The team is in bad shape. One member has a broken rib. The other, a possible concussion from a nasty fall. A third wraps a compression bandage around a sprained ankle. They’ve been practicing day and night, and the strain is showing. What they could really use is a nice, peppy cheerleader. The only thing is, these are the cheerleaders. There’s a lot more to cheering than short skirts and “fight, fight, fight!” says Kate Torgovnick, author of Cheer. Torgovnick spent a year following three groups—a four-time championship team, an all-girls squad and an all-African-American team—none of which fit the stereotype of vapid blondes doing splits on the sidelines. Instead, she discovered daredevil adrenaline junkies who often perform exhausted or hurt and love their sport with an addict’s devotion. The truth, says Torgovnick, is that cheerleading has a long, distinguished history—five American presidents did it. Cheerleaders have been around since the 1890s, egging on Princeton in its first football game against Rutgers, but they looked a lot different. For one thing, they were all men. For another, they didn’t do much, besides using megaphones to pump up the crowd. During World War II, women joined the squads. Around the same time, the president of Kilgore College caught students drinking in the parking lot during halftime, so he asked the cheer team to take the field between quarters to keep students in their seats. And thus, modern cheerleading was born. Torgovnick says the biggest surprise in writing her book was learning how popular the sport is with men again. After becoming female-dominated in the 1950s and 1960s, college cheerleading is now 50 percent male. “I assumed if you were a guy cheerleader you’re gay,” says the writer, “but it’s this culture of manly men who come from football, wrestling, baseball, and get pulled into this world.” If they get static about their activities, they can always point to their forefathers in cheer: before leading the country, FDR led the crowd at Harvard, and Eisenhower wielded the megaphone at West Point. Ronald Reagan rooted on the basketball team at Eureka College as a cheerleader. And both Bushes had that rah-rah spirit at Yale. Though the sport continues to evolve, most people’s perception of it remains rooted in 1950s stereotypes. “The image of the cheerleader straddles the virgin/ whore line,” she says. “She’s either the straight A’s prom queen, or the short skirt, slutty, queen-bee kind of girl.” But she admits that there is something about the sport that attracts drama queens: “To be a cheerleader you have to want to be the centre of attention,” she says. “The women like wearing that uniform.” The men like it, too.
