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The slow death of decency standards
Posted Sep 17, 2010 by Tom Jackson
Updated Sep 17, 2010 at 05:33 PM
So, in the interest of capturing some of the pageantry of our high school alma mater’s halftime show to help promote a celebration marking the 50th anniversary of its opening, the lovely Mrs. Jackson orders me to the sidelines with a camera last Friday night, and I, being dutiful, go.
I shot photos of drummers, woodwind players, even a trumpeter who doubles as a second-string defensive back. I also took pictures of the dancers – Lionettes, as they are known at King High School – although, to be abundantly honest, I felt a little creepy about it.
Back in the day, Lionettes (and as I recall, most of the dance troupes in Hillsborough County) tailored themselves after the Radio City Rockettes or the June Taylor Dancers. They were high-stepping precision drill teams that stressed peels and kick lines.
Not being an aficionado of modern music videos, I have no idea who today’s high school dance troupes model themselves after. But I am pretty sure parts of their routines are utterly inappropriate for viewing by middle-aged men who are not their close relatives. (As for the middle-aged men who are their close relatives and have not intervened to prevent the public hyper-sexualizing of their daughters and nieces – what in heaven’s name are they thinking?!!)
In the presence of this Lolitaesque, daughters-of-the-harvest grinding and undulating, I had the good, perhaps antiquated, sense to be embarrassed. In those moments, I took no photos.
I hadn’t planned to go public with my discomfort, but then I came across the small war over a little kids’ cheerleading squad going on in a Detroit suburb.
Todayshow.com contributor Michael Inbar explains:
As sports cheers go, “Our backs ache, our skirts are too tight, we shake our booties from left to right!” isn’t likely to make Chris Rock blush. But when [Jennifer] Tesch’s daughter Kennedy came home after practicing with her Madison Heights Wolverines cheerleading squad and demonstrated the routine, her mom was taken aback.
Properly shocked – Kennedy is 6 years old – Momma Tesch took it up with the squad’s coach and general manager. The adults in charge were dismissive. Mom quoted the general manager as saying, “We’ve been doing it that way for years and that’s the way it’s going to be.”
Reassured she wasn’t nutty by other parents who “agreed the cheer seemed racy for a 6-year-old to be chanting” and getting nowhere with the squad’s leaders, Jennifer Tesch took h er concerns to the local media. The upshot? Kennedy Tesch was fired from the Madison Heights Wolverine flag-football cheerleading squad.
Now there’s a phrase I never thought I’d type.
Given the chance to intervene on behalf of standards of decency, the clueless grownups in charge chose, instead, to spike a little girl.
Because this whole brouhaha came up on the Today show, Kathie Lee Gifford waded in and, call me hopelessly old-fashioned, came down on the side of the angels:
Gifford said the cheer is not only inappropriate for a 6-year-old; she didn’t believe it was even appropriate for her 17-year-old daughter, Cassidy.
“Where does it stop?” Gifford said. “It’s the sexualization of our young females from an earlier and earlier [age]. When do parents lose our rights to raise children according to the values that we think are important?”
When [co-host Hoda] Kotb told Gifford her school cheerleading squad actually had a very similar, though less lurid, cheer, Gifford said those kinds of cheers didn’t exist “in the 1800s when I was a cheerleader. It was sis-boom-bah, rah-rah! It’s, little by little, the choices that we’re making that’s deteriorating our culture as whole.”
I could not agree more enthusiastically. Which is pretty much where I came in.
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