[Houston, November 23. Image via Getty]

HOUSTON - NOVEMBER 23: Houston Texans cheerleaders perform at Reliant Stadium on November 23, 2009 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Bob Levey/Getty Images)

[Atlanta, November 8. Image via Getty]

ATLANTA - NOVEMBER 08: An Atlanta Falcons cheerleader performs during the game against the Washington Redskins at Georgia Dome on November 8, 2009 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

Christine Wilson, assistant vice president for student affairs and director of student activities, told The Hartford Courant that the school replaced the cheerleading team with the Spirit Squad because "we want people formerly called cheerleaders to focus in on building spirit at UConn, on spending time working on ways to engage fans and to really spread Husky spirit." The new team will wear outfits similar to what the cheerleaders wore, but will focus on leading crowds in interactive cheers and spend time in "tailgating areas handing out spirit buttons and other kinds of spirit supplies," at football games, men's and women's basketball games, and other school events. According to the Spirit Squad's website, "You will not need to have gymnastics, dance, or cheer experience to be eligible for the Spirit Squad."

Twenty-four men and women were recently selected to be on the Spirit Squad, but many of former cheerleaders didn't make it. Alanna Ferguson said she was selected to be a cheerleader as a freshman last year because of her gymnastic skills, but feels she wasn't picked for the Spirit Squad because the new team isn't looking for people with athletic ability. She said creating the Squad is like, "reverting back to the 1970s or 1980s, when cheering was more about getting with the fans and dancing around... They are disrespecting cheerleaders in general by doing this."

Many cheerleaders have fought to be seen as athletes rather than just sex symbols in recent years as cheerleading has come to involve more physically demanding stunts. (Especially since recent studies say that among female athletes cheerleading is now the leading cause of catastrophic injuries, including death, head trauma, and paralysis.) Neal Kearney, who resigned as UConn's cheerleading coach in June, said that in his 22 years on the job he saw cheering become much more physically demanding and it became harder to make the squad. "A lot of people came to the first day, saw how competitive it was and it dissuaded them from trying out," he said. "They needed to be grounded in gymnastics. You had to be able to do at least a round-off back handspring."

A statement released by the university explained the creation of the Spirit Squad saying,

"By changing the style, and not requiring gymnastics experience, we will be able to offer the opportunity to participate to a broader pool of students. Students who did not have a chance to 'cheer' previously, or students who are not gymnasts, can represent their college as 'spirit ambassadors.'"

According to an article published earlier this year in The Daily Campus, UConn's student newspaper, the cheerleading squad was facing a tough season in 2009-2010 because all six male cheerleaders graduated. While the author seemed most concerned that the female cheerleaders wouldn't be able to hurl free t-shirts past the first few rows of fans, he noted,

Stuntin' will no longer be a habit for UConn cheer. In fact, with such inexperience at the the base positions, it will be awfully hard to pull off the aerial stunts that have defined the squad in the past.

Some have suggested that the school wanted to open up the team to "a broader pool of students" because they couldn't find enough men who were strong enough and wanted to join the squad. But, Michael Downard, a former captain of the cheerleading team who graduated in 2005, said he believes having less emphasis on strength and athleticism will actually make men even less interested in joining the Spirit Squad. Plus, a simple solution to not having enough men to fill the base positions in stunts would be to recruit or train stronger women to do the job, as thousands of squads around the country perform stunts without male cheerleaders. Even if school officials weren't solely motivated by wanting to see less gymnastics and more dancing in skimpy uniforms, the decision was still sexist. Rather than than making the team even more physically challenging for female recruits and those already on the team, they decided that the spirit of UConn has nothing to do with showcasing the abilities of female athletes.

UConn Replaces Cheerleaders With 'Spirit Squad' [The Hartford Courant]
Spirit Squad FAQ [UConn.edu]
Cheerleading Is Leading Cause Of Catastrophic Injury In Young Women [Science Daily]
Looking Ahead For The UConn Cheerleaders [The Daily Campus]

[Los Angeles, June 16. Image via Flynet]

[Los Angeles, June 4. Image via Getty]

Los Angeles Lakers cheerleaders perform during Game 1 of the NBA Finals between Los Angeles Lakers and Orlando Magic at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California, on June 4, 2009. AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS (Photo credit should read GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images)

[New York, May 18. Image via Getty]

NEW YORK - MAY 18: A general view of atmosphere at The Glee Cheerleaders exclusive performance at Fox's Upfront presentation at New York City Center on May 18, 2009 in New York City. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images for Fox)

