Cheerleader!: An American Icon

I read this book because one of the authors, Pam Bettis was going to give a talk about cheerleading culture. Eventhough I was a cheerleader I was skeptical of this book. I was worried that it would be one-sided and full of fluff. I was very wrong! I learned a great deal about the history of cheerleading, the economics of cheerleading and the use of cheerleading in organizing and activism. This book was so much fun to read and I really enjoyed being able to talk with Pam about it!

As a former H.S. cheerleader (WAY back in the mid to late 60's), I really enjoyed this book. It's interesting to see how cheerleading developed after I left H.S. After the girls were able to participate in "real" sports after Title IX, cheerleading had to change. I'm amazed at what those girls do now. We jumped around a little, did a pyramid, yelled, swung pom poms around, but these girls today ARE real athletes. They are dancers and gymnasts - there is no way I could have made cheerleading in this day and age! LOL It's a fun book to read, and it brings back a lot of memories, and also makes me think about what cheerleading meant to me, and how I've used it since. They talk about "radical cheerleading", which is so interesting to me, because when I left H.S., I marched in the streets against the Vietnam War. Unbeknownst to me, I was still a cheerleader! I love this book, and highly recommend it.

In this day and age, when girls are told they don't have to be nurses, they can be doctors -- when girls don't have to be secretaries -- they can be CEO's, when girls don't have to stay off the playing field -- they belong between the lines, why would any girl want to be relagated to cheering for the boys?Natalie Adams and Pam Bettis dig in to this post feminist phenomana. They not only supply answers, they ask the right questions. Why is it when Mia Hamm and the Williams sisters make the cover of major magazines, giving little girls a new role model, that most little girls still want to be a cheerleader? Though cheerleading was originally an exclusively male endeavor, since females took it over in the late '40's and early '50's, cheerleaders have been seen as the ideal "girl next door" whose only purpose in life was to support men. According to Adams and Bettis, nothing is so entrenched in American culture as the "quarterback finally marrying the cheerleader" and thus is born the All American couple.Adams and Bettis do a fine job of seperating the myth from the reality. According to them, the cheerleader image has been used to sell everything from NFL football, to pornography to toothpaste. And today cheerleading has become a multi billion dollar business.The authors also explore the question: "Is cheerleading now a competitive sport" and are the participants real athletes? They make a compeling case that the white, blond blue-eyed cheerleader of yesterday is now a finely tune athelete capable of incredible athletic activity.What a fasinating book. The authors prove, indeed, that cheerleading is a subject deserving of serious study. At the same time, they preserve all that America has always loved about her favorite girl, the cheerleader.Read this book and keep that cheerleader smile!!