Comment: My thoughts on Cheerleading

Firstly... again apologies for not updating this more often. My life appears to have been taken over by work. I had my first day off on Friday and haven't done anything but work since then. I've been at the Brighton Centre and the Pavilion (more of which later), however I wanted you all to know the program I helped to make is set to be screened on the BBC soon. 'The Death of Respect' presented by John Ware is set to show on BBC2 at 11.20pm on the 16th and 23rd July. Tune in to see some research I did (although it might have been excluded from the final edit) and possibly see my name in the credits as they are half-screen and talked over.

Anyway....

Today I worked at the Brighton Centre for a conference called Future Cheer. It was strange. Whilst I don't want to bite the hand that feeds me (or the corporate hire that pays my wages), I can't help but be slightly disturbed by an odd event.

Future Cheer celebrate the small, but sizable minority of people across the UK into the US sub-sport (it is the female bit before the 'real business' of American Football/Baseball/Basketball matches take place). I find it disturbing in several ways. Firstly, it is a hugely obvious example of cultural imperialism. Whilst I am in no way a nationalist (indeed I believe a world without nation states would be better than today's system) I feel this is a blatant erosion of culture by an unpleasant Yankee import. It is crude, bitchy and heavily sexualised. Girls from 5-18 dress in unpleasantly skimpy outfits and prance about to songs about blow jobs by Flo Rida (lyrics: You spin my head round baby when you go down). I believe sexuality is an important part of growing up and people should not be naive about such issues. Children of 12 should at the very worst know how sex works, that it is natural and that it is not morally wrong and should really be helped to know how to handle their hormones, but this event strikes me as highly sexist. The boys that do it are dressed in t-shirts and long trousers but the girls wear short skirts. It seems to mirror society in some disturbing ways. Women are on the back foot to be the more overtly sexual of the two genders.

I don't mind this sort of event occurring, indeed it seems to bring people together, it just unsettles my views of society. To me 'cheerleading' is a celebration of oppression - both in terms of gender and social status (below 'real sports').