Give me an H! Give me an O!

In September, we finally relented and let Samantha sign up for cheerleading. Or rather, Andy relented. I was OK with it from the time she expressed interest in it two years ago.

We had been reading off a newspaper flyer about all the kids’ activities offered by the city rec department: soccer (spoken with a hopeful voice), rock climbing, T-ball, gymnastics, cheerleading, ... . Samantha jumped at the word as if she had known what cheerleading was since birth. She was five at the time, and Andy said absolutely, positively, unequivocally no.

In truth, Samantha is a born cheerleader. She’s naturally loud — voted “loudest camper” at summer day camp this year — prone to spells of jumping around with arms flailing, and attracted to skimpy, sparkly outfits.

But the very idea of the sport, if I can call it that, gives Andy fits. He seems to think that eight weeks of cheerleading will start our 7-year-old down a career path to waitressing at Hooters. Or on the payroll of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.

I, on the other hand, see the rec center program as an avenue to get cheerleading out of her system before an age where wearing tight outfits and cheering on the sidelines for boys to score a T-O-U-C-H-D-O-W-N really is loaded with sexual innuendo. Primary school cheerleaders aren’t sexual objects. They’re cute. Sort of. And why not let her see what it’s all about? To say no now could lead to her harboring the urge for a decade, then dropping out of college to pursue her unfulfilled cheerleading dream.

When I was a kid, cheerleading was the only activity available for girls, at least until high school, when field hockey and cross-country running were added to the menu. We didn’t even have to ask. Our mothers signed us up, and every Saturday in the fall, in their dresses and high-heel shoes, they drove us to the flood plain that served as an elementary school football field.

We thought our cheers actually helped the boys and that they would look over and see how cute we were in our pigtails and short skirts. We weren’t destined for careers at Hooters. We knew one day we were supposed to date those boys, but only if they asked first. We were housewives in training — attractive and supportive, cheering on the boys in their endeavors, without anyone — except our mothers — cheering our own.

By the time we were in high school, only the cool girls were picked to be cheerleaders. And the squad was as much a dating pool for the football team as it was a cheerleading group. With thick glasses, good grades, and no boobs, I was far from cool and way off the cheerleader radar. Not that I wouldn’t have jumped at the chance if asked.

Then my sophomore year, I went to prep school. Exeter had been all boys until 1970, and it never seemed to occur to anyone to start a cheerleading squad once girls were a part of campus life — probably because girls who win the math prize in public school aren’t typically the type to swoon after the quarterback. (And if we do swoon, we do so privately. No sense in setting ourselves up for public humiliation.)

At football games, a couple of potential theater majors with bull horns led the whole student body — or at least the students who attended the games — in loud intellectually elitist cheers such as “Pursue them, pursue them, make them relinquish the ball,” or the more low-brow “What do we do? Screw the blue,” for the end-of-season big game against rival Andover with its blue-and-white team colors.

Cheerleading wasn’t an option, and somehow this made us equal to the boys in those early Title-IX days. We could play volleyball, soccer, do crew, swim, even play ice hockey. We weren’t housewives in training. We were expected to attend college, grad school, get a job and make our way in the world. I wasn’t going to stand around and cheer for some boy. Unless he cheered for me too.

Fortunately, Samantha’s cheerleading career was over after only four weeks. Too much standing around, she said. “I want to play soccer next year,” she announced the other night. She had discovered it in gym class and liked all the running around.

I know our days of skimpy outfits and sparkly eye shadow are far from over. But at least she’s learning that it’s more fun to participate than watch, and to be cheered rather than to cheer.