Police have taken statements from the cheerleaders but the school district is withholding the statements from the press for the time being, so there are no details to the case. There are a few questions, the answer to which would explain if this was a case of some classic mean cheerleader antics (a varsity cheerleader's ex-boyfriend would be involved, a MTV movie would be made starring a C-list actor/singer as the head cheerleader) or just some classic dumb hazing "rituals" made by young women who probably watched too many late-'90s high school films: How long did the girls stay in the water bound and gagged? Did the parents of the junior varsity cheerleaders know that their child would be "kidnapped" (which one parent of a varsity squad member seems to imply in a statement she gave to the Houston Chronicle)? More importantly, was anyone injured during the whole ordeal? According to Texas Education Code, students who participate in hazing can be charged with a Class B misdemeanor, which carries a maximum fine of $2,000 and/or up to 180 days in jail.

Granted, any parent should be concerned for their child's safety, regardless if their child was willingly partaking in an invented ritual to make some cheerleaders feel important or if their child was a victim of a violent crime. But as more details of this case come out, the situation will probably be sensationalized as another case of violent girls beating up other girls, with the added "sex appeal" surrounding cheerleading thrown into the mix (let's not forget how much the media — and Dazed & Confused director Richard Linklater — loves a bad girl Texan cheerleader). Is hazing really girl-on-girl crime, or is it just idiotic people being, well, idiots?

Officials Probe Cheerleader Hazing Case [UPI]
Katy ISD Probes Report Of Cheerleader Hazing [Houston Chronicle]
'Mean Girls' [Newsweek]

Related: The 2007-2008 Varsity Cheerleaders! [Morton Ranch High School Cheerleader's Page]

• Yet another tale of a creepy pageant mom who spends $600 a month on beauty treatments on her 11-year-old daughter. • A new study shows that women who are already "subfertile" worsen their chances of infertility by drinking coffee. • More weird studies! Adults who were born at a low birth-weight tend to leave the nest later in life. • A father in Georgia killed his 25-year-old daughter after she said she wanted to divorce the husband with whom she had an arranged marriage. • A neighboring town to Gloucester, MA mocked the towns now infamous "pregnancy pact" teens in a July Fourth Horribles parade. • Ew! A woman spent half of her day with a baby bat hiding in her bra before she noticed it. • The family of the woman who died on the floor of the Kings County Hospital psychiatric ER plans to sue the city and call for criminal charges. • Could a gene variant make women more prone to alcoholism through endorphin release? Well, it happened in some lab mice. • Two tween-aged girls are missing from a foster home in California, as is their parent's Lexus. • Violence between romantic partners is common among college students with men most likely to perpetrate sexual violence and women more likely to perpetrate physical violence. • Doctors are planning to introduce a cheaper (and less effective) form of in vitro in Africa, where infertility and a stigma attached to it can be stronger than in the West. • Cute video of the day! My favorite Japanese doggy troublemaker gets more than he bargained for when he tries to play with a pack of 5000 dachshund pups!

Gadkari is referring to legislation that makes the Giuliani regime look tame: the closing of all public places where dancing takes place in Mumbai. And while many Indians like Gadkari find themselves assaulted by what they perceive to be a crass performance of sexuality which stands in affront to their own culture, the cheerleaders, flown in from everywhere from the Eastern Bloc to the Midwest, have themselves become the victims of harassment from those who see them as cheap and vulgar exploiters of their culture.

Girija Vya, chairperson of Indian's National Commission for Women says, "I find nothing wrong with the concept if it is just for adding entertainment element to the game. It has to be presented in the right manner keeping the Indian values intact. I think we should promote our culture by bringing folk dancers and musicians in these matches. We have so much variety in our culture, dresses that after some point of time foreign countries will start imitating us." And yet one Indian housewife poses the following question regarding the new addition to the country's national pastime, "What is the purpose of this display?"

Good question. What is the purpose of cheerleaders at any sport, whether it's cricket in India or football here in the U.S.? Can sports where women are still not allowed to compete alongside men exist without women cheering on the sidelines for the men at play? Maybe the outrage in India will spark some soul-searching amongst sports commissioners here in the U.S. as well.

U.S.-Style Cheerleaders Shake Indian Cricket [MSNBC]
Cheerleaders OK If Properly Presented [Times of India]

• We were so into the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints and their Yearning For Zion Ranch, where girls in their early teens get married off to gross molesty old men with multiple other wives, none of whom are allowed to wear red because that's Jesus' color.
  
• Are those teens better, or worse off than the brave 8-year-old Yemeni girl name Nojoud Muhammed Nasser who was married off by her crazy homeless father, but has now successfully filed for divorce.
  
• A study in contrasts: the marriage of Nojoud Muhammed Nasser versus the insane Southern belles of MTV's True Life who call themselves "old maids" at age 24.

