Gender, Power, and Performance: Representations of Cheerleaders in American Culture
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Copyright by Allison Elaine Wright 2012 The Dissertation Committee for Allison Elaine Wright Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Gender, Power, and Performance: Representations of Cheerleaders in American Culture Committee: Elizabeth S.D. Engelhardt, Supervisor Janet M. Davis Mark C. Smith Mary C. Kearney Janice Todd Gender, Power, and Performance: Representations of Cheerleaders in American Culture by Allison Elaine Wright, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2012 To my parents, Cecil and Jane Wright Acknowledgements The process of researching and writing this dissertation has left me with innumerable debts. It is my pleasure to finally acknowledge some of them here. First and foremost, I would like to thank my dissertation advisor, Elizabeth Engelhardt, for her continued support of this project and me. She has been an ideal mentor and advisor, offering astute critiques of my writing and challenging me to reach further in my analyses. I am especially grateful for her confidence; her belief in me and in this project often gave me the strength for one more sentence, one more paragraph, one more draft. It is not an exaggeration to say this would not be possible without her guidance. I am forever indebted to her and thankful for her wisdom; I strive to emulate her peerless scholarship and fierce dedication to the teaching profession. I would also like to thank the members of my dissertation committee. Mark Smith, who first took seriously the academic study of cheerleading when I proposed the topic of my master’s thesis in 2004 and who later suggested I ask Elizabeth Engelhardt to direct my dissertation, has shaped the project from its inception. From teaching one of the first graduate seminars I took and then supervising me as a teaching assistant to advising my master’s thesis and chairing my oral examination committee, he has exemplified teaching excellence and provided continual support at crucial junctures. Mary Kearney served as a reader on my master’s thesis and first introduced me to the academic world of youth cultural studies. Her dedication to girl-centered scholarship and her focus on the intersection of gender and generation are fundamental to this project. Janet Davis taught me to consider seriously what we call popular culture, leading by example with her inimitable scholarship and infectious spirit. Through her work and her life, Jan Todd has v shown me to privilege sport and to respect the athleticism of women’s bodies. I am honored to have worked with and studied under such unparalleled scholars and teachers. The Department of American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin was a supportive institutional home for me and I would like to thank the Department staff, especially Ella Schwartz and Valeri Nichols-Keller, for helping me navigate bureaucratic hurdles along the way. In addition to the professors on my committee, other members of the American Studies faculty deserve mention here as well. Naomi Paik shared a key text with me at a critical time. This project is more theoretically grounded because of her intellectual generosity. I served as a teaching assistant for Nhi Lieu and Shirley Thompson and am thankful for their leadership and support. I benefitted from the wisdom and guidance of Steve Hoelscher, who was graduate advisor upon my arrival and department chair upon my departure. Julia Mickenberg read a very early version of my thoughts on girls’ cheerleading and gave insightful feedback; several years later, at the Society for the History of Children and Youth conference at the University of California, Berkeley, she introduced me to senior scholars whose work I had come to know and admire, and she attended my panel; I am thankful for her support. The Department offered me the opportunity to develop and teach my own classes for five semesters, including one crucial summer semester near the end of my time at the University, and provided funding in the form of the Louann Atkins Temple Endowed Presidential Scholarship in American Studies during the year I was not teaching. I would like to thank the University’s Office of Graduate Studies for two professional development awards that aided in conference travel. I would also like to thank the School of Undergraduate Studies and especially Michael Craig Hillmann in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies for employing me in my final year. vi My graduate school experience would have been very different – and very lonely – without the support and friendship of three women in particular. Colleen Conrad arrived on campus with me for our first meet and greet as graduate students; almost nine years later, she is one of my dearest friends and trusted confidantes. Audrey Russek and Anna Thompson Hajdik provided moral support and mutual encouragement. Together we studied for oral examinations, wrote and revised dissertation prospectuses and chapters, and shared frustrations. Thank you, Colleen, Audrey, and Anna, for your friendship during such a defining period in my life. In my first meeting with then-graduate advisor Steve Hoelscher in the summer of 2003, he suggested that I “try to have a life” while in graduate school. To that end, I am grateful for non-academic friends who have helped me keep things in perspective, explore Austin, and appreciate life. Thank you to Karen and Doug Schaefer, who welcomed me into their home and their family for many hours each week beginning the second day of 2002 and who have seen me through two graduate degrees now (and many personal milestones). I am especially thankful for the relationship I have with their son, Ryan, whose smile and bright eyes never fail to lift my spirits. I cannot say a big enough “thank you” to The Craft for their continued support, encouragement, and love. Since the late 1990s, Sarah Macrini Hans, Jessica “Jay” Brown, and Audrey (Johnson) Jones have been my favorite people, my most trusted advisers, my best friends, and my partners in crime. They know the value of a well-timed greeting card, the usefulness of a humorous email thread, and the benefit of a friendship that spans decades. Finally, I would like to thank my immediate family: my parents, Cecil and Jane Wright, without whose unwavering support and love I would not be where I am; and my puppies, The Nickel and The Penny- I cannot overestimate the positive impact of their warmth, snuggles, and late night company on this project and my well-being. My father’s vii five-decade career in the newspaper business, his habit of reading the paper from front page to back each day, and his tendency to correct grammatical mistakes wherever they occur – even, or perhaps especially, in the church bulletin – inspired my interest in words and their meanings, as did my frequent trips to the library with my mother when I was a small child. A veteran of World War II, my father’s indefatigable interest in the history of that conflict and its filmic representations also shaped my desire to study the United States and its cultural products, though I did not realize it during the third (or thirtieth) viewing of Sands of Iwo Jima. My parents’ support knows no bounds; they are my personal cheerleaders, and it is to them that I dedicate this dissertation. viii Gender, Power, and Performance: Representations of Cheerleaders in American Culture Allison Elaine Wright, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2012 Supervisor: Elizabeth S.D. Engelhardt This dissertation reveals that the various, often conflicting media representations of cheerleaders are responsible for the many ways gender and power are refracted through the lens of American popular culture and on the bodies of American youth. Beginning in the circumscribed nineteenth century world of elite male privilege, the history of cheerleading is intimately connected to the discourse of masculinity in America. It is not until almost one hundred years after the activity’s birth that its primary narrative changes from one of masculinity to one of power. This project calls attention to the ways in which sociohistoric context impacts representations of cheerleaders. My interdisciplinary project draws on sources from the popular press; children’s, adult, and mainstream literature, film, and television; material culture; and interviews with cheerleaders themselves; and engages with existing cheerleading scholarship as well as literary criticism and feminist scholarship. Each chapter interrogates a different, related trend in the cultural representation of cheerleaders, including: competing narratives of victimization, im/perfection, and popularity; a third wave feminist vision of gendered superpower; prescriptions of beauty and behavior; pornography and its connection to the professionalization of cheer; and the performance of representation by actual cheerleaders. Taken together, these chapters trace patterns of representation, ix fraught with nuance and complexity, to provide a picture of a shifting cultural icon whose relationship to larger social movements is often reciprocal and who challenges societal expectations of gender and generation over three centuries. x Table of Contents List of Figures ...................................................................................................... xiii Introduction ..............................................................................................................1