Or the female gaze. Who cares who looks at them? Do you really want to police everything???
Sexualized female cheerleaders or cocktail waitresses are intended to draw the male gaze. Other women are irrelevant. The term “male gaze” means something specific about power, entitlement and objectification. Look it up.
Wow… I assumed from your post that you were a 17 year old male. There are really adults who think like this?
No, LaMa, it just means you’re human.
Men don’t have power over cheerleaders or cocktail waitresses. The sad thing is you actually think, and a few others, that the men who look at cheerleaders or flirt with cocktail waitresses should go to jail or something like that which is why I said you can’t police everything. Or maybe you think whomever created the U-Dub poster/flyer/advertisement should go to jail or get some kind of sensitivity training. That’s it. Make them say they are sorry and take it down. Or maybe the people who approved the poster should be the one’s shot and stoned in the town square.
And if you find some way to take the poster down everything will be fine. As long as they don’t say it out loud everything is fine. If there had been no poster everyone would be equal and no one in life would get an unfair advantage because they are hot. Nope. Still wouldn’t work. You can put Sofia Vergara in a potato sack and make her wear a hot or something but she is still going to get plenty of attention. Same thing with Salma Hayek. Make her wear hemp outfits like Hillary does and Salma would still be pretty amazing to look at. Even if no one said it out loud. They’d still be thinking it. So why make a federal case out of it?
The red herring isn’t that people enjoy looking at other people, at least the normal ones do, the red herring is all the mumbo jumbo about power and objectification which is the excuse unattractive people use to try to tear down attractive people like cheerleaders and cocktail waitresses. If anyone is hot, good for them. I don’t think they should have to cover their faces or bodies in sacks just to make other people feel better about themselves. I think other people should just stop being jealous.
No, Int, not 17. Just not super insecure and jealous either. Some people are smarter, taller, more athletic, richer, etc. than I am. It doesn’t bother me. You’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt. I use whatever skills I have to be as good as I can be and don’t spend much time worrying about what other attributes people have. Like I said, way back in my first post on this thread, some guys are six-two with washboard abs. Good for them. Some guys make millions to dunk basketballs. Good for them. They are blessed in ways I am not. But I’m not going to hate on them for that.
Could someone tell me what I’m supposed to be more offended about: attractive women, not chunky, or a blonde girl? I’m confused as to which part I’m supposed to get histrionic about.
And, yes, there are plenty of adult, well-educated and well-adjusted men who appreciate cheerleaders as eye candy. And, yes, many of them have daughters.
By the way, the university took the thing down and issued the standard politically correct comment just to move on to other more important business. Not even worth fighting about. Save your outrage for real issues IMHO.
“They would compete at their own cheer tournaments, not perform on the sidelines of other sports’ games.”
False distinction. College cheer tournaments are made up of squads that do sideline cheers. The same people do both. If any colleges are putting together competition-only squads, I haven’t heard of it, and they aren’t making it to the national championships. (Competition-only “all-star” squads come from private gyms, not schools.) Big football schools in the SEC and big 10 dominate the cheer championships.
Look at the photos of the U of Washington football team. http://www.gohuskies.com/SportSelect.dbml?SPID=126613&SPSID=749528 You will note the team is more racially diverse than the cheerleaders.
Is the U of Washington so stupid that it doesn’t realize that some “minority” football recruits are going to run in the opposite direction when they visit and see an all white cheerleading squad? I doubt that many of them are going to tell the Huskie coaches, but minority players with choices who visit check the visuals too. And when the team has minorities, but the coaches, the trainers, and the cheerleaders are all white…the minority players with choices are going to go elsewhere.
The NCAA championship cheerleaders for the 4th straight year are from U Michigan…which has cheerleaders from different ethnicities and with different body types. UWashington might want to take note.
You sure sound like a 17 year old guy. Men have NO IDEA what it is like to be a woman who is ogled by jerks. I loved the moment when a guy ogling my daughter turned his head and walked into a parking meter. Karma. Wish it would happen more often.
What’s particularly icky is the prescriptive nature of what constitutes good-looking. False eyelashes and a fake tan meet the bar, but lips without lipstick are unattractive? Being eye candy, at least as part of the “job,” is fine. Johnny Depp is eye candy. Jennifer Lawrence is eye candy. Any woman athletic and fit enough to be a cheerleader will be good-looking enough to, IMO, be eye candy; it comes with the territory of being healthy and glowing and all that.
But the notion that a particular, stamped-out-of-the-mold look should be privileged over other slightly different (but equally fit) looks isn’t about eye candy. It’s about the embedded assumption that the only flavor of eye candy that is really okay is Barbie flavored. Frankly, that’s not just dehumanizing for women – it also makes a pretty insulting assumption about what the guys in the stands are able to perceive as “attractive,” too.
