Dismantling Gender Stereotypes in Cheerleading

I was recently watching one of my favorite movies, Bring it On. This is an iconic movie in the cheerleading world, so I would highly recommend watching it if you haven’t already! I love this movie, but I couldn’t help noticing the gender stereotypes that were implemented.

The main character, Torrance, falls into many of the typical stereotypes for cheerleaders: blonde, not the strongest academically, and socially adept. There are many other nuances of this issue in the movie, not limited to Torrance’s character. Although these were clearly added in for comedic effect, I wondered where these stereotypes live in society today. 

The female cheerleader stereotype, as I mentioned earlier, is one we’ve all heard before: dumb, blonde, and exclusive, yet popular. In order to dive deeper into the origins of these stereotypes, I think it’s important to understand how the sport started.

Many people are surprised to hear this, but cheerleading began as a male-dominant sport, which gave it some initial respect. Fun fact: four former US presidents were cheerleaders themselves (George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Franklin D. Roosevelt). Many scholars also claim that it only became a female-dominated sport in the 1940s due to the absence of men in WWII.

As we can see, this sport didn’t start off with harmful stereotypes. Actually, they only grew in popularity when the media began to portray cheerleaders this way, and many shows/movies adopted the same trope. Specifically, they began to force the idea that cheerleading is centered around the aesthetic.

In reality, cheerleading is a much more empowering sport, allowing participants to engage in athletic activities while building teamwork and leadership skills. A more modern invention in the world of cheerleading (circa ≅1990) is all-stars, or competitive cheerleading. This actually doesn’t involve any cheering whatsoever, and allows participants to become the main event, rather than standing on the sidelines. 

This issue of cheer stereotypes is still prevalent today, which has contributed to popular beliefs of the sport’s athletic merit. Unfortunately, many people still believe that cheerleading is all about yelling, waving, and putting on makeup, when it’s so much more. 

Now that we know what the issue is, what can we do to dismantle these stereotypes? 

Well, one show that I think does a great job of illustrating the realities of cheerleading is Cheer on Netflix. Although it aimed to tackle the athletic aspects of the sport, in my opinion, it also completely refuted gender stereotypes within cheerleading. Going back to my previous point, I think an effective way to get rid of gender stereotypes (on a smaller scale) is to educate the public on what cheerleading really looks like. 

Larger-scale change would have to take place through a major media reform, effectively disproving any existing gender stereotypes. Ideally, these ideas should spread through the most widely consumed forms of media (television, social media, etc). Since these have been ingrained into society for quite some time now, it will take a lot of effort to actually change the minds of the public in such a dramatic way.

I also believe that recognizing cheerleading as a sport under Title IX would help to dismantle these stereotypes further. It's frustrating that it's still stuck halfway, where it's (kind of) officially a sport, but not really... In this way, initiating such a large-scale ruling would be even more impactful, but again, we are pretty far from achieving this.

Aside from these, advocating on a smaller scale can still be impactful.

Although larger-scale change may not take place immediately, some things you can do to effectively advocate for change include, posting on social media, informing your peers on the realities of the sport, and stopping the spread of sexist language when it comes to cheerleading talks.

I hope this article was helpful, and that you've gained some insights from reading!