Several schools have brought in shorts for cheerleaders at baseball tournament while another positioned teachers between the cheerleaders and spectators
High schools taking part in Japan’s annual spring baseball tournament are taking action to prevent spectators from taking sexualised photographs of female cheerleaders.
The invitational tournament – and a regular tournament held every summer at Koshien stadium near Osaka – are supposed to be a celebration of youthful sporting prowess and a chance for teenage boys from 32 schools around the country to make their mark and perhaps catch the eye of a professional ball club.
But in recent years the events have been marred by incidences of voyeurism, in which female members of cheerleading groups, often dressed in sleeveless tops and short skirts, are photographed without their consent, with the images posted online in some cases.
It’s sexualized, but not sexual. Like beauty pageants.
Usually when kids do a sexualized thing, it’s “supposed” to be cute and not sexual. “Haha, kids doing the adult things! Adorable.” Or if it takes skill, “wow, so great for a kid. She’ll be ready when she tries out as an adult”.
But then the creeps come along and sexualize the kids doing a “cute” thing.
And it happens every time. By now, it should be expected; surprising to no one.
It doesn’t mean we have to stop those things, unless we decide that we don’t want adult cheerleaders or adult beauty pageants. I’m okay with that personally, but I get that it’s an important cultural thing for a lot of people.
If we want these things for adults, then we need to let children do them, because cheerleading (in particular) is a sport, and the best adults are often the ones who practiced as children. Same as with sports.
I don’t know how we keep those cultural activities and also stop the sexualization. Banning certain outfits or articles of clothing to certain age groups or during certain activities feels wrong, but not quite as wrong as condoning pedophilia…which is what a lot of children’s beauty pageants and cheerleading clearly ends up being, even if unintentionally.
Yeah, nothing sexual about those adolescent girls, nothing at all. Christ, was nobody here ever a teenager?
I was generally referring to children, not just minors. There are creeps who love the kinds of beauty pageants that Honey Boo Boo was in as a child.
But yes, you’re absolutely right. We should expect that there are going to be some people who are attracted to post-pubescent minors, and there are going to be some creeps among those people who will make everything worse for everyone.
I feel like child beauty pageants are especially disgusting, to be honest. I can’t imagine them being anything but harmful to the children participating in them, especially when forced to by parents who just want to feed their own ego.
I definitely agree. I think beauty pageants are pretty disgusting, but child beauty pageants cross several terrible lines for me.
But it’s a cultural thing. I’m not an expert, so I don’t want to necessarily shame it unless I know that it’s inherently harmful to children (and can’t be modified to be no more harmful than forcing a kid to join a club they hate).