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Cheerleading's
VIDEOManly Beginnings
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Lisa Wade, PhD

3/21/12 7:15pm • 10.7K 35

You might be surprised to learn that at its inception in the mid-1800s

cheerleading was an all-male sport. Characterized by gymnastics, stunts, and
crowd leadership, cheerleading was considered equivalent in prestige to an
American flagship of masculinity, football. As the editors of Nation saw it in
1911:

…the reputation of having been a valiant "cheer-leader" is one of the most

valuable things a boy can take away from college. As a title to promotion in
professional or public life, it ranks hardly second to that of having been a
quarterback.*
Indeed, cheerleading helped launch the political careers of three U.S.
Presidents. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan
were cheerleaders. Actor Jimmy Stewart was head cheerleader at Princeton.
Republican leader Tom DeLay was a noted cheerleader at the University of
Mississippi.
Women were mostly excluded from cheerleading until the 1930s. An early
opportunity to join squads appeared when large numbers of men were
deployed to fight World War I, leaving open spots that women were happy to
fill.

When the men returned from war there was an effort to push women back out
of cheerleading (some schools even banned female cheerleaders). The battle
over whether women should be cheerleaders would go on for several decades.
Argued one opponent in 1938:

[Women cheerleaders] frequently became too masculine for their own good… we
find the development of loud, raucous voices… and the consequent development
of slang and profanity by their necessary association with [male] squad
members…**

Cheerleading was too masculine for women! Ultimately the effort to preserve
cheer as an man-only activity was unsuccessful. With a second mass
deployment of men during World War II, women cheerleaders were here to
stay.
The presence of women changed how people thought about cheering. Because
women were stereotyped as cute instead of "valiant," the reputation of
cheerleaders changed. Instead of a pursuit that "ranks hardly second" to
quarterbacking, cheerleading's association with women led to its trivialization.
By the 1950s, the ideal cheerleader was no longer a strong athlete with
leadership skills, it was someone with "manners, cheerfulness, and good
disposition." In response, boys pretty much bowed out of cheerleading
altogether. By the 1960s, men and megaphones had been mostly replaced by
perky co-eds and pom-poms:

Cheerleading in the sixties consisted of cutesy chants, big smiles and revealing
uniforms. There were no gymnastic tumbling runs. No complicated stunting.
Never any injuries. About the most athletic thing sixties cheerleaders did was a
cartwheel followed by the splits.***

Cheerleading was transformed.

Of course, it's not this way anymore. Cultural changes in gender norms
continued to affect cheerleading. Now cheerleaders, still mostly women, pride
themselves in being both athletic and spirited, a blending of masculine and
feminine traits that is now considered ideal for women.

* Adams, Natalie & Pamela Bettis. 2003. Commanding the Room in Short
Skirts: Cheering as the Embodiment of Ideal Girlhood. Gender and Society 17, 1:
73-91.
** Davis, Laurel. 1994. A Postmodern Paradox? Cheerleaders at Women's
Sporting Events. In Women, Sport, and Culture, edited by Susan Birrell and
Cheryl Cole. Human Kinetics.

*** McElroy, James. 1999. We've Got Spirit: The Life and Times of America's
Greatest Cheerleading Team. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Photos borrowed from How to be a Retronaut.

Header image via Getty

This post originally appeared on The Society Pages. Republished with permission.

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