maybe. if she were competing all day outside in Texas. But cheer competitions are not like that. At all. You show up at an appointed time and have like 25min to touch up your hair and makeup and make sure everyone is there. Then you have 3 min to stretch. 3 min to run the routine on a practice floor. Then you might…

it’s a performance. How is it different than a dance team requiring all 8 year olds to come to practice in a ballet pink leotard with light pink tights and capezio shoes and a high tight bun with NO SKIRTS? because my daughter’s dance school requires this. Competitive cheer is very similar to dance - head to toe there…

it’s always been a thing. 20 years i’ve been involved in cheer in some way or another, and matching hair / bows / shoes / socks / jackets... it’s a thing. this is not new. in some leagues you do actually get judged on uniformity.

she’ll compete like, a few times a year. A few hair straightenings is not going to ruin her hair. I have very very similar hair and it’s a BITCH to straighten, but when I was in college, that’s what our coaches required. Stick straight high ponytails. Guess what, my hair is still flowing along just fine. Changing skin…

I.... don’t understand what the problem is? Hair in cheerleading is part of your uniform. Everyone wears a uniform and matching shoes and hairbows, it follows that you all have the same competition / game day hair styles. I’ve been involved in cheer for over 20 years- no one has ever questioned the mandated hairstyle.…

The other girls on the team voted on the hairstyle. Reading the original article and watching the news clip, the coach says they would have worked something out but it never got that far because the mother was nasty in their meeting. He dropped her from the squad due to her mother’s negativity (he claims). Frankly I…

It’s only for a single routine. The squad voted for straight ponytails for that routine. Other ones they have curly hair. At practice they can have curly hair. They have not banned anyone from having curly hair at their gym. It’s the same as saying bun instead of ponytail, or two braids instead of a bun.

Competitive cheer mom chiming in. The coach sets the competition style hair and makeup for a reason. Uniformity counts. That is just the way the sport is. Good or bad, it just is.

That’s a really damaging and bullshit stereotype. Competition cheerleading is really fucking different from “cheering for some random dude.” To perpetuate that stereotype is irresponsible since it seems you want to brand yourself a feminist.

She’s the only one on the team who didn’t do the uniform look to her hair. But I willing to bet my last penny that she isn’t the only person on her team with wavy/curly hair. But they straightened it out because those were the rules. Curly/wavy hair is way more common than most people realize. It’s just that hair…

When I was in show choir, we had the rule of don’t change your hair (cut it or dye it) during competition season. For competitions we had to all wear it half up/ half down, straightened (though big barrel curls were sometimes permitted). We had to have similar make up. When I was on cheer squad, there were rules about…

Ah, the classic “feminist” who’s not like this other girls, those “girly” girls! Because devaluing traditionally female pursuits is so feminist!

Okay. So I am not, nor have a ever been, a cheerleader. My cousin was a cheerleader for years and is now a high school cheerleading coach. (She’s also an algebra teacher and a heck of a smart person, so I get kind of cranky about some of the cheerleader stereotypes.) But my understanding of the hair and makeup is as…

Who cares? Honestly. This was a private cheer company, not something public like a school. The team apparently voted on a specific hairstyle. The mom is taking her to a new, different private cheer company without that rule. This is normal life. Why is this “news?” Who the hell calls the news station whining about a…

The title of this is misleading. It sounds like, from actually reading the article, and the source, that the title should be “Girl Kicked Out of Cheerleading Team Because of Difficult Mom”.

Cheerleading is the only sport that actually encourages the participants to be feminine. This makes haters think less of it because if it’s feminine, it can’t be that hard, right?

The girl in question is white. Why does everyone on this article think it’s racism? Her mother is white (perhaps hispanic but idk so can’t say) and her father is clearly white.

If gymnastics is a sport, competitive cheerleading is a sport. There is no difference in competition, athericism, skill, training, etc between the two. I say this as someone who (admittedly, arbitrarily) loathes competitive cheerleading.

Sounds like you have some issues to work about about what it means to be a girl. You seem to have some internalized misogyny going on there.

Yeah and her curly hair was fine for practice. It seems like the rules were pretty clear.