I am not a pretty girl, that is not what I do

God help you if you are an ugly girl
Of course, too pretty is also your doom
'Cause everyone harbors a secret hatred
for the prettiest girl in the room
-- Ani DiFranco

I once tried out for cheerleading.

Despite my general disdain for all things stereotypical and gender-biased and demeaning and choreographed, I lined up with dozens of other girls in the bubble-domed gym on the second or third day of Frosh Week in my first year at university. I went as a favour to a high school friend who had ended up at the same university, who had been a cheerleader in high school, and who begged me to come to try-outs so she wouldn't be alone.

None of the other girls we knew at school had agreed to go, which probably should have warned me. But I had no idea what I was getting into at the time -- my only hesitation was the fact that if any of my male friends found out, I would never hear the end of it.

Most of the people I hung out with in high school tended to judge cheerleading by its American mid-west stereotypes: a bunch of pretty, stupid girls bouncing around the edges of a football field or in front of the gym bleachers, shaking their pom-poms both literally and figuratively, cheering on the boys with inane spelling games and fighting amongst themselves for attention and world domination. You know, like Mean Girls, but in the '50s.

Not that anyone would blame us for believing it -- Hollywood has done its part to perpetuate that stereotype. This is not a democracy. It's a cheerocracy.... whatever that means. Did you ever see Molly Ringwald play a cheerleader? No, because she's always supposed to be the outsider, the one who gets it, the one who's above all that high school popularity bullshit (while simultaneously pining for the most popular rich boy). She'd never be caught dead in a short pleated skirt, although she'd give her panties to a geek to save his rep as a dude. It's not just the '80s either -- look at Glee, one of the most inventive TV shows around right now. Their cheerleader, while smart and talented in areas other than backflips and wiggling, is just another Kirsten Dunst: blonde, vindictive, selfish and manipulative. And, um, knocked up.

Part of this is just your typical sexism, the refusal to believe that a bunch of girls or women can be around each other for longer than ten minutes without dissolving in cat-fights and back-stabbing. That women as a group are more likely to be supportive and nurturing than calculating each other's failures, that hanging out with your girlfriends makes you feel happy and positive instead of insecure and self-hating. Not to mention the fact that guys probably don't hate having a bunch of pretty, athletic girls dancing around on the sidelines while they perform their heroics.

So it's not hard to fathom why my friends and I didn't hang out with any cheerleaders. I should point out that by the time I was in high school, between 1998 and 2003, most cheerleading squads were far more focused on athletic competition and gymnastics than cheers and pom-poms. There were even a few guys cheerleading, but of course with the usual homophobia resulting. I don't know if it's different in the United States, what with the cult-like adoration entire towns seem to feel for high school football teams. Probably the more stereotypical cheerleaders abound in Canada too, along with the more enlightened ones. But none of this erases the fact that cheerleading -- like gymnastics, dancing, swimming, and every other activity highly dependent on a certain body type -- seems to drag girls into hyper-awareness of weight and body image, unhealthy eating practices, and girl-on-girl politics.

Fast-forward to my university campus in September 2003. Sitting on the edge of the indoor track inside the dome, we listened as a tight-muscled, tight-shorts-wearing, perfectly made-up young woman explained what we were signing up for. If we made the team, there would be daily practices and monitored work-outs at the campus gym. There would be competition meets at other schools, many of them requiring travel, at least every other week. The hours of commitment were more than any of us were prepared to allot to a part-time job throughout our entire university careers. Oh, and it cost hundreds of dollars as well, for uniforms and travel fees. Essentially, cheerleading WAS a job -- and a lifestyle. And on that note, it was time to stand up and perform.

I have tried out for many teams in many sports before, and played several of them for years. I've been to sports camps where I was forced to run around in 30-degree sun while bored counselors sat in the shade. I've been the camp counselor, the peer helper, the social coordinator, the orientation volunteer leading younger students in physical activity requiring endless adrenaline and memorized chants and face paint. And I've had personal trainers push me to my limits in weight rooms. Yet I can honestly say that the three-hour university cheerleading tryout was the most physically demanding thing I have ever done in my life.

We ran laps. We did push-ups. We did lifts and standing formations and routine falls. We did burpees, a form of torture I can only assume was invented sometime during the Spanish Inquisition. Halfway through, my face was so red I thought my skin would burst into flame, along with my burning muscles and lungs. I never caught my breath fully during the whole ordeal, and I wheezed for days afterward. My hands shook, my knees trembled, my heels and shins locked up and stayed there.

And that was day one of a multi-day try-out.

As my friend and I dragged ourselves and our backpacks up the hill toward our residence halls around 6 o'clock that night, I think we both re-evaluated the myth of the cheerleader. My friend resigned herself to the fact that university-level cheerleading is an entirely different beast than the simple high-school competition she was used to. As for me, I was beginning to understand why so many cheerleaders were supposedly such evil creatures, since you'd have to be a true masochist to put yourself through that experience on a daily basis.

Although that day was my first and last venture into the squad life, I later met other girls who were more successful at it. One of them even went on to cheer for a professional football team. And let me just say this: I may not have much respect for the cheerleader ideal, but I will never mess with one of those girls. I've seen what it takes to make them what they are, and it's not pretty.