@ 49,
I like being ogled. I can think of far worse problems. I’m still waiting for your reply or LesMa’s reply as to how men have any power over cocktail waitresses or cheerleaders.You have to stretch really far to make your case that men are evilly controlling what the cocktail waitresses and cheerleaders do and say and you also make the assumption that the cheerleaders and cocktail waitresses do not enjoy what they are doing. Men have so much power that they force them to be there, against their own will, and make them dress and behave a certain way.
I don’t know how.
I usually sit up in the stands and watch my sons play (the youngest just finished his football playing days last season).
I have nothing to do with who makes the squad or what they do down there.
But, as ridiculous and false as those assertions are, it gets worse. You, in #49, then say men have no idea what it is like to ogled. How do you know that? Did you even read my posts on this thread at all? Do you really think men don’t have body issues? Why do you assume only women do?
Good looking people, of both sexes, have it easier.
I’m not sure why I am replying on point you don’t or can’t.
“If any colleges are putting together competition-only squads, I haven’t heard of it, and they aren’t making it to the national championships.”
That was the direction some colleges like Maryland and Oregon and Quinnipiac were taking in an effort to have cheer be recognized as an NCAA sanctioned varsity sport. One of the key distinction in that effort was that you didn’t perform on the sidelines for other teams…
That effort came to a halt I guess when Quinnipiac lost its title ix lawsuit. With a federal judge ruling that, at this point, cheer is not a sport as a legal matter.
The NCAA does not have a cheerleader competition. Competition cheer is the purview of the NCA and the UCA – two private organizations since Cheer is not a “sport” (see the discussion above). The UofMich has won the championship *in its division/I– but it’s not the most competitive division. Basically, schools can enter whatever skill level they want to enter, regardless of their size. Not trying to hate on them but there are multiple “champions” for the various divisions.
For the NCA, the most competitive division is D1A and the University of Louisville won both the Coed and All-Girl championships. Univ of Oklahoma finished 2nd in both, too.
For the UCA coed Div 1A, Univ of Kentucky won (Univ Central Fl was 2nd) and All-Girl was won by Indiana (Alabama was 2nd). But the top 10 are a wide variety of schools, not only the Big 10 and SEC.
These schools would be recognized the true national champions. Hope this helps. Hope this hasn’t veered too much from the original post’s intent. But the level of athleticism is off the chart, IMHO.
@T26E4 Thanks for the correction. Obviously, I know zilch about cheerleading.
I disagree strongly.
Cheering in the big stadiums (UW has a big stadium, FWIW) is where the vast majority of their visibility is. That is where they are in front of tens of thousands of people and representing the school.
How many people will see them at a football or basketball game vs. any cheer competitions? You know there are marching band competitions too, right? But most people see them at football games.
The male cheerleaders are there to make the females look good (i.e., lift them, catch them, etc).
“The male cheerleaders are there to make the females look good (i.e., lift them, catch them, etc).”
There’s some truth to this; it’s a pretty good parallel to ballet or pairs figure skating. There are male stars in all those disciplines, though.
The failure of the logic is stunning. Forget cheer competitions, as others have said that is something else entirely. But for everything else, if what you are saying is true, then why do schools that have small stadiums and are rarely or never on TV have cheerleaders at all? Remember, the statement being questioned is
Yet they send the cheer squads to all sorts of less attended events, including the female sports such as basketball, volleyball and soccer where often the majority attendance is female. Your contention that objectification is the whole point just doesn’t hold up, and is really insulting to those that participate.
Udub has had many Asians on the squad for years. Hardly “all white”
I live near UW and have been to basketball and volleyball games. From what I could tell, the Huskies’ squad has two portions to it - the co-ed squad with the flyers (an ex co-worker’s daughter was one), and the all-female squad who do the choreographed dances. The flyers are pretty good, the dancers are, gosh, not at the level of the better groups I have seen. Lots of shuffle/hair flip/hip rotate choreography. Some of the dance group look like they could be flyers, and some would never be. There is a separate dance group called the Dawg Squad who are better.
The cheer group come from a competitive cheer background and would know the rules, written and unwritten, for showing up for tryouts. The dance group would come from a bigger variety of backgrounds and would need a few more hints. Most cheer groups have a graphic similar to what UW put out, maybe less public, maybe less direct, but the essence is the same. They are looking for a certain type of physically attractive and petite female. The males, to make the team, just need to be able to do the lifts.
One effect of living up near the 48th parallel is that, by the end of April, white skin has evolved to that translucent, glow-in-the dark, fish underbelly white. It makes you look ill. What they are asking, while purposely avoiding mentioning race, is to get a spray tan if your skin is that pallid. It would not apply to anyone with naturally darker skin.
“Girl About Town” is the official lipstick color of the UW Spirit squad.