2, 4, 6, 8…More News from the Booty-Shaking Debate

Following up on our recent story, “Shake Your Booty or Get Booted”, NBC.com reported on another cheerleader, this time in Nebraska, who was kicked off her squad for refusing to participate in a “booty cheer’. Faylene Frampton, a sixth-grade cheerleader from Nebraska, was kicked off her cheerleading squad after refusing to participate in what her cheer coach affectionately referred to as the “booty cheer’. According to the 11 year-old Frampton, “I [didn’t] like that people are just staring at my butt…”. In fact, Frampton found the cheer so unsettling, she decided to share her feelings with the squad’s coach, Toni Harris. Harris, was apparently less than cheerful about the cheerleader’s grievance and kicked Frampton off the team. Adding insult to injury, Coach Harris allegedly emailed Frampton’s father, asking for his daughter, Faylene, to apologize to her squad for “disrespecting” the team. Faylene Frampton, however, is not the only cheerleader to be persecuted for feeling awkward about suggestive cheers. As we explored in the article, “Shake Your Booty or Get Booted”, six year-old Kennedy Tesche was kicked off her cheerleading squad, the Madison Heights Wolverines, after Tesche’s parents verbalized their dissatisfaction with a “booty cheer’. Since being kicked off their teams, both cheerleaders have appeared in interviews on the Today Show, where they shared how this was neither an individual attack aimed at the coach, or the squad. More appropriately, the only problem existed between these cheerleaders and their refusal to participate in a cheer they embraced as demeaning and inappropriate. During a Today Show interview, Frampton indicated as much. In the same Today Show interview, the 11 year-old cheerleader stated, “It [the “booty cheer’] just felt wrong. It just didn’t feel like it was a cheer that was appropriate [for] my age of kids or younger.” So when did youth sports transition away from teaching kids how to have fun and towards teaching kids how to rely on physical assets to get their crowds cheering?