Question speaks for itself.
No other country has them and I think this film went straight to DVD in most countries outside of the USA.
Just wondering if most Americans think cheerleading is necessary and AFAIK most people outside the USA think it's pointless and don't get it.
Americans have cheerleaders because of the whole fanfare surrounding American football games, especially at the high school and college level. They have marching bands, school mascots, color guard (flag spinning), school "fight" songs and chants..as part of this football culture too.
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G - A - F - (low)F - C...... 👽
Lots of things aren't necessary: ballet, novels, sports, movies....
It's not quite true that no other country has them. There are cheerleading competitions in the UK, though I'm pretty sure it's really a fringy thing, and most Britons probably aren't even aware that it exists.
In any event, I don't quite get the relevance. Pretty much every country has some activities and behaviors that are unique to it. A country that didn't would be pretty sad, actually. It's what's called "having a culture."
Cheerleading squads fill three distinct functions, so far as I can tell, though often a single cheerleading squad doesn't fill all three at the same time:
- Being part of the pageantry and "show" at sporting events (primarily football, though also basketball, and - rarely - other sports). There's also a related function here that's typically present in high school cheerleading squads (though it seemed to be entirely absent in the movie): encouraging "school spirit" in between games in various ways.
- Participating in full-on competitions, as portrayed in the movie. This sort of cheerleading is really an athletic event akin to gymnastics.
- Providing a systematic method by which girls can identify who is unusually attractive and "popular."
Why do we have dancers? Why do we have athletes? I mean, who thinks of game where you throw a ball around, then put into a net, and then decides to make up rules to go along with it, like you need to bounce it up and down with one hand if you want to move with it? Suddenly you have the game of basketball.
Cheerleaders is a huge predominately USA-based "sport", designed to promote sport spirit and to draw in a crowd. Lately though, there has been a shift from the traditional pom-pom waving song-and-dance from a sideline of a football field to a much more athletic and competitive sport involving a combination of dance and gymnastics. While there it classified as a "sport technically, there is still a list of rules that a routine must follow based on the level of the team you are at. For example, a lot of the stunts and tumbles that you saw in Bring It On aren't allowed at the high school level.
I'm Australian and cheerleading is a fast-growing sport over here. I'm on my university team, and I love it. I used to do gymnastics and dance when I was a lot younger and cheer is the perfect combination of the two. we don't do cheering at sporting events because Australia doesn't do that, but we still train our asses off for competitions like the one you see in Bring It On. It's also great teamwork. Cheerleading is dangerous if you have no training, you're tossing girls into the air with only 3 people to catch you and it requires a lot of trust. At the gym my team trains at, a lot of parents take their kids out of gymnastics and put them into cheer because it is a team-based sport that still retains the gymnastic element. It's tough work, but it's great work and it's the best work out I've ever done. My abs and my biceps have never looked better :)
oops meant to reply to your post.
American Football would be popular without cheerleaders. And why not call it something else if they are doing group acrobatics? The image of cheerleader is just there for T*ts & *ss.
Cheerleaders never were originally just there for "T*ts"& *ss", just like pole dancing was never originally a stripper's thing.
As I commented in my original post, cheerleaders were designed to promote school/team spirit, and many of them were actually men! They did flips and tricks while waving banners and pom-poms to get the crowds excited. Today, it's now its own "sport" that has done away with the pom poms and has become what you see on Bring It On, a team based sport that shows stunts, tumbles, dances and jumps that complies with a set list of rules to follow. What you see on American Football is just a sad remnant of what a cheerleader usually was, however they still do essentially the same thing, dance and cheer to get the crowd excited about the team.
And the reason why it's not called group acrobatics is because it's not just acrobatics. If it was, then all the cheer routines would just be a series of tumbles and tosses. There is more to a cheer routine then just back flips and throwing people into the air. Also, there is already a thing called group acrobatics, or "acro". It's a gymnastics spin off that is literally just a small group doing a series of tumbling and also making pyramids by throwing people into the air. That's its own thing. And it IS different to cheerleading, because I used to do acro and what I did in acro was no where near what we do in cheer.
But why call it cheerleading at all if you do gymnastics and acro?
Also aren't the men just to lift the girls? I've seen some videos and the girls still outnumber guys, wear more skimpy outfits and dance more whereas the guys seem to do all the heavy lifting, stay in the background and do tumbles.
No, the men are there to be part of the team. They lift the girls because they're stronger, and the girls are lighter and more flexible in the air. You can have all-girl cheer teams where stronger girls also lift the more lighter girls into the air.
