Who attended the pep rally on Friday? Oh that's right...we all did.
Who wore their gender lenses on Friday? I know Caroline and I did...thus ensues this two-week requirement; a cultural-critique on gender roles in our society.
I have a guy friend who specializes in the art of tumbling, mostly just falling over on purpose and springing back up. Last year some teacher asked him (totally innocently, of course) if he had ever considered joining a gymnastics club or even the cheerleading squad. Needless to say, he mumbled something about cheerleading being a "gay sport for guys". He went on to elaborate that his father would kill him if he ever joined a club like that.
Why are guys so afraid to join sports like cheerleading? Because cheerleading has been hyped up for years as ultra-feminine. What other sport incorporates hand-clapping, preppy cheers, cartwheels, and whose uniform is a short skirt? Congratulations, society- you've created the perfect exclusively-female dominated sport ever. High school sports become stereotypes; girls, please pick up your pom-poms and guys, here's a football.
If a guy has the guts to go out on the cheerleading squad, that doesn't mean that any of the other guys will have the guts to accept it. They'll still laugh at him and call him a gay sissy. Maybe somewhere underneath they'll be jealous of his guts, but they can't show that; that's un-masculine, and anything un-masculine is gay. DUH DU JOUR.
On the flip side, girls are discouraged from playing ultra-male sports, like football. Granted, professional football is (unfortunately) way above any regular female's physical capabilities in terms of being hit repeatedly (but I bet Serena and Venus could do it- they're BEASTS).
However, they're even discouraged from playing football in high school. I do have a friend who made the varsity football team her junior year, but she met a lot of discouragement from her own teammates in the beginning. She still gets calls on the field from opposing players that she's wearing the wrong uniform ("Go back and put your skirt on!") or, her favorite, "The pom-poms are over there!" Girls playing rough-and-tumble sports like that are seen as untouchable but also as equals to other guys, which takes them off the dating field; and of course none of us can live without a boyfriend. (sarcasm, SARCASM)
So, there you have it. Gender roles in high school- girls who cheer, guys who play. It's that simple, unless you're some Disney-hero who thinks they can change it. But even if we do have kids who can overcome these gender stereotypes, they still exist in our minds, back there somewhere with the homework we forgot to write down from math class.
