What is it that’s so impressive about a scantily clad adolescent shaking her behind?

Perhaps that’s the question Texas Representative Al Edwards should have asked when he took action three weeks ago to ban sexually suggestive cheerleading performances in Texas schools. “It’s just too sexually oriented … the way the [cheerleaders] are shaking their behinds,” Edwards said. “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 kinds of gyrations.”

Unfortunately, those ‘gyrations’ might have more to do with some sort of 21st century code of choreography than anything else. Much more than just the incarnations of daring high school pom squads, the shake-your-booty and rock-your-pelvis dance moves so popular today are present in even the most primitive of “cheer” routines. I had the misfortune last January to witness a whole slew of young performers like this at a Bulls game – some sort of preteen cheerleading championship featured during the halftime show. As I watched about 100 little pony tailed, pompom thrashing girls grinding on the linoleum, I began to feel the way I assume Al Edwards does.

If Edwards seeks to make a difference in an activity best known nowadays for hip-skimming skirts and gyrating dance sequences, he’ll have to acknowledge the real root of the problem: Cheerleading is a “sport” that has survived mainly for its superficial appeal.

Such is the pattern of most women’s athletics, or, as Julia Keller of the Chicago Tribune calls “The iffy, tricky, historically heartbreaking and possibly wallet draining world of professional female sports.” Few may have noticed when the Women’s Soccer League closed in 2003 because of lack of funding and corporate sponsorship, but if the same happened to the Chicago Luvabulls squad, the reaction would be far different. And it seems the new surge of interest in women’s tennis has not been attributed to player’s records – but more toward the media-made socialites who inhabit the field, and the court-contrived couture they show off during games.

This is not to say there’s nothing more to cheerleading than looking cute and shaking a pompom – the field obviously requires a good deal of strength, flexibility and coordination, not to mention an unfalteringly peppy attitude. However, just like Anna Kournikova wouldn’t be an endorsement sensation without certain assets, cheerleading doesn’t have a place in our society without its characteristically sexual elements.

This may not be a problem for the thousands of male sports fans who pay to keep the industry alive. But when that kind of behavior is so encouraged that it defines a “good” performance for junior high level girls, it becomes obvious our focus is in the wrong area. Edward’s heart is in the right place, and his plan to reduce funding to the schools who continue to perform sexually toned routines definitely can change the way Texas student cheerleading is performed. But will it change the industry, and what we expect of a professional cheerleader? Probably not. Especially when she has to compete with Anna Kournikova.

Columns reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the Northern Star staff.