Is it just me, or has the cheerleading industry undergone a total P.R. makeover in the past few weeks? Last Thursday, Broadsheet’s Lynn Harris pointed readers toward a huge feature in the Boston Globe that named cheerleading “the most dangerous women’s sport,” because of the frequency of major injuries including head and spinal cord trauma. A flurry of worried segments on the morning TV circuit, including the “Today” show, soon followed.
Now, if there was any lingering doubt that America’s pompom girls are powder puffs, a short profile in this week’s Time Out New York should put it to rest. The article introduces Jen Nedbalsky, 26, a member of NYC Radical Cheerleaders, the local arm of a national group dedicated to “activism with pom poms and middle fingers extended.” Nedbalsky, as it turns out, “was an actual pom-pom girl during her high-school years on Long Island,” but now “she and fellow squad members bring their genial anarchy and short skirts to street actions and protests … shaking and dancing while they shout slogans supporting reproductive rights and opposing the war in Iraq.”
Feel like breaking out your old uniform for a good cause? The Radical Cheerleaders’ Web site features an awesome selection of unorthodox cheers, written by members and arranged by category. There are enough girl-positive cheers, queer- and sex-positive cheers, environmental cheers and antiauthority cheers to satisfy any athletic anarchist. In these New Year’s diet-crazed days, we took particular pleasure in this original:
Riot don’t diet / Get up get out and try it / Riot don’t diet/ Get up get out and try it / Hey girl (clap clap clap) / Get yer face out of that magazine / You are more than a beauty machine / You’ve got anger soul and more / Take to the street and let it roar!
So for everyone who didn’t make the cut in high school, here’s a second chance. As it says on the group’s home page, “To be a Radical Cheerleader, you don’t need to be an actor, a singer or a dancer — you just have to want to yell!
