gimme a J!Muffti guesses the enforcement/legislative side of tznius in America began when the FCC reacted to Janet Jackson’s famous ‘wardrobe malfunction’. It has since gone on. The latest front in the tzinius wars (though not under that name) is Texas, where legislators have threatened schools whose cheerleaders perform overly sexy routines. Apparently things have gotten too sexy at high school and even middle school football games. This inspired Democrat Al Edwards of Houston proposed last week to bar “sexually oriented” performances during sporting events at Texas high schools, middle schools and elementary schools.

How ribald are the routines?

It’s just too sexually oriented, you know, the way they’re shaking their behinds and going on, breaking it down…And then we say to them, ‘don’t get involved in sex unless it’s marriage or love, it’s dangerous out there’ and yet the teachers and directors are helping them go through those kind of gyrations.

Well, THAT wasn’t very informative. In another interview, Edwards clarified:

The way they’re moving their bodies, it’s not twirling or doing the splits. Those majorettes are doing things that are sexual.

Ah, now Muffti gets it. Cheerleaders should be twirling and doing the splits. Moving your body and breaking it down are the real enemy.

Anyhow, the bill passed the Texas House of Representatives with a surprising 85-55 final tally. It still has to pass through the Texan Senate. The bill lacks a provision that clearly lays out what sort of behaviour is actually offensive. Stick to splits and twirls, boys and girls! Otherwise, your whole school could suffer from diminished funding. As Edwards puts it:

The legislation said we don’t want to see that anymore or we might cut your funding later.

So now even the students have a vested interest in making sure they don’t get turned on at the games.

Oh well. Muffti guess we’ll always have Bring it On, Bring it On Again, and the less realistic Bimbo Cheerleaders from Outer Space to remind us of the pre-legislative, racier days of the art of cheer.

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31 Comments

  • Bring it on Texas! Oh it’s been “buh-roughten!”
    Clearly Texas is not a cheerocracy.

  • Those poor lil’ ‘ol Texas gals. This may seem silly to many of you, but this is a serious issue that requires serious consideration. Hey, I’m all for giving those routines a little cleaning up, but we have to look at how this could impact the Texas economy.

    Think about it. Texans are known for what? Big, that’s what. Big hair, big cars, big…. you know whats. Especially on cheerleaders, right? (C’mon guys, you know what I mean).

    Now think for a moment about what effect this law could have on Texan plastic surgeons. Probably the same efffect as the removal of the OU hechsher on Fuji film!

    Read on:

    (WOMENSENEWS)–This summer 17-year-old Aubrie Wills is getting a special graduation present. It’s not a new wardrobe, a laptop computer or a trip to Cancun. It’s a set of breasts.

    “If I go to college, then no one’s going to know my boobs were small,” said the Grapevine High School senior who endures teasing in suburban Dallas. “It would be a lot more evident if I did it in the middle of the school year.”

    Her mother, grandmother, two aunts and stepmother have implants. Aubrie, who turns 18 in July, hopes to enhance her 32A cups to a small C. “If my mom is offering to pay for it now, why not?” she said.

    The [breast augmentation] phenomenon is taking off across the country, but doctors say implants are especially popular in Texas and California. (ed. note: both are hotbeds of cheerleading debauchery).

    “When I graduated high school in 1990, the big thing was nose jobs,” said Jo Trizila, director of media relations for the Greater Dallas Chamber. Now, 8 of her 10 friends have implants. Those who couldn’t afford them took out a loan. (ed. note: or cashed in their Bat Mitvah checks- “Thanks, Bubbie!”).

  • This is going to be troublesome – cheerleader is one of our spam block words. So if you want to comment here and want it to appear right away, just spell it cheer leader or something. We’ll go back and fix it later. We’ve gotten a lot of cheerleader porn comment spam (DUH!) so we had to block tht word. We also blocked Texas. But have no fear. If your comment doe not appear right away, you can let us know and we’ll take it out of the moderation cue. Or just spell Texas differently. We’ll fix that too. In either case, please don’t panic!

  • Please, ck delete my redundant postings, I beg of you. The comment window kept disappearing after I posted and my attempted posts didn’t show up. I know, a likely excuse. Please?

  • While seeing high school girls in cheer oufits getting their swerve on may be great for the pedophile in many of my contemporaries, it just can’t be good for the youth. I remember when I was in high school, girls dressed like the teenagers they were (of course there were some notably slutty exceptions), and not like the ho-ed out young celebs who are so popular today. I’m only talking about 10 years ago, not the 50’s or anything. I try to be a progressive person, but I guess this is just one arena in which I can’t help but be conservative. I can’t stand seeing girls in their early teens dressed like Britney, Paris, or whoever. Their parents should be ashamed.

  • While we are at it, I think all photos of President Bush in his cheerleading garb should be photoshopped to avoid any lasciviousness.

