Picture Bring It On, but a whole lot less bitchy.
“Hate us ’cause we’re beautiful, well we don’t like you either. We’re cheerleaders.”
Perhaps some of you remember cheer captain, Big Red, or Wh-Wh-Whitney, belting out this little ditty in the opening cheer-slash-musical number of Bring It On, back in 2000. Anyone? For the uninitiated, the movie features rival teen cheerleading squads—the posh suburban Toros and the East Compton Clovers (whose leaders were played by Y2K screen queens Kirsten Dunst and Gabrielle Union), competing for total glory. Obviously. And just as predictably, the cheer captains serve up plenty of sass and remind us that cheerleading goes hand in hand with toxic mean girl culture, skinny girl diets, and claws-out cattiness.
While cheerleading itself hadn’t made them mainstream in my small Canadian town during my own impressionable years, the magic of satellite TV delivered the unmistakable sorority-girl-esque, vapid, Hollywood cheerleader archetypes to my living room. The social gate-keeping, status-obsessed teen queens portrayed in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Sabrina the Teenage Witch were the worthy predecessors to the queen bees birthed by Bring It On.
Thirty or so years later, my 11-year-old, full-fledged American niece, born to my transplant sister who had settled in small-town USA for its wholesome values and neighborly charm, announced that she wanted to be a cheerleader. She was eager to take her backyard gymnastics routines and TikTok choreography to the stage. To her, cheer seemed the logical next step. To my sister, cheer seemed like a path to flippant ponytails, popularity contests, and perfectly timed eye rolls. Naturally, she had some apprehension.
I remember my sister’s high school experience as distinctly more cheers ‘n beers in the woods than even remotely cheerleader-adjacent, and these days she leans decidedly more hippie than hip-hip-hooray. But not wanting to deter the spirit of her small-for-her-size child who had yet to find her place in the world of sport, she drove her to cheer auditions.
The phone call I received that evening was all squeals: “Auntie—I get to be a flyer!” And my heart burst for her. I hoped she had found her people. And that her people were not in fact reminiscent of the characters in the satellite TV shows of my youth.
My niece went on to break down the main roles—back spot, bases, and flyers. A flyer, I learned, is the one who is lifted, thrown, hoisted, tossed, and, fingers-crossed, caught.
Soon, the family group chat included videos of tiny humans being tossed about with alarming confidence and, if I’m being completely honest, slightly sadistic smiles. My own heart pumped. I could practically feel the adrenaline.
And somewhere in the rush of living vicariously through her, the flyer I was imagining wasn’t my niece anymore.
It was… me.
My rural upbringing had seen me riding horses and occasionally performing dance routines with my sisters on the roof of the barn (a particularly cringe number involving beach towel choreography and The Beach Boys’ “Kokomo” comes to mind). While friends signed up for things that involved a uniform or an audience, I was the kid who didn’t want to rock the boat, ask for too much, or risk disappointing my parents with something frivolous.
Because asking, in my mind, carried an implication—that I believed I might be good at something. That I deserved a shot. And that felt dangerously close to arrogance.
I felt the pull, sure. I just never voiced it. The me who was afraid to want, afraid to shine, to draw attention, to be seen as self-important, quietly packed those curiosities away.
As a city-dwelling grown up, I had dipped my toe into dance and more recently tried my hand at acro yoga, discovering that I enjoyed putting my trust in a partner. But any semblance of a team sport, one combining strength and choreography with a side of sparkle, no less, was something I had never even considered.
And then there it was, the pull.
Was this envy I was feeling? Did I want to fly too? Maybe I’d missed my calling. I was almost certain that I could still do a cartwheel. Did that count? I found myself auditing my untapped potential—a midlife spiral down the rabbit hole of shoulda, woulda, coulda.
So, naturally, I did the only logical thing: I sat down at my computer and Googled adult beginner cheer near me.
And I shit you not, it’s a thing! Now, I realize for the cheer-initiated, there is nothing remotely eyebrow-raising here. But for me, without children or a gateway to youth sports culture, this was a world I knew not of. It wasn’t until Netflix’s Cheer that I began to understand that cheerleading was more than a sideline to sports and a nod to cute skirts. That it was actually a skilled sport itself, requiring discipline and strength (if also a propensity for those slightly sadistic smiles). And I had judgmentally rolled my eyes at that other Netflix series—the one where 20-something-year-old Dallas Cowboys cheerleader hopefuls cry crocodile tears after being cut from their “one true calling.”
