In defense of cheerleading

Six years ago, if you had told me that I will be posting on cheerleading, I would have defenestrated you. But that is precisely what I am doing (posting and not throwing you out the window), indeed driven to do it, by IPL, of all things. Truly sad.

In a recent post on IPL I had written, “Get the cheerleaders out.” A good friend commented that I got it all wrong and my suggestions to improve IPL must include “[H]ow to increase suggestive moves for cheerleaders,” in the interest of profit maximization. Given the state of affairs in IPL with such sharp focus on selling to the exclusion of everything else, I could not disagree with him; yet, I wanted the context of cheerleading to be teased out of my experiences.

My first experience of cheerleading was at a NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) football game that the University of Kentucky was playing at the Commonwealth Stadium in Lexington, Kentucky in the Fall of 1978, at which time I did not know even the meaning of the word / phrase. Whenever there was a pause in the game, (and, in American Football there are more and longer pauses than action!), a set of athletic-looking students and a group of bewitching co-eds (yes, female students in US universities were merely co-eds, to their male counterparts) gather at the center of the field or line themselves in front of the partisan home crowd, to invoke some rah rah to get the team to perform better (and fail miserably, at least in the Commonwealth Stadium) – to lead the cheer for the team. It was all, I felt then, quite senseless.

Yet, sooner than later, I managed to internalize at least part of the logic of cheerleading. First, it is the cultural aspect. Cheerleading starts at the school level, as a show of solidarity with the contestants. It just evolves and fits into the university niche. Then, as I saw more and more of the stunts the students do while leading the cheer – invariably every routine ends up with a roar from the crowd, in all probability appreciation for the routine as well as exhorting the team– go way beyond shaking of pom poms and other things. These stunts are at the very least quasi-gymnastics. The performers, are at least quasi-athletes; on par with Rhythmic Gymnasts with props like colorful balls, ribbons, and rings?

In a hurry to post this piece, I denied myself the pleasure of mining through the hundreds of photographs, at least some of them of cheerleaders, I had taken at the games, both football and basketball of the University of Kentucky teams to include here. Instead, I chose the following from the stock available on the Net. I think you will excuse me.

No, I am not going to deny there is much suggestiveness, even in the costumes, but that is not all. I discerned certain commitment to cheering for the team. How effective these are, I am no judge.    

I do not know the motivations these cheerleaders may have had to get into this act. They get to travel to away games; they get the choicest points to watch the games from. They get their regular exercise routine. They gain exposure in the university and perhaps popularity too. There may even be some scholarships, I can’t remember. Of course, there are sacrifices, like studies (?), additional expenses. Anyways, the norm then could also have been for the co-eds to scour for suitable mates in universities, and cheerleading opened up such avenues. But, let that be.

It is when the NFL team Dallas Cowboys brought in Dallas Cowgirls (!) and NBA team Los Angeles Lakers got high profile Hollywoodian cheerleading to the professional ranks, I had to do another rethink on cheerleading. None, and I mean none, of the rationale for cheerleading at colleges scaled up to the professional ranks. It was just a job. Do you remember the flash-in-the-pan Paula Abdul? Good, if you do not.

Cheerleading for professional teams, like at the IPL, are mere dance routines and the only tangible prop is the pom pom. Of course, the intangibles are galore – the suggestive shakes, shimmying, the revealing costumes etc. Only the name Cheerleading is common between the high school / university and professional versions.

But my friend and perhaps most others who have been taken in by IPL version of cheerleading have not had the opportunity to contemplate as to how it may have come about, evolved. For them, cheerleading does not have an evolutionary background; it is more like the skyhook that dropped fully made human beings on the earth, like the Intelligent Designers (IDiots) and Creation Scientists claim (Philosopher Daniel Dennett’s imagery). Perhaps this is true of how cheerleading got to IPL, but there is more to it, at least some of which redeem the activity. 

This post is to disabuse them of this notion, with the help of Wikipedia:

“Cheerleading (ˈtʃɪərˌlidɪŋ) is an intense physical activity based upon organized routines, usually ranging anywhere from one to three minutes, which contains many components of tumbling, dance, jumps, cheers and stunting in order to direct spectators of events to cheer for sports teams at games …”

Hope I have succeeded enough to elicit some pom poming by cheerleaders!

Raghuram Ekambaram