Cheerleader!: An American Icon

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Entertainers, sex objects, or athletes? Leaders, porn stars, or superstars? Cheerleaders, numbering 3.8 million in the United States alone, are part of everyone's school experiences and memories. Looking beyond the poms and megaphones, Cheerleader! An American Icon explores how cheerleading reflects our shifting beliefs about sports, entertainment, gender, and national identity. Natalie Guice Adams and Pamela J. Bettis trace cheerleading's history from its inception 135 years ago as a male leadership activity, ...
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More About This Book

Overview

Entertainers, sex objects, or athletes? Leaders, porn stars, or superstars? Cheerleaders, numbering 3.8 million in the United States alone, are part of everyone's school experiences and memories. Looking beyond the poms and megaphones, Cheerleader! An American Icon explores how cheerleading reflects our shifting beliefs about sports, entertainment, gender, and national identity. Natalie Guice Adams and Pamela J. Bettis trace cheerleading's history from its inception 135 years ago as a male leadership activity, through the sexual and sassy era epitomized by the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, to its current incarnation as a physically demanding sport. Integrating history, pop culture, and interviews with cheerleaders of all ages, even those in the cheerleading business, Adams and Bettis simultaneously celebrate cheerleading and provide a critical analysis of this perennially popular activity. Poignant, hilarious, powerful, and ground-breaking, this is one book you won't want to be without.
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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
Cheerleading, for all its frivolous bouncing and squealing, is a serious matter. So argue Adams and Bettis in their study of the most abhorred and adored of American pastimes. These two professors (Adams is in education; Bettis, qualitative research) bring a refreshing perspective to the subject; on the one hand, they are academics and self-described feminists, and on the other, they admit to being a bit smitten with the whole ordeal (Adams was a cheerleader; Bettis tried out and was cut "for unknown reasons"). They aren't afraid of asking questions, the mother of them all being: why does postfeminist America still have 3.8 million people involved in the cheerleading world? Adams and Bettis recognize the importance of anecdote, using smalltown examples to illustrate big-time problems like desegregation and the eroticism of young girls. Their historical account-who knew cheerleading used to be a strictly male sport?-is sound and colorful. They falter, however, when dealing with current models of radical cheerleading like performance artists X-Cheerleaders, a group of New York City-based feminists who shout "No ifs ands or buts, we're the virgin sluts!" Adams and Bettis astonishingly miss the opportunity to look at the concept of subversion in depth, instead choosing to state the obvious: "Through their performance, the X-Cheerleaders make explicit the contradictions, constraints, and joys of girls' and women's lives in this society." The authors rightly treat their subject with the joyful frivolity of a "pony mount," but they should have dug a little deeper when it came time to land on the ground. (Nov.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781403961846
  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
  • Publication date: 10/8/2003
  • Edition description: REV
  • Pages: 208
  • Product dimensions: 5.54 (w) x 8.74 (h) x 0.73 (d)

Meet the Author

Natalie Guice Adams is Associate Professor in the College of Education at the University of Alabama and was a Winnsboro, Louisiana cheerleader from 1975-1980.

Pamela J. Bettis is assistant professor in the College of Education at Washington State University. For unknown reasons, she was not selected for her high school cheerleading squad.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction: Cheerleading: What's There to Cheer About? 1
Ch. 1 Cheerleading - As American as Apple Pie and Customized Synthetic Wiglets 9
Ch. 2 Cheerleading with a Twist: Transformative Cheerleaders 27
Ch. 3 Pump it Up: Sports, Athleticism, and the New Cheerleader 47
Ch. 4 Cleavage, Buns, and Poms: Cheerleading and Eroticism 69
Ch. 5 Cheerleading as a "White Girl Thing": The Racial Politics of Cheerleading 91
Ch. 6 From Cheer Making to Money Making: The Spirit Industry 111
Ch. 7 Cheer Evolution: The Changing Face of a Cultural Icon 129
Notes 143
References 165
Index 177
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Sort by: Showing all of 4 Customer Reviews

  • Posted January 19, 2010

    A wonderful, very informing book about cheerleading!

    This book really opened my eyes to all aspects of cheerleading. It is very informative and descriptive when it comes to explaining the history of cheerleading. The author does an excellent job of being unbias in her writting. She describes all sides of cheerleading and shows the reader all the good and bad things that come with cheerleading. She explores the different ideas and stereotypes of cheerleaders and really exposes alot of things about cheerleading that the average person probably doesn't know. This book was really well organized and put together. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in cheerleading or anyone who has any interest in finding out more about it.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 23, 2009

    TQ in Mcintyre's E4

    I enjoyed this book quite a bit and it is definitely a change from what I am used to reading. First of all, it is nice that this book gives views from both sides of the spectrum. The authors explain how cheerleading gives girls an excuse to be provocative but they also end up saying that cheerleading gives girls strong leadership skills. There are also some interesting and even disturbing cheerleading stories in this book. Also, this book isn't only hinged around school related cheerleading. It goes into depth about competition cheerleading and different cheerleading organizations around the country that aren't affiliated with schools. One thing that stuck out to me in this book was that the majority of cheerleaders until about the 1950s were dominantly male. Overall this book was very good. Don't just pass it by because it has a cheerleader on the cover. Give it a shot, you'll probably like it.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 14, 2009

    AH in Mrs. McIntyre's CC6

    As a cheerleader myself I really enjoyed reading this book and recommend it. Everything in this book was well researched and easy to understand. It tells a lot about the positives and negatives of cheerleading - the effects of it on those who cheer and the american society. Also, I enjoyed this book because it discussed how others sterotype cheerleaders. Not only did it discuss the typical "high-school cheerleader" but, it gave many other examples and types of cheerleaders - many that you could never even imagin. The topics in this book were easy to relate to and understand. It was a great book because it showed facts about the truth behind cheerleading - everything that cheerleaders have to go through and put up with.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 25, 2008

    A reviewer

    Cheerleader an American Icon was a great book. It really opened my eyes and made me think about cheerleading in a different perspective. And it was pretty cool to find out where, when, and how cheerleading got started. I do reccomend this book to anyone. Even cheerleaders.

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