Evolution

I'm sexy. I'm cute, I'm popular to boot. I'm bitchin', great hair, the guys all love to stare. I'm wanted, I'm hot, I'm everything your not, I'm pretty, I'm cool, I dominate this school. Who am I, just guess, guys wanna touch my chest, I'm rockin', I smile and many think I'm vile. I'm flyin', I jump, you can look but don't you hump. Woa! I'm major, I roar, I swear I'm not a whore. We cheer and we lead and we act like we're on speed. Hate us 'coz we're beautiful, but we don't like you either. We're cheerleaders, we are cheerleaders!

-----Rancho Carne Toros cheerleaders, Bring It On

Yesterday while I was working I had the NCAA womens' basketball tournament playing on the TV. It was a tight game between Tennessee and Texas A&M, with the winner taking a spot in the Final Four. Candace Parker, Tennessee's superstar player, had to leave the game twice when her shoulder popped out of its socket, but she gritted her teeth and played with her shoulder in a brace and led her team to victory. All of the women on the court were tough and strong. Some were pretty, some weren't, some were skinny, some were stocky, some were tall, some were short, but all were bad-ass ath-a-leets.

At one point, the camera panned away from the women on the basketball to a group of cheerleaders on the sidelines. They were garishly made up and wearing big poufy bows in their hair and waving frilly pom-poms around. And to me, they looked ridiculous, particularly juxtaposed with the women athletes they were cheering on. They just didn't seem to fit in, particularly in an age in which a woman is running for president and a woman is secretary of state and women are increasingly receiving more and more acclaim and recognition for their accomplishments in the field of battle, be it an athletic field, a military field, a diplomatic field, a business field, whatever.

I don't really have anything against cheerleading. I've never actually given it much thought one way or the other. Plenty of my friends were cheerleaders in high school, and I know high school kids now that are cheerleaders, and this is in no way a knock on them. Hell, I know cheerleaders these days tend to be really good gymnasts, and they do crazy scary tricks in which they fly in the air doing loop-de-loops. In fact, there was just an article in Sports Illustrated about how dangerous cheerleading is and how cheerleading accidents account for a disproportionate number of overall athletic accidents in emergency rooms these days. So obviously, what they do is really difficult.

But also, it seems to me, increasingly irrelevant.