When I first had the idea to follow three college cheerleading squads for a year and write a book about it, I sort of bought into that stereotype. And I was stunned to find out that male cheerleaders were actually the opposite of what I was picturing in my head. Below, who guy cheerleaders really are:

1. They’re jocks. Most guy cheerleaders started out as football, baseball, or basketball players. Some of them had an injury that took them out of their original sport—others didn’t get college sports scholarship they were looking for and decided to change focus. There’s one guy in my book who played both football and rugby before becoming a cheerleader. “Cheer is by far the hardest sport I have ever been a part of,” he said.

2. They almost all give the same three-word explanation of how they got into cheerleading: “For a girl.” This is where Fired Up gets it right. Most guys don’t think, “I should be a cheerleader” on their own. Sometimes a girlfriend, a female friend, or a sister suggests it. Other times, a guy will be working out in the weight room at his college, and a random female cheerleader will come up to him and suggest he come to a practice. Almost all of the guys say it only took one practice to get hooked. Why? Because in basketball, it’s hard to come up with, say, a new dunk. But cheerleading is constantly evolving—and there’s tons of room to innovate and try new moves.

3. It quickly stops being about the women. Cheerleading is one of the only sports where men and women compete on the same team. And though they may start out with the idea of their team being a dating service, the guys quickly find that they develop big brother/little sister type relationships with the women on their team. Though on any given squad, there may be one or two couples, for the most part, dating and hooking up with teammates is discouraged. Cheerleaders on other squads, though—they are fair game.

4. They’re strong. Very strong. I watched one guy cheerleader tear a phone book in half, and another lift the tail end of his car.

5. They’re in it for the long haul. In sports like basketball and football that are governed by the NCAA, you’re only eligible to play for four years. But cheerleading isn’t technically a sport—and it isn’t under the NCAA’s umbrella. So it’s very common to meet guy cheerleaders who are cheering for their 5th, 6th, even 7th year in college. One guy in my book is even cheering for his 8th year in college.

6. They feel body pressure, too. The aesthetic in coed cheerleading is to have teensy girls and ginormous guys—the size differential makes it easier to perform acrobatic stunts. But for guy cheerleaders, this means that there’s a ton of pressure to be even bigger and stronger. As one guy explained to me, it’s considered embarrassing for a guy cheerleader to be under 200 pounds. Most eat a ton and work out to put on weight. But steroid use is also surprisingly common in the cheerleading world.

–
Kate Torgovnick is the author of CHEER!: Inside the Secret World of College Cheerleaders, a non-fiction romp through the world of competitive cheer. The paperback comes out in 17 days. Preorder your copy here.

Sighting #1: About a year ago, at the Cosi at 14th street, with Courtney. She nudges me, and I look up in time to see Russell Simmons, opening the door to the bathroom. We can’t prove it, but we are fairly sure he did not actually purchase anything, and made a pitstop specifically for the bathroom, which ain’t that nice to begin with.

Sighting #2: About a month ago at Housing Works Bookshop, with Joie and Scott. One of the bookshop clerks places a flyer on our table telling us that at 7pm, the table will be removed for a book reading. We don’t think much of it, since it’s only around 3. But a few minutes later, a group of people starts (very loudly) setting up a sound system at the podium. In walks a lanky older gentleman who proceeds to read the same line from a book over and over again, driving us crazy. “I think that’s Lou Reed,” says Scott. And upon closer examination, it was. We instantly thought the disturbance was less annoying.

Sighting #3: Today at ReBar coffee shop in Dumbo, with Courtney and Scott. It must be hard out there for a pimp, because Terrence Howard was inside having lunch. (Sorry, that was bad.) We all resisted the urge to sing, “Whoop that Trick” as we passed by his table on the way to the bathroom.

