Cheerleader: A Symbolic Interaction Analysis

During the first year of cheerleading, I learned a lot about what it means exactly to be a “cheerleader” whether it be how to act, what to say, how to look, or who I should be talking to. I like to compare this to the symbolic interaction theory. This theory is all about shared meanings or symbols, events, and socialization and how society interprets these interactions. When sharing these symbols and thoughts, common ideas are formed as well as the expectation of them within society itself (Ballantine, 29). I can relate this to my experience with cheer because there almost always is a stereotypical view of a cheerleader. Just because someone sees you wearing a skirt with a bow in your hair, people will automatically make assumptions about you

as a person. As the years past, I have had and still have people until this day saying “you're too nice to be a cheerleader” or “I could never see that, you're just so different than them”. When I would ask why that was, many people would say because they are used to these girls being mean, dumb, and ditzy. They already imagined how I should be in their minds and the expectations they had of me all before I ever came in contact with them. This is all because of how people communicated within my school and how the media describes high school. The sad fact about this is that the stereotypical mindset about cheerleaders was actually true of the sideline girls, at least at my high school. They revolved their life around the fact that they cheered for the school so much that they changed the way they behaved and interacted in a social context. I knew a few of the girls on my team for many years before, and once they joined the team, it is as if they were told and shown through the older girls and media (like the movie, Bring It On) so many times, as said above, how they should act, behave, and even speak that they eventually “turned” into the basic cheerleader. This brings me to the self-fulfilling prophecy.