The Science Cheerleaders Are Totally Radical...

The Science Cheerleaders Are Totally Radical...

via On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess on 12/1/10

I am afraid for you all, my lovelies. I am afraid that the end of the world may be near. The Seven Seals are being opened. When the first four seals are opened, the horsemen of the Apocalypse appear. When the fifth seal is opened, Isis blogs about feminism without calling anyone a fuck-knuckle.

Figure 1: And when the fifth seal was broken, Isis lost the ability to call anyone a cockweasel. Thus, the people knew that this was the end of days.

What has caused this amazing change in everyone's favorite domestic and laboratory diva? The Science Cheerleaders and, specifically, this video:

Video 1: Science Cheerleaders at the USA Science and Engineering Festival.

The USA Science and Engineering Festival is an amazing event aimed at inspiring young people. The America Physiological Society was there and presented some cool hands on physiology. As an aside, if you have a child in grades K-2, check out their new online physiology experiments with Phizzy the Physiology Bear.

But, the Science Cheerleaders were also there and their attendance has been more than a smidge controversial. The debate seems to surround the question, "Should cheerleaders be be using their sexy cheerleading abilities to promote science?" One side feel squicked out at the idea of using sexy cheerleaders to encourage the public to care about science. The other side of the discussion (which includes several scientists who used to be cheerleaders) doesn't like to be told that they can't be sexy. Or something like that. People wrote some stuff (see, see, see, see, see?). Somewhere someone called someone a twat. Brian from LabSpaces wrote some total n00b, crazy shit.

But, the real question everyone is asking is, "What does Isis think of the Science Cheerleaders?"  Jason from Thoughtful Animal asked me this question more than a year ago.  Another reader emailed me this evening to see if I was going to join in the current discussion.  Well, lest I be called a twat (although I have been called worse), I am going to join in and I am going to say that I actually like the Science Cheerleaders.

Figure 2: Take off your shocked pants, dear reader.

I think the reason I approve of their appearance at the USA Science and Engineering Festival is that I don't believe they were there to use sex to sell science to people, making many of the posts about the Science Cheerleaders not pertinent to the central discussion of whether the Science Cheerleaders hurt or help science outreach.  I think the Science Cheerleaders had a much more subversive goal that many folks missed.  Allow me to elaborate...

When I was a little girl, my mother tried desperately to cram my squirming self into frilly dresses.  These dresses soon found mud puddles.  She bought me a Strawberry Shortcake kitchen set, which I quickly abandoned to play with my best friend Johnny's He-Man and Transformer action figures.  One year she encouraged me to be Princess Leia for Halloween and was dismayed that I really wanted to be Darth Vader.  Then, when I was six years old Johnny started playing Pop Warner football.  My mom encouraged me to start cheerleading. 

I really enjoyed it and did it for quite a long time, although I will confess that I secretly wanted to play football with Johnny.  My performance was positively reinforced with praise.  Bows, bloomers, and backflips were all positively reinforced with praise.  And while I can't say that I look back on cheerleading with any negative emotions - in fact, when something good happens to me I think in my head "S-U-C-C-E-S-S! That's the way we spell success!! - I also know that my life before about junior high school was full of praise for frilly dresses, toy kitchens, gender appropriate costume choices, and gender appropriate after school activities.  I know that I didn't receive much encouragement to think about science and math, except from my dad who helped me wire a science project in the third grade to test the conductivity of different materials, and read all the Charlie Brown 'Cyclopedia volumes about science with me over and over, and gave me all of his old science fiction novels from he was a kid.  They were awesome and yellowed and well-worn.  He always seemed proud of me when I took things apart.

But, I digress....

I also knew going in to junior high school that, according to my non-cheerleader friends, the cheerleaders were not supposed to be the smart ones.  They were successful because they were beautiful and had friends, not because they had to think.  Some of my cheerleader friends really owned that stereotype, frequently consciously dumbing down their opinions until they no longer needed to do it consciously.  That made me uncomfortable because, at that age, I was beginning to become interested in science and math as a career - the teenage equivalent of sitting in a mud puddle in your frilly dress.