Now, I actually like Bono. I do. But his writing is, well, not good. He does what many non-writers do when they’re told to write—he overdoses on flowery language and packs in as many adverbs and gerunds as he can in a sentence. A sample:

“Glasses clinking clicking, clashing crashing in Gaelic revelry: swinging doors, sweethearts falling in and out of the season’s blessings, family feuds subsumed or resumed. Malt joy and ginger despair are all in the queue to be served on this, the quarter-of-a-millennium mark since Arthur Guinness first put velvety blackness in a pint glass.”

Velvety blackness? Ugh.

So here is my advice to Bono. One, pick topics that really matter to you. After all, weren’t you nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize? Don’t you want to inform the general public about bad things going on around the world? And two, keep it simple. “Nothing changes New Years’ Day”—that was great. Those five little words had way more impact than this entire column. And finally, take off the sunglasses. Really, dude. —Kate

When I read this story, my first thought was, “Smile? Who has ever smiled at the DMV?” But then something else hit me. Facial recognition software? In 20 states? For everyone who gets a drivers license? Am I wrong, or does that feel a touch big brothery?

Come on people, karaoke is supposed to be fun. Even community building? Try a group hug while singing “More Than Words.”

So what do you think—will it be a month or more like a week until we see this in New York? And how much should one be paid for pimping out Rover in the name of capitalism?

–
You Can’t Make This Stuff Up is a weekly (yeah, right) column by Kate Torgovnick. Read more about her and CHEER! at www.katetorgovnick.com.

So I decided to look up what costumes other people are leaning towards. According to Yahoo, most peeps this year, go figure, have politics on the mind. The most popular political costumes, and I think this speaks volumes about our society:

1. Sarah Palin
2. Barack Obama
3. John McCain
4. Ronald Reagan
5. Bill Clinton
6. Richard Nixon
7. George W. Bush
8. Joe Biden
9. Michelle Obama
10. Arnold Schwarzenegger
11. Hillary Clinton
11. Abraham Lincoln

For other assorted costumes, here are the most popular picks:

1. The Joker
2. a fairy
3. a pirate
4. a flapper
5. a witch
6. Tinkerbell
7. Cat Woman
8. Playboy Bunny
9. Indiana Jones
10. Little Red Riding Hood

For dogs, the most popular costume is…a hot dog.

So out with it. What are you going to be this year? —Kate

Come on, any takers? —Kate

But then I saw this story about Wendy Brown, a 33-year-old woman in Green Bay, Wisconsin, who used her 15-year-old daughter’s ID to enroll in high school. Now why, oh why, would any adult want to go back to to high school? Because Wendy desperately wanted to be a cheerleader.

Before school started, Wendy tried out for the squad, bought her uniform (with a check that bounced, naturally), attended multiple cheerleading practices, and attended a pool party at the coach’s house. However, during the first week of school, she only went to class for a single day, leading school officials to investigate her more closely. They soon discovered that Brown’s daughter actually lived in Nevada with her grandmother, her legal guardian, and was happily attending high school there.

Brown has been charged with felony identity theft and could face up to six years in prison. Not to mention that she didn’t even get to go to Homecoming.

Now, this story brings up a few questions. First, how did no one notice that a 30-something was in their midst? “In school you see a lot of children who look older and dress older,” said the school’s spokesperson. “At what point do you say, ‘You’re lying.’”

And second, why did this woman so want to be a cheerleader that she’d break the law to do it? In her statement to the police, Brown said that she cooked up this scheme because she had, “no childhood and was trying to regain a part of her life she missed.” To me, this is a prime example of cheerleaders’ symbolic power. They are deeply entrenched in our high school mythology as the ones at the top of the social pyramid. They have those elusive qualities that seems like the key to happiness when we’re teenagers—beauty and popularity. In short, their lives seem easy, enviable, perfect.

Wendy didn’t want to be a straight-A student. She didn’t want to be class president. She wasn’t even after a diploma. She wanted to wield the pom-poms and pleated skirt.

Interesting, no?

–
All Cheer, All the Time is a column by Kate Torgovnick. You can read more about her, and her book CHEER!: Inside the Secret World of College Cheerleaders at Cheerthebook.com.