![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
why i love cheerleaders
Feb. 10th, 2009 10:08 pmIt's not just the tiny skirts!
I think pretty much every angry young girl, girl geek, or wallflower has at some point learned that cheerleaders/The Popular Girls/whatever are evil. Yes? I suspect a lot of you were like me in that respect.
Bellydancing has totally changed my mind about that. I've met a surprising number of women who were, in fact, stereotypical Popular Girls (queens of things, cheerleaders, sorority presidents, that sort of thing). I've met even more who, whatever they were in past lives, act like those girls now. They're awesome. There is certainly a level of backbiting and enforced niceness - that is, there's a way to say things, and it's not blunt [though my closer dance friends have learned to live with my blunt] - but it comes with so much enthusiasm for the beauty of your costume, and your dancing, and your smile, and... wow you are just so cool.
I think most of them mean it. I've come to find their costumes, their dancing and their smiles beautiful, too. There's a graduation process from outsider to student to performer to teacher that helps you discover and champion the beauty in other dancers. I bet that it's a lot like being in a sorority. And like, I'm totally a senior now. I look at less-experienced dancers especially, and they're just OMGSQUEEWOW so very wonderful. Okay, maybe not quite as GAH, I LOVE YOU as the ATS dancers I dance with and have trained (there's wonderful, and then there's tribe). But pretty damned wonderful.
Also? The Popular Girls? Give you presents. Best idea ever. Let's all give each other presents.
I think pretty much every angry young girl, girl geek, or wallflower has at some point learned that cheerleaders/The Popular Girls/whatever are evil. Yes? I suspect a lot of you were like me in that respect.
Bellydancing has totally changed my mind about that. I've met a surprising number of women who were, in fact, stereotypical Popular Girls (queens of things, cheerleaders, sorority presidents, that sort of thing). I've met even more who, whatever they were in past lives, act like those girls now. They're awesome. There is certainly a level of backbiting and enforced niceness - that is, there's a way to say things, and it's not blunt [though my closer dance friends have learned to live with my blunt] - but it comes with so much enthusiasm for the beauty of your costume, and your dancing, and your smile, and... wow you are just so cool.
I think most of them mean it. I've come to find their costumes, their dancing and their smiles beautiful, too. There's a graduation process from outsider to student to performer to teacher that helps you discover and champion the beauty in other dancers. I bet that it's a lot like being in a sorority. And like, I'm totally a senior now. I look at less-experienced dancers especially, and they're just OMGSQUEEWOW so very wonderful. Okay, maybe not quite as GAH, I LOVE YOU as the ATS dancers I dance with and have trained (there's wonderful, and then there's tribe). But pretty damned wonderful.
Also? The Popular Girls? Give you presents. Best idea ever. Let's all give each other presents.