• OMG I almost forgot about that Australian father and daughter who fuck and have babies. Oh ew.
• Can't some people just have a nice, normal wedding that doesn't involve incest, polygamy, statutory rape, fake boobs or Botox?
• Mommablogger Dooce appears to be a fairly reasonable person whose wedding probably didn't involve any of those things.
• Karl Lagerfeld hates Dooce's kid, though. Actually he hates all children. And also fat people!
• You know who probably had kind of shitty moms? Those horrid teenage cheerleader bitches who beat the living hell out of their friend and may now face life in prison.
• So make a bonfire out of Cosmo's "Sexy" issue, and rip off that bandanna you've been wearing. Let it all hang out this weekend!

Though the attack shocked Sheriff Grady of Polk County — "That is animalistic behavior. It's pack mentality," he says — it's probably not that shocking to anyone who has witnessed a roving pack of schoolgirls firsthand. Growing up in New York I learned that girlfights were almost always scarier than any rumble the guys could muster up. Scratched eyes, pulled hair, ripped earlobes from snatched earrings — girls can be vicious. And the victors in these battles gain respect and support, as scientists have now "discovered."

According to the Telegraph, more than 600 students were asked to rate their school's cliques on popularity. Casey Borch, a professor of sociology at Alabama University, who worked on the study, says, "A lot of popular kids may not be well liked, but they are relationally aggressive and their peers think that they are popular." He also noted that girls as young as nine learn that being nasty can boost their "social visibility" and that girls are more likely to use aggressive behavior than boys.

And it's not just aggression: In a savvy marketing move, the Florida cheerleaders intended to post the video online, where it would not only serve as a testament to their dominance, but as a warning to others. Sheriff Judd says, "When we had them in custody at the station, they were laughing about it, saying, 'Well, I guess this spring break we won't go to the beach.' One of the suspects asked the detective, 'Am I going to get to go to cheerleading practice tomorrow?' They showed absolutely no remorse at all." Maybe because they were so secure, so sure that nastiness and treachery would earn them respect and recognition — and it has.

Cheerleaders Pummel Girl For 30 Minutes In 'Animalistic' Ambush Attack, Police Say [Local 6]
Cheerleaders Tape Themselves Giving Former Friend 30-Minute Violent Beat-Down [Breitbart]
Teens Arrested Over Filmed Beating [CBS News]
'Mean Girls Are The Most Popular Students' [Telegraph]

Sure, there are some superficial moments in the GQ piece. (Two of the Ben-Gals in the locker room preparing for a game: "We look so awesome." "Oh, my God, we do!") And yes, the women tease their hair, fake their tans, paint their lips with orange lipstick and obsess over every pound gained and lost. But before you toss these women off as flippant and the story as chauvinistic, take a moment to appreciate the fact that they are allowed to speak in their own voices in the piece, a smart journalistic move which eliminates any possibility for the reader to assume any tone of condescension and shows many of these women for who they are: Just as smart as they are sexy. There's Rhone:

I have a bachelor's in chemistry and a bachelor's in biology. I just finished my master's in public health with an emphasis in environmental-health science. For two years, I worked on a project dealing with air quality within chemical-fume hoods. We came up with something called the smoke-particle-challenge method. I did monoclonal-antibody research for BD Transduction Laboratories. I worked for the U.S. government at the Center for Health Promotion and Preventative Medicine... For me the Ben-Gals is about fulfilling a dream. Not many people out there can say they're an NFL cheerleader. I have never been so proud to wear such an ugly color of lipstick....[W]hen a small-town girl tries out for NFL cheerleading and makes it, that's huge. I made the front page of our local newspaper.

People think we're so weird...Like, a guy will ask you out on a date on a Wednesday night, and you can't say, "I can't eat, because I have to weigh in tomorrow." But you can't go and not eat, either. So it is hard. I usually say to a guy, "Let's wait until Friday night, because I have four days to get my weight back down after that"....Of course, guys look at it as some type of sex symbol. But I don't think it's a thing that guys want their girlfriend to look like, you know what I mean? It's like a costume. It's not something I think a guy would like to look at every day.

My mom was killed. She was murdered by my stepdad. I had just turned 1 year old. I break down sometimes. You can't think: Why me? Things happen for a reason. You just can't think about the unknown... With the Ben-Gals, with thirty girls in one group, you'd think it'd be a bunch of backstabbers, cliques, but it's not like that. They say I'm this role model because I have a little girl I'm raising on my own and I work construction. They say I'm an inspiration. They say that they're amazed I do all this....Being a Ben-Gal in general is just awesome.

Meet the NFL Cheerleader: G-L-O-R-Y [GQ]

Earlier: Angelina Jolie: A Woman For All Seasons (And Sexes)

U.S. soldiers from the 3rd Brigade combat team of 101st Airborne Division react as one of the cheerleaders from the Washington Redskins football team perform during a show at Patrol Base Dragon, some 20 kilometers (about 12,4 miles) south of Baghdad.

[Iraq, November 27. Images via AP.]