Special Status

Cheerleaders.  They were peppy goddesses.  I was awed by them in high school.   I watched them at basketball and football games, how they'd crouch so they wouldn't obstruct views of the game, their pleated skirts fanning out on the ground.

Varsity cheerleaders at my high school in 1968

Some of them were not only pretty and fun, but smart.  And popular.  How did they do it?

One of my new readers was a cheerleader at my high school. Now, of course, she is a regular person, but then she was a cheerleader.  In my mind, I can't get her out of uniform.

She says being a cheerleader worked against her with some people, that even in high school some kids blew her off and thought cheerleaders "were stereotypical boy crazy airheads, selfish brats."    I thought about this, and I realized that by the time I got to college, this status had lost its allure, and I looked down on them a bit.  Now, in this post-Title IX world, she says, "I think I'd try to earn a Varsity letter in a sport instead."   Whoa!  She's moved on.  I've still got her on a pedestal.

But this applies only to cheerleaders at Del Mar High School from 1964-68.  These days when I see the prancing, overly made-up, silcone-enhanced cheerleaders of professional sports, I think, oh, for God's sake!  Bimbos!  T&A!  And when I go to Cal games and see the pom-pom girls dancing around, I think,  get a life.  

But adolescence prevails in some cranny of my brain.  Odd.