Comments on: You Can Cheer If You Want To

By: Kate

Kate — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 01:37:05 +0000

I think that if a plus sized person has the talent, commitment and skills to become a cheerleader, then so be it.
There shouldnt be a too big limit or anything like that. if you have the talent you should be fine & its wrong to make a just “fat” team. Society needs to pul the stick out of its ass and look that people are amazing no matter what shape or size. Everyone is loved by god and thats all that really matters. I’m not plus size but i am somewhere in the middle & have struggled with obiesity my whole life. Somehow this really realates to me.
People need to draw a fine line between what is funny and what hurts & all these fat jokes and pointing and laughing DOES HURT. i mean we are human too. thats like making fun of somebody with blonde hair, blue eyes or skin color. DISCRIMINATION.! Is america really going to go through that type of humiliation on its part just to be a size 0? I would sure hope not. Everyone thinks hitler was wrong and that slaves was wrong. but hey everyone is doing the same thing with discriminating against a bigger race.!
ITS NOT FAIR!!!! People just need to take a stand and realize history is repeating itself over and over again with discrimination.

By: thatgirljj

thatgirljj — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:42:37 +0000

So wait… fat people aren’t allowed to be funny now either? Looking through some of the Matador’s material at least, it looks like these guys are big time fans first and foremost and having some fun getting the other fans amped up.

I mean, some of this does upset me. Women are allowed if they’re teensy weensy slender and conventionally pretty, while men are allowed to be large and funny, but neither large women nor fit men are welcome on the squads. And the whole sub-conversation about really poor compensation for squads that are obviously a draw is really interesting.

But just because a fat person is performing humor does that automatically make it a fat minstrel show? If so, we’d have to get rid of a lot of REALLY funny comedians in the name of fat acceptance.

By: littlem

littlem — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 01:13:59 +0000

“You can’t take these people seriously when they’re so hypocritical.”

Nice one, Bree.

By: msruth

msruth — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:54:29 +0000

In fact, if you’d like to read more about them, go here http://www.thebigballet.co.uk/index.php?pid=ensembles&hid=the-big-ballet

To quote “grace, elegance, charisma and nimbleness is not the demesne of the “thin”, proudly presenting their voluptuous yet surprisingly sinuous and flexible figures.”

and go look at the galleries, their amazing, especially the ones of their lead dancer doing arabesques etc.

By: msruth

msruth — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:38:11 +0000

I don’t know, I mean it sounds like it’s just a laugh at fatties things, but there was a plus sized ballet group from Russia that toured the UK a while back and they were amazing. And I mean real plus-sized not plus-sized-for-ballet (they had four men for some of the lists). They were all women who having had you know done it since they were kids, were obsessed, gave it all their time, were really talented etc etc, but had been getting increasingly marginalised by their schools as they grew into their adult bodies…so they formed their own school or something, I don’t quite remember, but hurrah!. Anyway, to quit rambling, the point was they were so graceful and beautiful and such amazing dancers, that even though at first I thought it was just going to be a novelty thing, but by the end I’d forgotten they were ‘fat ballet dancers’, they’d just become dancers.

By: ginger

ginger — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:07:12 +0000

I interpreted Lisa’s question as meaning that all of the aspects except the gender of the cheerleaders would be the same – the fat-mocking name and the presence of a parallel “serious” cheerleading group of slender women. Of course it’s great and liberating to have a fat dance troupe or a fat cheer squad. I’d love it if we had size-blind troupes and squads, too, where there was a mix of body types. But in this particular case, I think she was getting at the idea that we might be more accepting of fat men making their weight the butt of a joke than we would be of fat women doing the same.

By: cathy

cathy — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:32:36 +0000

Uh, a troup of all fat women cheerleaders and you say that like it is a bad thing? What about that group of all fat women singers that posters here were rooting for on that one talent show just because they were fat?

By: Richard

Richard — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:13:11 +0000

“I do think that, regardless of whether one is given money or tickets or whatever … well, it just doesn’t ever seem to be ok to me.”

So… you’re saying that fat people shouldn’t be allowed to join a dance squad? Or that choreographers shouldn’t be allowed to work with fat people (at least, not in public)? Maybe some kind of weight-limit should be applied?

I don’t think that was your point (in fact I’m sure it wasn’t), but that would be the only way to enforce what you’re talking about.

By: MizFit

MizFit — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:17:16 +0000

yeah I saw this and DIDNT LAUGH AT ALL.

thought it was just me….

By: Jadette

Jadette — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 06:41:42 +0000

Yeah, I think I would. It’s definitely not something I could do myself, as I am extremely introverted…. But any type of performance job, for a fat person, carries the risk of being made fun of. So should all fat people shrink away from the limelight because someone might say something mean about us? WTF? Most of us run the risk of being made fun of every single day. That doesn’t mean I’m going to shutter myself in my home and never come out. (However, I’ll admit, I’ve been tempted.) For whatever reason, these guys WANT to do this, and I’ll support them. Now, the really interesting thing will be to see if they actually get enough interested guys to go through with this idea…