Male Cheerleaders - Gay or Just Really Happy?

When I reached junior high school, my life long dream came true, I became a cheerleader. However, at cheerleading camp I learned that men were supposed to be just as manly on the sideline as they were on the gridiron. To be completely honest though, masculinity is hard to pull off when you're prancing around in a polyester uniform with pom-poms trying to get everyone else to, well, stand up and holler. 

It is a sport dominated by curly ringlets, bobby pins and more body glitter than an overweight drag queen. This is what mother’s dream of their daughters one day becoming, especially on the sprawling West Texas plains where football teams determine the survival of a town and bibles are placed right next to shot guns on night stands. But when a thirteen-year-old boy is drawn to the shiny pom-poms and a perfect spread eagle jump, it is the worse nightmare that wakes many fathers of their Friday night lights wet dreams.

I don’t know if it was the maroon and white letterman’s jacket I was attracted to or the power behind it, but I was a convert the very first time I attended a football game. The squad, all female, would tell the crowd what to yell and the crowd would mindlessly do it. I wanted to have that same kind of control someday. I didn’t know that it was a girl’s sport, I didn’t care. The tiny girls in the short skirts had all of the power. The young boys on the football field could barely be seen from the stands. I needed to not only be in front of the crowd, but one-day lead the crowd. So that’s exactly what I found myself doing during the better part of my teenage years and into my early twenties at a small college that literally handed out cheerleading scholarships to any male that showed up to the tryout.

Now I am going to let you in on a little secret from the cheerleading world, homophobia exists within the confines of the ancient rah-rah traditions. Yes, no lie, like totally serious. Want to hear more? Ready – okay.