My daughter made the pom pom squad last week. It was a little strange to watch her the night before tryouts, practicing the turns and kicks to Devo’s “Whip It”. Even Peter came upstairs after watching her and her friend go through the routine shaking his head and saying, “She was dancing and doing this shaking thing. She has moves.”
It was a little strange because, believe it or not, I was a pom pom girl. My poms career began in junior high and ended abruptly my senior year of high school when scheduling conflicts between poms practice and newspaper deadlines collided. I opted to stay on as EIC and give up my poms, but despite never having good friends on the squad I missed performing. Back when my knees didn’t creak, I had moves. (Stop laughing!)
Anyway, I’ve been thinking back to that season in life and wondering what my parents thought of the whole thing. They didn’t come to any performances that I can remember, though I found a photo of them at homecoming with a “My daughter Jane is a Lancette” so I know they were at at least one game during my sister’s stint on poms. I vaguely remember my parents and I talking about whether or not being on the pom pom squad was something I could put down on my college applications and whether or not it would conflict with more important endeavors like school.
But one of the things that I remember about being on poms was that holding those blue and gold and then blue and white bundles of plastic gave me an exclusive look at social power. It was all very confusing to me; isn’t everything pretty confusing in junior high and high school? Suddenly, the geeky smart Oriental girl had access to the social elite. I spent hours in practice and at games with girls whose hair defied gravity and designer bags were both the envy and joke of us “regular” girls at school. It was always such a strange feeling, walking around in school on game days in my uniform. I felt part-phony, part-geek, part-mean girl.
Now before you think this is all about teenage angst, I actually had a science teacher who laughed when I walked into class with my lettered sweater and pleated skirt. He laughed out loud and then made a comment to me in front of the class about how cheerleaders and upper-level science didn’t work together. Never mind that I was also fighting stereotypes about Asian Americans excelling in math and science (my passion was English and newspaper reporting), but now I was fighting stereotypes about girls and math and science.
Fortunately, the strength of those stereotypes have wavered some since my days as a pom pom girl. I’m not so sure if the social power structures of middle school and high school have changed all that much though. I wonder what my daughter will feel when she puts on her uniform for the first time and walks through the hallways. How will her friendships deepen and change? How different or the same will her middle school experience? Will the uniform help my daughter, whose teachers unilaterally describe her as quiet and shy, find her voice? And if so, what will that voice sound like?
I’m unabashedly proud of her. She knew that only 16 girls would make the team, which meant a lot of girls weren’t going to scream and smile when they opened up their envelopes. And when she found out that she made the squad but that a few of her close friends had not, she handled it with aplomb. I can’t wait to hear more from her.
Woooooooooooooohoooooooooooooooooo!