{"id":41178,"date":"2012-12-28T13:03:25","date_gmt":"2012-12-28T18:03:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=41178"},"modified":"2013-07-06T14:36:22","modified_gmt":"2013-07-06T19:36:22","slug":"the-manly-origins-of-cheerleading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/12\/28\/the-manly-origins-of-cheerleading\/","title":{"rendered":"The Manly Origins of Cheerleading"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the last week of December, we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite posts from 2012. \u00a0C<\/em>ross-posted at Jezebel<\/a>, the Huffington Post<\/a>, and Pacific Standard<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

You might be surprised to learn that at its inception in the mid-1800s cheerleading was an all-male sport.\u00a0 Characterized by gymnastics, stunts, and crowd leadership, cheerleading was considered equivalent in prestige to an American flagship of masculinity, football.\u00a0 As the editors of Nation<\/em> saw it in 1911:<\/p>\n

\u2026the reputation of having been a valiant \u201ccheer-leader\u201d is one of the most valuable things a boy can take away from college.\u00a0 As a title to promotion in professional or public life, it ranks hardly second to that of having been a quarterback.*<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, cheerleading helped launch the political careers of three U.S. Presidents.\u00a0 Dwight D. Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan were cheerleaders.\u00a0Actor Jimmy Stewart was head cheerleader at Princeton. Republican leader Tom DeLay was a noted cheerleader at the University of Mississippi.<\/p>\n

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Women were mostly excluded from cheerleading until the 1930s. An early opportunity to join squads appeared when large numbers of men were deployed to fight World War I, leaving open spots that women were happy to fill.<\/p>\n

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\nWhen the men returned from war there was an effort to push women back out of cheerleading (some schools even banned female cheerleaders). \u00a0The battle over whether women should be cheerleaders would go on for several decades. \u00a0Argued one opponent in 1938:<\/p>\n

[Women cheerleaders] frequently became too masculine for their own good\u2026 we find the development of loud, raucous voices\u2026 and the consequent development of slang and profanity by their necessary association with [male] squad members…**<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cheerleading was too masculine<\/em> for women!\u00a0 Ultimately the effort to preserve cheer as an man-only activity was unsuccessful.\u00a0 With a second mass deployment of men during World War II, women cheerleaders were here to stay.<\/p>\n

The presence of women changed how people thought about cheering.\u00a0 Because women were stereotyped as cute instead of \u201cvaliant,\u201d the reputation of cheerleaders changed.\u00a0 Instead of a pursuit that \u201cranks hardly second\u201d to quarterbacking, cheerleading\u2019s association with women led to its trivialization.\u00a0 By the 1950s, the ideal cheerleader was no longer a strong athlete with leadership skills, it was someone with \u201cmanners, cheerfulness, and good disposition.\u201d\u00a0 In response, boys pretty much bowed out of cheerleading altogether. By the 1960s, men and megaphones had been mostly replaced by perky co-eds and pom-poms:<\/p>\n

Cheerleading in the sixties consisted of cutesy chants, big smiles and revealing uniforms.\u00a0 There were no gymnastic tumbling runs.\u00a0 No complicated stunting.\u00a0 Never any injuries.\u00a0 About the most athletic thing sixties cheerleaders did was a cartwheel followed by the splits.***<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cheerleading was transformed.<\/p>\n

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Of course, it’s not this way anymore. \u00a0Cultural changes in gender norms continued to affect cheerleading. Now cheerleaders, still mostly women, pride themselves in being both athletic and spirited, a blending of masculine and feminine traits that is now considered ideal for women.<\/p>\n

See also\u00a0race and the changing shape of cheerleading<\/a> and the amazing disappearing cheerleading outfit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Citations after the jump:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

* Adams, Natalie & Pamela Bettis. \u00a02003. \u00a0Commanding the Room in Short Skirts: Cheering as the Embodiment of Ideal Girlhood. \u00a0Gender and Society<\/em> 17, 1: 73-91.<\/p>\n

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** Davis, Laurel. 1994. A Postmodern Paradox? Cheerleaders at Women\u2019s Sporting Events.\u00a0 In Women, Sport, and Culture<\/em>, edited by Susan Birrell and Cheryl Cole.\u00a0 Human Kinetics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

*** McElroy, James. 1999.\u00a0We’ve Got Spirit: The Life and Times of America’s Greatest Cheerleading Team. <\/em>New York: Simon & Schuster.<\/p>\n

Photos borrowed from How to be a Retronaut<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the last week of December, we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite posts from 2012. \u00a0Cross-posted at Jezebel, the Huffington Post, and Pacific Standard. You might be surprised to learn that at its inception in the mid-1800s cheerleading was an all-male sport.\u00a0 Characterized by gymnastics, stunts, and crowd leadership, cheerleading was considered equivalent in prestige […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16039,55,2096,2102,2087,8092,253,108,309],"class_list":["post-41178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dance","tag-gender","tag-gender-femininity","tag-gender-history","tag-gender-masculinity","tag-gender-sports","tag-history","tag-sports","tag-warmilitary"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41178"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41188,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41178\/revisions\/41188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}