And it's called cheerleading because it is not just gymnastics and acro. As I mentioned in my above post, the rules and regulations for cheer, gym and acro are all different. Cheerleading combines tumbles, stunts, jumps and syncronised motions in the form of dances.
As for the outfits, by your logic dancers, gymnasts, swimmers and runners are all in skimpy outfits too. The reason why those uniforms are "skimpy" (by the way, midriff showing tops are illegal at a high school level, in the real world high schoolers where a full top with long sleeves but I give "Bring It On" a pass because hollywood) is so there is nothing in the way. Cheer uniforms are made from a tight, nylon/lyrca material to so there is free movement. Shorter skirts allow for easier leg movement, same reason why gymnasts wear leotards. The tight tops are also a safety thing too. If you have a loose, baggier type top, then a flyer's (that the person that gets thrown in the air) foot can get caught in a base's (the two people on the bottom holding the flyer up) top causing a fall or a sprained ankle. Male cheer uniforms are made from the same tight fitting material as well, they just wear long pants instead. But the male and female tops are exactly the same.
I think your question is kind of dumb. First of all, cheerleading is all over the world but not necessarily in every country and not to the extent as the USA. Secondly, why does it matter if something is relevant to one country and not other countries. You can ask why do Canadians love curling and the rest of the world isn't as interested. Why do the Japanese love Kabuki plays, why do the Chinese listen to peking opera, why do people in Bhutan train eagles, it goes on and on. It's called culture. American culture is just as real as any other country's culture. The only difference is American culture is not ethnic but rather a national culture. In the USA we call it the mainstream American culture but every ethnicity/sub group follows their own sub culture.
Cheerleading in sport events is different from cheerleading in competitive arenas. Most cheerleaders in professional sports in the USA actually dance 99% of the time. If you watch the laker girls or dallas cowboy cheerleaders they really for the post part are dancing. What is their purpose? They entertain the crowd during time outs and they hype the crowd as well during the game.
Professional competitive cheerleading is the gymnastic+dance variation. This is where girls get injured the most. (shown in the movie)
Cheerleaders in high school really take it as an extra curricular activity. Most of the teen movies portray cheerleaders forming some social hierarchies but in reality every school is different. I can't name one cheerleader or football player during my high school days because I didn't care. Movies make it seem that everyone wants to be like them but again that is not the case in most high schools. Usually that is more the case in areas that are homogeneous like the South with mostly Caucasian students and a small student population.
Lastly, Americans emphasize the concept of community belonging but not necessarily from an ethnic perspective. So these "rivalries" among high schools and cheerleaders intensifies one's high school identity and also makes things more exciting.
I think your question is kind of dumb. First of all, cheerleading is all over the world but not necessarily in every country and not to the extent as the USA.
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Who cares. Not everything is a crusade
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@Bradlytony_lotsOfNumbers
You are on bad drugs if you think people aren't equal today. Only people who want special treatment want more rights then everyone else. Get a job and a life.
Get a job and a life.
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So why are black people protesting and rioting in Missouri and elsewhere? Cos white people got shot there?
Or celebrate New Years Eve in Cologne?
Go live in the 3rd world - it'd do you good to experience life there. Might open up your eyes.
So learning is the key, not what you look like peaches.Who's peaches?
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Not all of them did commit any crimes. I didn't take anything out of context just pointed out that things are far from equal.
Even if some of these poor black people did commit crimes they were for petty theft ... hardly any justification for shooting someone.
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In fairness you do have a point but shouldn't boys be offered and encouraged to cheerlead too then?
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I didn't know Americans [people] can own cheerleaders [also [people].
Oh God. Fortune vomits on my eiderdown once more.
My high school had a cheerleading squad and a "kick line" team ... I don't know what they were but I recall hearing they were very good. There was also a spirit squad, which I think was made up of the girls who didn't make the cheerleading team. Again, not sure what they did.
The stereotype is that cheerleaders are either mean girls or ditzy. The girls on those teams at my high school had as much range in personality and intelligence among them as any other random sampling of teenage girls.
Why do we have it? It's probably born out of the same American phenomenon that champions beauty pageants, bikini contests, and car models. That's America... Anything that includes white women in bikinis can turn a profit.
No one is going to mention how competitive cheerleading is HUGE in Asia? I mean MEGA huge. It's actually a bigger deal there than it is in the states.
shareBecause our girls are hot and we want to be able to look at them when watching sports!
The validity of my answers is highly dependent on the intelligence of the question..or lack thereof.