    By the way, the punishment for this debauchery – this vile cheerleading and shaking of tushees (sp?) – should be a public spanking with the offensive uniform removed and the wayward butt exposed.

  • Yeah, Muffti wasn’t really sure what to make of the cheerleading thing. He thinks TM is right: punishing schools for their squad seems draconian. Should the principal really have to act as a censor for routines that may or may not fall under a vague clause?

    In any case, Muffti is generally against the Tznius revolution, so he guess he is against this bill as well. But that’s just him.

  • Isn’t Tznius Tznius Revolution an interactive video game that is all the rage in Japan? I think I saw it in a Times Square arcade next to “Dance Dance Revolution” and “Karaoke Revolution.”

    In high school, a friend and I once designed tznius cheerleading uniforms (ankle-length skirts and all), and then realized that the dancing (not to mention all that jumping) would still be a problem. Additionally, we were um, not the popular people in our class, so I was pretty sure that our Geek Cheerleader Initiative wouldn’t ever yield the popularity that the movies promised. We then further realized that we had no sports teams to cheer anyway and just joined drama club instead.

    To this day, I have a fascination with cheerleading. And with high schools that have functioning sports teams. Or athletes.

    Bring It On broughtened it, big time. Eliza Dushku’s my hero.

    Conserva-Girl, I’m a little weirded out by the prospect of grandma having implants. But the good news is I just found my band name: Grandma’s Implants.

  • There was a report on NPR this morning about a movement among a number of Christian groups to essentially rewrite into the history of the United States a very strong Christian religious influence. Combine this with the recent election and its emphasis on “moral values” and the current leadership of Congress and the Senate, not to mention the newfound passion for religiosity among politicians, and it all smells of one big movement toward religion on the grassroots as well as the political levels.

    Somebody wrote the other day that it has become very challenging for some people to run for office in the US if they don’t show some outward connection to a faith or to a god. They pointed out that nobody runs on a proud platform of being an atheist.

    If the discussion is about the sexualization of America’s teens, I think this is a valid concern and a societal issue that needs addressing. However, taking on cheerleading and ascribing evil sexuality to it without dealing with broader problems that matter far more, is not unlike picking a raisin out of a fruit & nut chocolate bar, pointing at it and saying, “You bad raisin! You stop being so naughty, surrounded by that chocolate that’s bad for me.”

    Now try to picture a raisin with the cheerleading uniform off, and the wayward butt spanked…

  • That’s twice you mentioned that TM. And I am not going to add that graphic even though the internet is rotten with naughty cheerleader spanking pics …

    Speaking of tznius – Esther!!! That Video. WE MUST LINK TO IT! It is the Madonna/Kabbalah/Tznius Tznius Revolution band!

  • Yeah, TM, Muffti totally agrees that the religiousization of all things America is a bad thing. Specially if it’s done by dopey anti-science christians. Muffti was just trying to contextualize and place the small scale attack on sexy, slutty cheer-lead-ers in the great scheme of an attack on sexy, slutty everything.

    Esther, tznius cheer-lead-er outfits? Yeesh. You must have been tons-o-fun in high school… 🙂

  • Muffti, I could be tons of fun. I mean, I totally had friends. We just were more of the nerd variety. And give me a break, what would you have done in yeshiva high school?

    CK, wish granted.

  • Yeah, good point. Maybe the moral is that no one has fun at a yeshiva high school.

  • A stong religious christain influence? in american history? hmmm you mean our “founding fathers” weren’t athiests. I’m shocked

  • Many legal scholars will happily tell you that the founding fathers had the opportunity to create a Christian nation but instead pointed us in the direction of non-Christian nation. One of the people interviewed on NPR mentioned that at the Supreme Court, the justices have a frieze nearby that includes images of not just Moses holding the tablets, but also Hammurabi, Solomon, and Confucius. On the opposite wall is a frieze with other well-known folks including Justinian, Muhammad, King John, Louis IX and Napoleon. The indication would seem to be that our laws are not founded solely upon Christian ideas and ideals

  • . . . “To which the girls of the Dallas Cowboy’s Cheerleaders retorted, ‘Bring it on!’ Edwards countered, ‘Oh, it’s been brought!'”

  • Nopes Grandmuffti, I had fun in my yeshiva high school! Like, lots of fun. But then, it was an all girls school.

    And after reading this article, I really, really, think we should consider a revolution that will overturn the government and bring us anarchism. But we’re probably not ready for that. 🙂

  • The Founding Fathers were passionate Hebraicists. Their form of Christianity tried to be a return to living according to the Bible. Their engagement with what they call The Old Testament was intense. Their idea of the Sabbath was much more somber than ours. But there is a lot of common ground about not desecrating the Sabbath. Somebody should research this. Just saying.

  • Many of the founding fathers were what is called Deists. This influenced their take on the separation of Church and state. You can Google this to find out more.