The Washington Redskins Football Team has decided to get rid of their cheerleaders (what a sexist idea! — why should women be cheering the men?) and replace them with a coed dance team. There have been some scandals involving the cheerleading squad, like the team execs inviting donors to have back-seat passes to topless photo shoots, and that sort of thing.
The Libertarian in me (an increasingly smaller part) says “Hey, if women want to objectify themselves for their own reasons, that’s their choice, why should we stop them.” And plenty of women choose to objectify themselves. Just look at Instagram.
This situation is different because the groups has (apparently) been expected to participate in topless calendars. For reasons that are explained well in The Economics of Sex, once you allow some cheerleaders to go topless, there’s pressure on the others to do it, and those who don’t participate lose some opportunities. (“C’mon, what’s wrong with you? The rest are doing it!”)
I have two friends who were Reskinettes, and I used to work with a Tampa Bay Bucs cheerleader. None of them were the type to pose for topless calendars.
Cheerleading teams used to have rules. It was about cheerleading. There was no fraternizing with the players, and certainly no topless calendars. It seems to me the current scandals are not because of cheerleading, but because they’ve tried to transform cheerleading into something else. Cheerleading should be about cheerleading.
Like so many other things, cheerleading has become more and more sexy over the years, and one of my friends was all apologetic and defensive about her participation in such a thing. And that was back in the 80s!
But cheerleading has nothing on dance teams in the sexy department. At least in my experience. Cheerleading routines have definitely become raunchier, but the couple times I’ve seen dance teams at professional events, I thought I was watching soft pornography.
Changing from a cheerleading squad to a dance team won’t solve the problems. People need to decide what it is they’re after, and — as with any interaction between the sexes — they need to set clear boundaries. Without that, the dance team will have just as many scandals as the cheerleading squad.