WEBVTT

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- She's front and center
of the triangle formation,

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sexy but modest,

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she's the perfect girl next door,

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Oh, and she's dead.
(record scratch)

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In this instance, I'm talking about...

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(whistling)

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Chrissy Cunningham.

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A cheerleader played by Grace Van Dien

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in the recently released fourth
season of Stranger Things.

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But her character is hardly new.

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We've seen her before year
after year, show after show.

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For decades, we've seen the
same reductive trope that sends

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ditsy blonde bitches with
pompoms to their graves.

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The cheerleader trope of
course, isn't a monolith.

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She has slight range.
Deranged and delusional,

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dumb as rocks, slutty,

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or abused and traumatized like Chrissy.

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Now there have been some
movies, like Bring It On

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and Jennifer's Body that
have subverted the trope

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to give cheerleaders a
little bit more life to them.

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But mainly when it pops
up, the trope says a lot

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about who's worth saving
and who can be sacrificed

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for the sake of the quad.

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Girly girls and innocent femmes,
a group that's easy to mock

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and write off as unserious,
useless little things.

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They're often the first to go

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and seemingly without any regret.

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We hate them for allowing
themselves to be objectified

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only to objectify them further

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by killing them without second thought.

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So in the future, it'd be great to cheer

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for some more subversive
feminist cheerleader tropes.

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Gimme a living bitch.

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(upbeat music)