Is it time to get rid of cheerleaders and ice girls?

No. Fitness and physical activity is certainly a value that schools can promote compatible with their mission. So is the band, which excludes those who aren't the most musically inclined. So is the math club, which excludes those who aren't the most mathematically inclined. So is the school newspaper, which excludes those who aren't the most journalistically inclined. And on and on.

There is a difference between activities, compatible with education, in which students self-sort upon merit, and a homecoming king and queen election that is nothing but a straight popularity context, and purports to be nothing more than a straight popularity contest, and that flies in the face of the kind of social inclusion that schools promote every other day of the year.

 

My son (17YO senior) is dealing with this. His idea of a workable ask-out line is to wait until Tuesday before asking, "Hey, wanna go to the game/movie/dance Friday?"

My approach, many years ago, was to dial six of the seven phone number digits (my hometown was small) and then hang up. Worked like a charm.

 

So, in other words, let the schools promote and sanction the idea that refusing to acknowledge other people's popularity or attractiveness somehow makes you more popular and/or attractive.

 

My kids' high school is huge, DW, and while there is a homecoming queen (I think) only a very, very small subset of the kids actually give a shit. It celebrates nothing more than, as Starman put it, among the Biffs and Buffys this particular Buffy won this particular election.

And let me emphasize that only that particular (and very small) subset even knows who won.

 

Obviously, homecoming is a popularity contest, but I don't think it's simply based on looks. At my high school, in Northern California where there were countless gorgeous blondes running around, those weren't the girls who won. The girls who always won were the ones who were nice to everyone. They were usually in the honors classes and usually played sports. If the brains and nerds and rockers thought you were a stuck up bitch, you weren't getting nominated, much less winning anything.

 

Building popularity is a skill, one that has value well past high school. Sure, much of it is based on physical attractiveness at that age, but that is a factor later in life as well. Interpersonal skills also play a huge role and those are also useful to those high school students as they move on in life.

 

My opinion of cheerleading is well-known and long-established, but for 30-some years I have always thought it was preposterous that any girls (or more, their parents) would want to be judged on how bouncily they could jiggle their booties and bazooms in order to tell the boys' football and basketball players how absolutely awesome they are (which is, in fact, the function of 'cheerleading' squads).

I always thought any energetic girl in good athletic shape would rather be judged on how well she performed her OWN sport rather than how well the boys' team she was cheering for played.

Disclosure: My GF in HS referenced above was a cheerleader. Our school's football teams were usually great and the basketball teams sucked ass, and she said the cheerleading team (almost all the same girls) were treated accordingly by fans both home and away.

During the football games while our team was usually kicking ass, fans were attentive and joined into cheers and opposing fans were (somewhat) polite; during basketball games when we were usually getting ass-kicked, it was all cat-calls and snotty remarks.

By the time she was a junior and senior she was very cynical about the whole deal. She almost quit to play actual sports like soccer or volleyball, but even in that ancient age she felt she had fallen too far behind the 'jock' girls by concentrating on cheerleading rather than playing sports.

 

Me too! Did you also do the "drive past her house on the 'way home' no matter where were you were in town and despite the fact that the road to her house did not lead anywhere else you wanted to go"?

There was the one time I finally worked up the courage to ask out the girl I had a crush on for two years. I was a junior, she was a sophomore, and I had a pretty good inkling she kind of liked me too. So I was walking over to her locker, we were going to chat and I had made up my mind that if the opening was there, I would ask her.

I turn the corner to her hallway ... and here she comes with the senior who had asked her that weekend.

I should add that we ended up going to the dance together the following year. Then in her senior year she was elected to the homecoming court, and I see from Facebook that she remains very fit and attractive and appears to have a good life with her husband and their two kids. That bitch.

 

Almost all of the cheerleaders at my school also did other sports. I think it only counted as a fall sport. They had to be there for football, but they would use a smaller squad for basketball because a couple of them played basketball and it seemed like most of them played soccer in the spring.

 

Right. Being popular is about much more than just looks.

I'm an extremely handsome man, but I wasn't popular in high school because I was a smart ass and kind of a dick.

 

The thing is, for my kids' homecoming dance, I would say the vast majority just go with a group of friends. Keep it casual, and see what happens. The bigger challenge than getting someone to dance with you is making sure you have a means to keep your phone on you at all times so it doesn't get stolen.

Also, the contact-but-not-quite-contact trick doesn't work if you both have iPhones. She'll wonder why those three bubbles keep popping up, then disappearing, then popping up, then disappearing, then...

 

5.666 per year out of more than 2000 players (counting practice squads, which is fair because practice squad players arrested would be counted against). Is that completely out of whack compared to General Electric or GM?