Cheerleading over Time Essay

Hailey Lower March, 20th, 2013 Ap World History Mr. Glueck Cheerleading traces its roots to the late 19th century, when crowds began to chant and yell to encourage their team. Credit for the first organized cheer is often given to a University of Minnesota student named Johnny Campbell, who got the Gopher faithful to shout, "Rah, rah, rah! Sku-u-mar, Hoo-rah! Hoo-rah! Varsity! Varsity! Varsity, Minn-e-so-ta!" during a losing effort in the 1898 season. Soon after, a yell-leader squad of six male students was organized, a practice that gained currency at numerous other universities. The four young men above turned out to cheer for Columbia in a game against Syracuse in 1924. For the first few decades of its history, cheerleading was an all-male activity, but by the 1920s, women were joining as well. Nowadays more than 90% of America's cheerleading participants are female, though guys still make up half of the yell squads at the college level. In reality cheerleading has changed in many ways over time. Cheerleading has changed socially, politically, intellectually, and economically. Religion and technology have even been influenced in ways by the sport of cheerleading. As stated, Cheerleading began in the early 1900’s. Many aspects have changed since then. Cheerleading has always been socially stereotyped and criticized by how people perceive cheerleaders to look and act. Over the years specific movies and television shows such as, the Bring It On movies, The Princess Diaries, You Again, and Glee, all perceive cheerleaders to be evil, slutty, and dumb. Any cheerleader in North American media can be expected to be portrayed as shallow and superficial, because popularity is her first and only concern. As time has gone on, there are always going to be those accusations made about cheerleading for pure entertainment purposes. In reality cheerleader are almost the total opposite now a day. As a cheerleader myself, our