Darlene Cavalier's Science Cheerleaders came to the festival to engage young girls with upbrigings similar to my own, who had been sold a particular set of stereotypes about what a cheerleaders looks and acts like and what a scientist looks and acts like and aimed to turn these stereotypes on their heads.  If you don't believe that is one of her goals, take a look at Darlene's video interviewing four Eagles cheerleaders who are also in science-related careers.  Or, read her own story.

Video 2: A mathematician, a research scientist, an occupational therapist, and an operating room nurse.

In that sense the Science Cheerleaders remind me of the Radical Cheerleading movement. Radical Cheerleading began in 1996 when Aimee and Cara Jennings of Sarasota Florida were planning to attend a Youth Liberation conference and were frustrated with the typical course of ineffective, male-dominated protest.  So, they went back to their high school cheerleading days, put on pleated skirts, fishnet stockings, and made pom poms out of garbage bags, and cheered "I'm sexy! I'm cute! Political to boot!"   The sisters certainly gained attention and there are now Radical Cheerleading groups all over the world.  Some groups dress more like "traditional" cheerleaders than others.  Some groups attend formal cheer camps while others learn from each other.  Many groups tackle feminist, racial, and LGBT issues using the appeal of the cheerleader to get the initial attention then encourage the watcher to reconcile the medium with the message of social justice.  This is similar to what the Science Cheerleaders are doing - challenging mothers and daughters to reconcile the medium and their preconceived notions of what a girl should aspire to with the reality of what these women have achieved.  The Science Cheerleaders have a key to the world of these women who might not be as accessible via usual science outreach methods.

In a post from Zuska about the Science Cheerleaders, she discussed a summer camp-style program she ran at K-State that encouraged girls to pursue science.  Zuska argues that this is a much more socially conscious and pro-feminism model for science outreach. She also contends that these girls probably would not have been pursuaded by Science Cheerleaders.  But, that's because they were coming from parents who were sending them to science camp.  Not the cheerleading camp Zuska describes as being close by.  The children being sent to this camp were already hearing the message that science was an option for them and were receiving positive reinforcement for their attendance.  Now imaging the attendees of the nearby cheerleading camp, who have never had the idea of science positively reinforced.  How well would the idea of being sent to Zuska's science camp go over with them were they simply presented the idea en face?

Now, ponder the alternative.  The girls at the nearby cheerleading camp receive a visit from the Science Cheerleaders - women engaged in an activity that has positively reinforced.  Then the Science Cheerleaders tell these girls about the amazing science careers they have and challenge the stereotype that women in science are cold, childless, and unhappy.  Perhaps for the first time these girls see themselves as scientists.  That's the most subversive type of science outreach there is.  A bad ass Trojan Horse of science outreach.  Using a stereotype to access a potentially unreachable population to challenge the stereotype.

Now, we can have a discussion about whether women should be cheerleaders to begin with, and whether it's ok for the Science Cheerleaders to enjoy being cheerleaders, but then we had better haul out the big bag of patriarchy and start taking sticks.  There isn't a one of us women who doesn't have feelings about cheerleaders that aren't rooted in our relationship to the patriarchy.  Being sexy is my right and makes me feel good.  Cheerleaders are sluts.  Girls who aren't cheerleaders are just jealous because they are not pretty.  None of us are going to have it right because we've all been smacked differently with the patriarchy stick.  Perhaps at the nexus of our collective experience lies the truth.  Or, perhaps all of the positive and negative opinions simply cancel each other out and we're left with nothing.

So, it's best to deal with the current reality.  Many young girls are guided toward cheerleading and many are taught that cheerleaders are not supposed to be scientists.  There is a pervasive stereotype that girls are not as smart as boys.  Darlene Cavalier's Science Cheerleaders challenge this with a message that resonates with these girls using a social context that they can identify with.  Frankly I applaud her efforts and offer her a supportive "Rah Rah!"

Figure 3: Cheerleaders from Virginia Union University.

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