Cheerleading...To Be or Not to Be...A Sport?

Stephanie A. Brown

Professor Urie

Composition 2

7 March 2006

Cheerleading...To be or Not To be...A Sport?

Cheerleading is a nationally recognized activity. Some people do not see it as a sport. But people who are in the so called activity consider themselves to be a athlete. Although schools and National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) do not consider cheerleaders as athletes, but make them go by the same rules and safety guidelines of all other recognized sports. Cheerleaders have some of the same concepts of gymnastics and gymnastics is considered a sport. Cheerleaders are given stereotypes and classified as dumb and easy. So I am here to show that although there are exceptions to everything.

For decades cheerleading has been seen as a girl only sport. Not to many people know that cheerleading was started by a man from Wisconsin University. Cheerleading was a mans sport up until WW2. After girls started cheering men quickly quit the sport. Not until the sixties men came back full strength, cheering at universities and colleges all over the United States.

"Cheerleaders are getting too suggestive" (Pom pom). Although some cheerleaders are sexual in their conduct it usually is just pro-football cheer teams that are more dancers than cheerleaders. Texas is trying to make it a law that if high school cheerleaders have sexual dance moves then funding would be cut to the school. Not all cheerleaders are sexually expletive. Some high school and even national competitions are already penalizing for vulgarity. This shows that people are watching and really see what goes on.

Although cheerleaders are exploited for the sales of some movies, some movies show the real aspects of the world of cheerleading. There are movies like "Superstar" that showed a funny side of cheerleading making them bimbos and lazy stupid high school blondes. Another movie like " Bring It On" shows the real aspect of cheerleading competitions. There are some bad things about the shows. They make cheerleader come off as stupid, almost all of the shows exploit the real side to cheerleaders. Discovery channel did a documentary on cheerleading showing all the mental and physical anguish a cheerleader goes through. "A few years ago, finding an accurate portrayal of a cheerleader was as easy as a touch full up one armed stretch"(Roenigk). Now a days we can look up a picture of a cheerleader and find a real cheerleader doing real things.

Title IX gives money to schools to help them give out