The Manly Origins of Cheerleading

Prior to the 1960s, the ideal cheerleader was a strong male athlete with leadership skills.



Indeed, cheerleading helped launch the political careers of three U.S. presidents; Dwight D. Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan were cheerleaders. Actor Jimmy Stewart was head cheerleader at Princeton. Republican leader Trent Lott was a noted cheerleader at the University of Mississippi.






When the men returned from war there was an effort to push women back out of cheerleading (some schools even banned female cheerleaders). The battle over whether women should be cheerleaders would go on for several decades. Argued one opponent in 1938: Women cheerleaders "frequently became too masculine for their own good ... we find the development of loud, raucous voices ... and the consequent development of slang and profanity by their necessary association with [male] squad members."

Cheerleading was too masculine for women. Ultimately the effort to preserve cheer as an man-only activity was unsuccessful. With a second mass deployment of men during World War II, women cheerleaders were here to stay.

The presence of women changed how people thought about cheering. Because women were stereotyped as cute instead of “valiant,” the reputation of cheerleaders changed. Instead of a pursuit that “ranks hardly second” to quarterbacking, cheerleading’s association with women led to its trivialization. By the 1950s, the ideal cheerleader was no longer a strong athlete with leadership skills, it was someone with “manners, cheerfulness, and good disposition.” In response, boys pretty much bowed out of cheerleading altogether. By the 1960s, men and megaphones had been mostly replaced by perky co-eds and pom-poms:

Cheerleading in the '60s consisted of cutesy chants, big smiles, and revealing uniforms. There were no gymnastic tumbling runs. No complicated stunting. Never any injuries. About the most athletic thing '60s cheerleaders did was a cartwheel followed by the splits.

Cheerleading was transformed.


