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Hi everyone, and welcome back to America Under the Microscope.欢迎回来【闲话美国】. Hello James.

Hello Lulu.

So what are we gonna talk about today？

I got something for you. Give me a ‘G’ give me an ‘O’ give me a ‘G’ give me an ‘O’, (clap clap) let's go.

James, have you been doing some cheerleading？

Maybe.

I dare not to ask, so I'm assuming we're gonna talk about cheerleaders.

Yes, we are absolutely gonna talk about cheerleading.

这种啦啦队,啦啦操cheerleading, cheerleaders. Honestly, if our audience watch any American TV show, movies, that is one of the cultural symbol, isn't it？

Yeah. It's so many things, it’s like any program that is about high school or college, it’s like there're the cheerleaders. It is ubiquitous.

特别是青春偶像剧、校园剧里面一定有cheerleaders.

So first of all, let's establish what exactly is cheerleading. They lead cheers?

Cheerleading at its core is a group that is there to lead the fans or the audience of a sporting event, and cheers to support their team.

So the ones that organize everyone to say加油加油that…

Yes. Now also probably not surprising, the group is mostly women. However, ...

You do have some men.

There are men in cheerleading, it is an event that is open to everybody.

But honestly, is it a little bit strange if you hear men want to join cheerleading, was a or ...

That probably was the case a while ago, but nowadays with the current generation, probably nobody would care, because nowadays a lot of people was like that's what you like to do. Cool.

Okay. I always remember in modern family, Phil, the dad, was into cheerleading. Because they need men to support, especially if they are trying to就是叠那种高塔human pyramid, and they need people who are bigger stronger at the bottom.

So the men do lot of the lifting. They will also do the flips and twirls; we'll talk about that in a little bit.

So in America, cheerleading is big in high school, and in college; and you will mostly see them at American football games and basketball. Yeah. And clothing is actually no different than what you would see on the TV shows and programs. For the girls, it's gonna be skirts sweater with the school logo on it. They'll have their pom-poms.

Pom-poms就是毛茸茸的球. Pom-poms that you can shake.

They will usually also have cheer cones, just these big cons to send their voice out further.

像个喇叭筒那种cheer cones.

Yeah, and then they'll always have some catchy cheers like I started our podcast today but there's...

Give me something give me… and then they spelled the…name…

It's like, they spelled out they'll have unique ones for their school. They will do routines with like the pet band. So the band would play a song, and they'll do like a dance routine that goes with that song. It's a whole big thing.

Okay. So like what you were saying, that give this, give me a ‘G’, give me an ‘O’, that's like a chant for that particular school or team.

Right.

But this sounds like it takes a lot of coordination, a lot of training. It's not just something you say, oh, today I will go to cheer for my team you can go.

Right. So because a lot of people have the stereotypical view that it's just the beautiful girl, the popular girl doing cheerleading, but the fact is cheerleaders are likely to be very athletic girls and very strong muscular men.

就都是运动健将型的athletic.

Because the girls will be required to do dance movements, flip movements, human pyramids. The guys need to be able to lift the girls and hold the girls.

It's pretty much gymnastics.就是体操.

There is a lot of similarity between it and gymnastics. It's also, what a lot of people don't know is, it’s a competitive sport in America.

Oh，that I've heard. I actually know a friend's daughter is actually competing in cheerleading tournaments, I think.

Yeah. In the cheer tournaments, they'll be graded on like how good their movements are.

Coordination...

The coordination, and the complication of their dance, cheers, and so on. And it's very competitive.

It's just another form of gymnastics really, almost.

It pretty much is, in fact there are some girls, the reason they do cheerleading is because their schools or they don't have gymnastics available.

I see, I see, and are these girls just basically like特长生basically they focus on cheerleading. They don't really care that much about their studies?

No, because if you do cheerleading in school, it's considered an extracurricular activity, just like if you played basketball for the school, so you have to maintain good grades.

Otherwise, they'll drop you.

They'll drop you off the team. So, it's no different than if you were on the basketball team, maintain your grades, then you can do the program; your grades drop, sorry, study is more important.

So, it is quite different from the stereotype on movies and TV shows where these girls are pretty much just like almost, for lack of a better word, the mean girls, the popular girls who are just hanging around with like ball players all day, and not really doing any study.

That's not what I experienced in school, the cheerleaders, they were fairly popular because they were cheerleaders, but they took their cheerleading seriously. They went there it's like, oh this is for popularity, no, they..

This is sport for them.

This is sport for them.

Although you said it's popular in high school college. But you also see it in for example NBA games.

Yes.

Like Laker girls.

So there is professional cheerleading. So like NBA, the professional American Football League, also use cheerleaders, but a big difference between the professional cheerleaders and say the sport cheerleading from school is the professionals is more of like a dance troop.

They don't do like all these really complex human pyramid things, these super competitive moves, they're mostly dancing.

They're dancing, still do the cheers, the cheers is something they will do. But they'll dance like during pauses or halftime to entertain the crowd and...

It's a big highlight actually.

It’s a big highlight, and the aesthetic of the professional cheerleaders is a little bit different than the college and high school cheerleaders, because professional cheerleaders they're not looking for the like more tumbling gymnastic type. They're actually looking more for the dancer type.

所以其实像NBA中间的什么Laker girls那种感觉更像是跳舞的, and they are usually just sexier in a… for example bustier, but with the high school, the people who are actually doing all these gymnastic type of cheerleading high school in college. They're more athletic.

They're much more athletic.

Okey. So that is the basic about cheerleading. I'm sure some of our listeners probably tried or watched cheerleading up close, I know for a fact in some international schools in China, they actually do have cheerleading that they can choose that as a sport or extracurricular activity.

If you have any experience with cheerleading, leave us a comment in the comment section; or if you want to say anything about cheerleading or ask anything.

In the advanced episode, we're gonna go deeper into this topic. Thank you, James for coming to the studio.

Thank you for inviting me. Thank you for listening, everyone.

See you next time.

Bye.

Bye.