adults are very sexual, so mating games should be an intrinsic part of work life, maybe we should have a job-code and a budget for it, objectives, and an assessment in our appraisal, perhaps dismissal - or extra coaching - for poor performance?
Schools can do far more to assist the natural mating games by building the self-esteem of children by encouraging them to be themselves, and then encouraging them to work together for a common goal, rather than pigeon-holing people crudely into 'active' and 'supportive'.
Someone needs to do a study of under-age pregnancy rates in schools where cheerleading is part of the curriculum compared with other schools. Of course, you'd have to adjust for other contributing factors, and would end up in some self-perpetuating cycle which would show cheer-leading is more likely where the prevailing culture is that girls are the sexual toys of boys, and doesn't happen where girls are encouraged to develop skills and autonomy.
I can see the attractions of being married to some fabulously rich man and never having to get up in the morning to board a crowded train, or sit in a traffic jam; never having to worry about budgeting, getting every material good or experience you could reasonably want. Most people I know, irrespective of whether they actually do the lottery, have a narrative of what they'd do if they won the jackpot.
But it's not just some abstract theoretical dogma that makes me question whether there would be any joy in being married to Wayne Rooney, Peter Crouch or Frank Lampard. Fun while it lasts. Well, if you could bear their lack of scintillating conversation. Or gird yourself for the repulsiveness (I exclude Lampard from that) as they mount you. But imagine how humiliating it must be to read that your Wayne or Peter has deemed you inadequate. Or that once you've done the breeding you get traded in for an uglier alternative, Frank-style.
