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May 05, 2005
Cheers Kerfuffle
Texas, home of some of the most rabid sport fans in the nation, is considering cheerleading legislation.
Texas, the home of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, the National Cheerleaders Association and the Herkie jump (more on that later), may have put modern cheerleading on the map. But the Texas House of Representatives, concerned that high school cheerleading is becoming too raunchy, has approved a bill that would allow state education officials to prohibit "overtly sexually suggestive" cheering and drill team routines.
You may think this is silly, but have you been to a high school sports event lately? It's not your mother's cheerleading any more. I've seen 'dance' routines at my kids' school that would make any pole-dancer green with envy.
"What's defined as lewd by one person is skill, talent and hard work to another," Mr. Howze said. "We're from Texas, which is obviously a very Christian-based state and something I support, but why do we want the government doing something that parents are already doing?"
Parents eventually stepped in at my kids' school, after the 'spirit squad' appeared during halftime wearing a whole lot of nothing and did a routine that was so suggestive & lewd that the entire gym fell quiet in shocked disbelief. Even I stopped studying for my next day's law class & watched, because I couldn't believe what those kids were doing. It was that obscene.
Now I'm not a big fan of government micro-managing what goes on in schools, but what do you do when parents won't do their job? Cuz I can tell you the parents of the girls on our dance team didn't think there was anything wrong with what they did.
Fortunately, there were enough of us who had the opinion that teen-aged girls shouldn't be dancing in public like a bunch of hootchie mama strippers to get the school to stop it.
Regardless of the "skill, talent and hard work" it took them to learn it.
Posted by Rita at May 5, 2005 04:43 AM