Cheerleaders

The other night, I turned on the TiVo to find that my daughter had paused one of those high-school oriented shows. It had a girl talking to another, saying Why don't you want the spirit squad to wear shorts? The second girl replied something like Because I think the squad should have a classy air, and the shorts make us look like sluts. I remembered seeing recently where a school (not around here) said that girls couldn't wear their cheerleader gear to class because the skirts didn't meet the school's dress code. One girl complained that if it was good enough for the field, it ought to be good enough for the school. I guess she didn't follow the logic chain backwards on that.

I thought about that today when I was in a local store where there happened to be several girls from the high school's cheerleading squad, many of them wearing pretty short shorts with Wildcats or some logo on the butt. Its my impression that they wear it to be noticed, but only by people whom they want to notice them -- ie, cute guys. (I thought that if one of them saw me looking at it, they'd likely think Damn old guy, checking out my butt.) Most of the girls, no matter how they were dressed, looked like normal kids; two or three, though, were the type who, when you saw them, you think Cheerleader. Long blonde hair, for example, though that's not a given. It's more the air; the haughty attitude that seems to say I'm gorgeous; you can look, but you can't ever touch. I don't know that these are arrogant kids. That's just the impression I get. Sort of like the attitude portrayed by the Angelina Jolie character in The Tourist (which we rented last night; it was worth a buck to see her in those outfits, with change left over for the plot. It was, shall we say, on the thin side.)

I wondered how I'd feel if my daughter was a classic cheerleader type. And decided that I'm glad she's not.