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Cheerleader!: An American Icon |  | Authors: Natalie Guice Adams, Pamela Jean Bettis
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Seller: HPB-Outlet Ohio
Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 1324582
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Pages: 208
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.7 x 5.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 1403961840
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.64
EAN: 9781403961846
ASIN: 1403961840
Publication Date: November 8, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
ntertainers, ditzes, or athletes? Cheerleaders: love them, hate them, hate to love them, they are part of everyone's school experiences and memories. Nearly four million cheer-leaders participate in competitions or lead cheers at sports events. Going beyond the poms and megaphones, Cheerleader! explores how cheerleading reflects our shifting beliefs about sports, entertainment, gender, and national identity. Adams and Bettis trace cheerleading's history, from its beginnings 135 years ago as a male leadership activity, through the sexual and sassy era epitomized by the Dallas Cow-boy Cheerleaders, to its current incarnation as a physically demanding sport. Integra-ting history, pop culture, and inter-views with cheerleaders of all ages and those in the cheer-leading business, Adams and Bettis simultaneously celebrate cheer-leading and provide a critical analysis of this perennially popular activity.
Book Description
Entertainers, ditzes, or athletes? Cheerleaders: Love them, hate them, hate to love them, they are part of everyone's school experiences and memories. 3.8 million cheerleaders participate in competitions or lead cheers at sports events. Going beyond the poms and megaphones, Cheerleader! An American Icon explores how cheerleading reflects our shifting beliefs about sports, entertainment, gender and national identity. Adams and Bettis trace cheerleading's history, from its beginnings 135 years ago as a male leadership activity, through the sexual and sassy era epitomized by the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, to its current incarnation as a physically demanding sport. Integrating history, pop culture, interviews with cheerleaders of all ages and those in the cheerleading business, Adams and Bettis simultaneously celebrate cheerleading and provide a critical analysis of this perennially popular activity.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Fun and Informative! May 9, 2006
K. Loges (Boise, ID USA)
I read this book because one of the authors, Pam Bettis was going to give a talk about cheerleading culture. Eventhough I was a cheerleader I was skeptical of this book. I was worried that it would be one-sided and full of fluff. I was very wrong! I learned a great deal about the history of cheerleading, the economics of cheerleading and the use of cheerleading in organizing and activism. This book was so much fun to read and I really enjoyed being able to talk with Pam about it!
 New Ideas About Cheerleading January 24, 2004
Sally Quick (Salem, MA United States)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
As a former H.S. cheerleader (WAY back in the mid to late 60's), I really enjoyed this book. It's interesting to see how cheerleading developed after I left H.S. After the girls were able to participate in "real" sports after Title IX, cheerleading had to change. I'm amazed at what those girls do now. We jumped around a little, did a pyramid, yelled, swung pom poms around, but these girls today ARE real athletes. They are dancers and gymnasts - there is no way I could have made cheerleading in this day and age! LOL It's a fun book to read, and it brings back a lot of memories, and also makes me think about what cheerleading meant to me, and how I've used it since. They talk about "radical cheerleading", which is so interesting to me, because when I left H.S., I marched in the streets against the Vietnam War. Unbeknownst to me, I was still a cheerleader! I love this book, and highly recommend it.
Why does anyone want to be a cheerleader? November 13, 2003
JERRY W. THOMAS (WINNSBORO, LA United States)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
In this day and age, when girls are told they don't have to be nurses, they can be doctors -- when girls don't have to be secretaries -- they can be CEO's, when girls don't have to stay off the playing field -- they belong between the lines, why would any girl want to be relagated to cheering for the boys?Natalie Adams and Pam Bettis dig in to this post feminist phenomana. They not only supply answers, they ask the right questions. Why is it when Mia Hamm and the Williams sisters make the cover of major magazines, giving little girls a new role model, that most little girls still want to be a cheerleader? Though cheerleading was originally an exclusively male endeavor,
since females took it over in the late '40's and early '50's, cheerleaders have been seen as the ideal "girl next door" whose only purpose in life was to support men. According to Adams and Bettis, nothing is so entrenched in American culture as the "quarterback finally marrying the cheerleader" and thus is born the All American couple. Adams and Bettis do a fine job of seperating the myth from the reality. According to them, the cheerleader image has been used to sell everything from NFL football, to pornography to toothpaste. And today cheerleading has become a multi billion dollar business. The authors also explore the question: "Is cheerleading now a competitive sport" and are the participants real athletes? They make a compeling case that the white, blond blue-eyed cheerleader of yesterday is now a finely tune athelete capable of incredible athletic activity. What a fasinating book. The authors prove, indeed, that cheerleading is a subject deserving of serious study. At the same time, they preserve all that America has always loved about her favorite girl, the cheerleader. Read this book and keep that cheerleader smile!!
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