That was the first thing I thought as the tiny little slip of a thing who couldn’t have been more than 5— 6 years old at the most— took her very first hip-gyrating step onto the floor in front of the line of 5-9 year-old  little girls lined up behind her.  It was the opening game of the YMCA’s winter basketball season and I was there to see my grandson who’d just turned 8 the week before.  Also in attendance at the packed gym were my daughter (his Mom), his 12-year-old sister, and his Dad (divorced from my daughter).  I think we all had exactly the same thought as we saw the first step, then the next few.  We were too taken aback to actually take our eyes off the tiny thing and look at each other to check out our respective reactions to make sure we were seeing what we thought we were seeing.  When it became clear that we were seeing what we were actually seeing, we looked at each other and it was clear we were all of the same mind.  WTH?!!

My next thought was “I am absolutely appalled.”

The tiny little thing was on the floor out in front of the line of girls, alone in the routine for the moment, leading the cheering squad in its opening number, doing the most sexually suggestive thing I’ve ever actually seen from a child.

OMG.

This was so wrong on so many levels, for so many reasons, that I’m not sure I can adequately convey it.  What message does it give her about herself?  What message does it give the other little girls?  What message does it send to the little boys? Just for starters.

I could start from the place that I have issues with teaching little girls from the start that their place is on the sidelines cheering for little boys as the little boys engage in the more valued business of sports (even tho there was girl on the team).  As the mother of three daughters, now grown, and a 12-year-old granddaughter, and as someone whose life work involves, among other things, working to have women be taken seriously in the workplace and in life, I am acutely aware of how these seemingly harmless ideas begin to be implanted at a young age and become expectations that ultimately result in women thinking of themselves, and society thinking of them, as outliers when it comes to taking on positions of responsibility and power outside the home.  Just ask Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi.  Powerful women who are exceedingly qualified women who, if they were men, would be lauded and held in high esteem, but instead are challenged every moment of every day simply because of their gender.  But what I was witnessing was more than that.

What I was witnessing is only one tiny thing, but so is the pixel on your TV screen.  Together, a plethora of these seemingly tiny things end up making up an entire envireonment within which women must operate, just like many pixels make up the screen you eventually see when you push the “on” button.  Each, in and of itself seems pretty insignificant and meaningless, but together they create a powerful entity.

We have to be mindful of this as we make moment-to-moment choices in our lives.  They matter.

While I would never have wanted my own daughters to want to cheer—and I realize it is a decision each parent is free to make on their own and I am not knocking anyone who allows it—I understand it is an American institution most think nothing of.  In fact, next week, I am going to the Unversity of  Florida to present an invited paper at a prestigious academic seminar.  As it happens, my paper is actually on the issue of NFL cheerleaders’ lawsuits being brought for unfair wages.  They work hundreds of hours during a season and make far less than minumum wage.  So, while I wouldn’t choose to have my daughters do it, I certainly would support them being treated fairly and respectfully if they did.

However, what I was witnessing on the gym floor was precisely what I knew made it difficult for that to happen and made it easy to have treated them this way all these years (the claims only began around 2014), the #MeToo and #TimesUp Movements notwithstanding.

Given society’s acculturation of males and females alike, when you put yourself out there in a sexual way, at the very least it sends a sexual message that makes males think they can pick up on.

Please get this right.  Do not misunderstand me.  I am not saying it is right for that to happen.  Clearly it is not.

However, given the way society has acculturated males up to this point by everything from allowing it with few consequences, to boys lauding each other for “the more sex the better,”  it makes sense that they may think so. And though things are now in the midst of change, I’ve spoken with enough of them to know that they can be understandably confused given our history.

And it takes two to tango.  Girls have been acculturated, just as what was happening before my very eyes, to think that giving off that message even before you are old enough to know that this is what you’re doing, becomes a part of how we are to operate in the world.  To gain praise.  To gain acceptance.  To make people laud us.  To gain attention. To be viewed positively.  To not be thought of as a prude, a bitch, a cunt, an ice-queen.  To be supportive of the guys that go out and do the things that bring people into the arena.  To use our bodies rather than our minds.  Watch teen movies.

So, here was this tiny little girl, who, from her very first sexually suggestive step onto the floor had my mouth gaping, getting cheered on by the clearly confused crowd.  I was appalled.  My stomach churned.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  It was so unexpected.  So inappropriate.  So wrong.  So not in keeping with what you expect for your child who is at the YMCA (YMChristianA) to witness.  As for the parents, the confusion likely stemmed from wanting to cheer on the efforts of the little ones, and mindlessly not thinking about the role of cheerleading in gender roles, as well as “Huh?  This looks wrong, but I don’t want to leave the little girls out there without crowd support.”  I get it.  But I couldn’t bring myself to endorse it by clapping.  I was too stunned, confused, appalled, embarrassed for her and disgusted with whoever clueless person taught her the routine.

I looked at my daughter, an elementary school teacher, some of whose students were in the cheerleading squad, and she looked appalled and disgusted.  I looked at my ex-son-in-law, he looked pissed off and said this was ridiculous.  I looked at the other parents, grandparents, family, friends, supporters, and they looked embarrassed.  It was clear that all of us had been set to at least enjoy the efforts of the new cheering squad we’d never seen before at the games, regardless of what we thought of the idea, but then the tiny thing took her first hip-gyrating step and we stopped dead in our tracks.

Surely it was only one step and things would become more age and place appropriate.

Nope.  It continued.

When the rest of the squad finally joined in the routine, it became more like what you would expect from children, but by then they had lost me and I was mentally drafting my email to the director of the Y (which I subsequently sent).

Y’all, I am a lawyer.  I am a professor.  Having just cleaned out, literally, enough to fill a rented dumptster of old files, letters, authored articles, etc. from my basement, I can attest to the fact that I have spent a lifetime caring about and writing about these issues in a reasoned way.  I am not hysterical.  I am not an alarmist.  I am not a “fringie.”

I am merely someone who has always had an interest in and passion for equality.  For justice.  For inclusion.  Someone who doesn’t just think abouit the final outcome of gender discrimination, but also how we got to that point in the first place.  I know enough to know that it is made up of a plethora of little things like this that form a pattern and an evnironment that eventually shows up in the workplace, in the classroom, on the movie and TV screens, on the airwaves.  Some of it is avoidable.  Some of it we contribute to without thinking.  I’d prefer not to.  I don’t want to litigate a claim.  These are issues I deal with each and every day in the classroom as I teach how to avoid the workplace liability, as well as in workplaces where I consult and speak with managers who make the decisions and use as a basis these messages they have received that lead them to think it is OK to do so.  I want to teach people to not have a claim to litigate in the first place.  Making better choice moment to moment can help with that.

As an academic in this area, I have an interest in, and in fact, must, study these issues.  I see things most people don’t simply because I spend time and energy looking at it.  Most people don’t have the time and energy to spend on it.

I’m telling you this because I want you to know that I am not being hysterical or overly sensitive here.  It is simply the way things work.  If you think about it, you’d realize it as well.  It’s not rocket science.  If we teach girls 5 or 6 years old to be sexually suggestive, in whatever context, but certainly this one where they receive instant praise and gratification for it, it will inevitably lead to consequences we do not wish to have.  Not for the girl.  Not for the boys watching her.  Not for society.

This has nothing to do with what consenting adults wish to do as grown ups.  That’s not what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about the inappropriateness of a 5-year-old being taught by an adult cheering coach that sexually suggestive cheering moves are a good thing and us backing it up by applauding such efforts.

It is not a good thing.

No.

Just, no.