And yet, here I was at 45, about to embark on a mission to become a cheerleader.
I arrived for my first meetup. Or maybe it was a practice. I did not yet know the lingo. I also did not know the dress code. Although the website had indicated “no experience necessary,” I was the only who fell into this category. As we lined up, according to height, my black Nike trail runners stood out among the delicate white shoes favored by the cheer moms and former cheerleaders in attendance. Having found myself at the short end of the queue since elementary school photo day, I was shocked to discover I’d landed among the tall.
But stature, it turned out, was not an indication of strength. I was lifted with relative ease by a few of the veterans who stepped forward to test out this rookie. And though my treaded soles no doubt dug into the palms of their hands, nobody flinched. These cheerleaders were tough. As for me, my arms may have flailed and my knees may have wobbled as I took my first flight, but who can remember. My face, I know, unquestionably smiled.
On the way home, I called my niece and squealed into the phone, “I get to be a flyer!”
Truth be told, it wasn’t an earned spot. Contrary to the romantic idea in my head of everyone wanting to be a flyer, it turned out very few actually did. Something to do with middle age, a healthy respect for gravity, and joint pain.
Though I kept it on the down-low, Monday nights became my cheer day. Donning my new white shoes, I slowly learned the ropes. My niece tutored me on to the lingo over FaceTime: libs, toe touches, extensions, basket tosses, half-ups, and tick tocks. How to High-V correctly. You see, your fists make little cinnamon buns (pinky-side) and big cinnamon buns (thumb and forefinger), and one must always, and I do mean always, show their big cinnamon buns to the world.
Just a few weeks in, I woke up to a poll in the cheer team group chat about bows: “Please indicate your preference: stiff bow, floppy bow, or flat bow.”
Having learned only at that moment that there would be a hair adornment for our end-of-season competition, this was a decision I felt ill-equipped to make. I’d need more information. I’d also need to screenshot and share this with my sister. Because this was absurd, right? I was above this, wasn’t I? I included LOL emojis, lest she think I was taking this seriously.
But what if I was? And what would that say about me? Would that make me shallow and ridiculous like Big Red and Whitney? Or was it brave and bold? I was once again spiralling. Conflicted.
But feeling embarrassed to proclaim my wholehearted participation, while quietly committing to it, began to feel disingenuous. Especially when my teammates were accomplished and kind and strong and pretty badass. Was I avoiding being boxed in by the very trope I had bought into?
And so, I owned it. I tried to. Be it ever-so-slowly, I made the conscious effort to shake off my reluctance to admit that I loved it. I mean, voicing to colleagues that I couldn’t work late because, “I have cheer tonight” are words I never thought I’d utter in a conference room. But, here I was.
As the sole rookie on the squad, for the next six months, the team ranging in age from 21 to 56 would have my back, my feet, my thighs, and handfuls of my butt, as I learned to keep my shit tight when hoisted into the air and to fall gracefully when I didn’t. Stepping on some boobs, kicking some faces, and even peeing my pants just a little, once or twice in the process.
At the year-end competition, with cracking joints, mismatched shorts, and cotton tank tops, our mighty masters team made our way to the front of the room through a sea of shimmering youth—all sequins and sparkly bows (I now know I prefer a stiff bow, for the record).
The unselfconscious joy of girls who had not yet learned to second-guess themselves filled the room as they chanted, “We are proud of you! We are proud of you!”
Maybe I was just a little bit proud of myself, too.
While Bring it On was followed by six direct-to-video sequels and plenty of sarcastic and quotable one-liners, I am gearing up for my own sequel season.
And just as Bring it On was as much about cheerleading as it was, believe it or not, about urban race relations and systemic inequality—for real, go ahead and re-watch it as a grownup—perhaps my own toe-dipping into the world of cheer was also about something bigger. I mean, not that big—but maybe it was about dropping preconceived notions and following a pull. As we get older and feel the shoulda, coulda, wouldas of our inner child slipping away, maybe it’s time to say yes to things that make us feel a bit ridiculous, or laugh, or pee our pants just a little. Maybe it’s about reclaiming the things we quietly set aside.
So, bring it on, I say! Call it a midlife crisis, call it crazy, or just call me Wh-Wh-Whitney.
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