• A new study has found that exposure to family violence, even at a young age, can cause poor health among older African-American women. • Brittany Mayes, one of the five teens involved in the video-taped assault of a 16-year-old friend and fellow cheerleader, has been sentenced to a year of probation. • Click here to read an interesting interview with writer/filmmaker/actress/artist/musician Miranda July in which she discusses Gossip Girl, her new movie, New York hotels and internet gossip. • Forgetful? Fan of Memento? Buy a To-Do Tattoo Kit. • Chicago's Cook County sheriff's department is suing Craigslist for the many, many sex ads listed in its "casual encounters" section. • An Australian company is selling paper made out of wombat poop for the extremely environmentally conscious/cute-loving among us. • Baby bottle companies have agreed to stop using BPA, a potentially harmful chemical, in their plastic bottles. • 65-year-old Val Renfro was shopping when a man shoved her, grabbed her purse and ran. She grabbed her phone out of her bra, where she always keeps it, dialed 911, and chased down her thief with her car. • What a nightmare: Jean Driscoll, 72, has been burping uncontrollably for two years, and doctors still do not know what is wrong with her. • 70% of male drug addicts admit to taking drugs in order to increase sexual pleasure, the most popular choice being, somewhat surprisingly, cocaine (58%). Only 37% of drug-addicted women report using for this purpose. • A new study shows that older adults are better at controlling their emotions than young adults. Yet another reason to respect your elders. • Prostitute-rating website, The Erotic Review, has severed its ties with founder David Elms because of recent drug charges. • A Tehran court has ruled in favor of blinding the man who attacked Ameneh Bahrami with acid in 2004. Bahrami was left blind in both eyes, but the court ruled that, since her attacker is male and thus his eyes are worth more, he will only be blinded in one. • Using the model of a "pendulum of pain," counselor Steven Stosny explains to CNN why some women are unable to leave their abusers. • Get ready to get stabby: a defense lawyer in a Bahrain gang rape trial has argued that the three men who committed the crime should be acquitted because they only did it for "fun." • A 40-year-old British woman bit off her boyfriend's tongue during a drunken kiss because she was upset she was not pregnant. • Census data shows that minority children may become the majority by 2023. • A recent study found that watching violent cartoons may cause children to act out aggressively against their peers. • Amnesty International has issued a warning about gender-specific violence against women in Iraq. • Sad news: Anne-Marie Rogers, campaigner for breast cancer drug accessibility, has passed away. • In response to recent claims of mishandling rape cases, the University of Portland has changed its handbook with regards to rape victims and underage drinking. • Bed, Bath, and Beyond is sponsoring a contest for female (and only female) inventors to develop new products that will retail in stores. • Ohio has been named the "manliest" state in the country, based on stereotypical criteria such as the popularity of sports teams, tools, hardware, and the frequency of monster truck rallies. •

Well the school district doesn't really explain that, but the girls' lawyers are pretty peeved. Matthew King, who is representing the two families of the girls involved tells the CBS Morning Show, "There is an implied 'boys will be boys' sort of mentality here, where none of the boys who had these photos on their phones were ever punished. That's a problem, we feel."

Over at Nerve, Colleen Kane thinks that this is all part of "the grand old tradition of condemning the high school female slut but not other participants in the slutting, and adds, "We have a feeling that this is the kind of scandal that Europeans love to laugh at Americans for, for being so uptight about nudity in the first place."

Another compounding issue is that one of the girls allegedly took the photos of herself when she was 13, before she attended the high school, so, in that case, the argument is that those actions should not affect her standing at her current school. Early adolescents are going to test the boundaries of their sexuality and sexual expression whether their parents — or school districts — like it or not, and kicking these girls off the cheer squad seems to be an unfitting punishment for something that's not really a crime, but rather a stupid youthful mistake. As one of the girls' mother points out, "If she had been caught taking illegal drugs twice, she would not have been punished this severely. The school has arbitrarily taken away the one thing that my daughter loves most. She will never get that back again."

Cheerleaders' Nude Photos Spark Dispute [CBS News]
Nude High School Cheerleader Scandal Is Disturbing For A Few Reasons [Nerve]

Exclusive: Beaten Florida Cheerleader Speaks Out [ABC News]

Earlier: The Meanest Girls At School Are Often The Most Popular
Cheerleaders May Face Life In Jail For Beating Fellow Teen

[Photo via Right Fielders.]

• A cat has survived being walled in under a bathtub for 7 weeks in Berlin after the feline crept under a bathtub that was being installed. • More stories of survival: A tortoise narrowly escaped being buried under 50 tons of trash at a landfill after his owners accidentallly threw him in the garbage. • Lunatica Desuna has complied a gallery of the different depictions of the Mona Lisa by famous artists like Andy Warhol, Keith Herring, and Marcel Duchamp. • Jeremy Paxman, a TV-presenter on the BBC network, whines that "the worst thing you can be [in the television industry] is a middle-class white male". • A 21-year-old mother undergoing treatment for cervical cancer has been denied Ondansetron, an anti-sickness drug, because it is supposedly too expensive. • Women at the National Theater in London are getting a chance to shine behind the scenes as art directors, designers, and playwrights by giving over the largest stage to a living female playwright's play, a first for the theater • Child rape is rising in Afghanistan's northern provinces (as the government's control begins to be lost to insurgents). • A 47-year-old man in Scarborough, Ontario has claimed to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary in his neighbor's tree. • More than 1/3rd of women between the ages of 18-44 have admitted to sharing prescription drugs in a recent study. • Wooser, Tibet's most famous female writer and blogger, has been arrested by police after being accused of photographing military installations. • Cheerleaders in Monroe, Ohio have been banned from wearing their cheerleading uniforms to school because the short skirts violate a new district-wide dress code on skirt length. •

[Image via Cafe Press]

• 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]