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Saed Hindash / The Star-Ledger
Gianna Antico and the rest of the Twinkles compete in a local competition, the Cheersport Philadelphia Grand Championship on Dec. 11. 2011, at the Liacouras Center at Temple University.
Saed Hindash / The Star-Ledger
Andrea Lipkus doesn't wait till she's at practice to start her stretching exercises as her mom, Valerie, drives her to the World Cup All Stars Gym in Freehold in October 2011.
Below is an excerpt from a 9-month project by New Jersey's Star-Ledger on the Twinkles - Chasing perfection: A tumble into the world of competitive cheerleading
Saed Hindash / The Star-Ledger
Andrea Lipkus, Gabby Cignetti, Camryn Sycoff and Samantha Santaniello pass the time giving massages as the Twinkles wait to perform on Nov. 20, 2011, at the Universal Cheerleading Association Northeast Championship in Toms River, NJ.
Jackie Freidman / The Star-Ledger:
The Twinkles, ages 8 through 12, train at the World Cup All Stars Gym in Freehold, where they are redefining what it means to be a cheerleader. Forget right now about what you see on the sidelines at football games. This is cheerleading as a high-flying sport whose soaring participants work like professionals, often devoting six or seven days every week to training.
They attend formal practice on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, take private lessons and flock to the gym for open tumbling sessions. Not even the slightest flaw is tolerated — they will repeat their 2-minute, 25-second routine with mind-numbing devotion for six months before performing it in front of an audience.
Saed Hindash / The Star-Ledger
During the second day of the Athletic Championships on Jan. 29 in Providence, R.I., Gianna Antico and her stunt group take their turn practicing stunts in a small convention hall room.
But the Twinkles also act their age, chatting about "Toddlers & Tiaras," how much they hate hair spray and how blueberries turn their teeth purple — all while doing backflips.
"Cheerleading’s taken over the world," World Cup co-owner Elaine Pascale says. "It’s on TV. It’s in magazines. Our community has really grown to be very, very vast as far as encompassing a lot of lay people that never knew such a thing existed."
The girls are aware they are phenoms, devoting their unnaturally chiseled bodies, their time, their emotional capacity and their parents’ money — some more than $10,000 a year — to being the best. Because when you’re a Twinkle, nothing else matters.
Read the complete story -- Chasing perfection: A tumble into the world of competitive cheerleading
Related links:
- nj.com/twinkles
- Photo gallery: Twinkles at practice - Part 1 & Part 2
- Photo gallery: Twinkles in competition - Part 1 & Part 2
Saed Hindash / The Star-Ledger
Lauren Preston gets some help stretching from her mother, Lori, as other Twinkles look on and her teddy bear sits nearby at the Rebel Classic Cheer Championship at Howell High School on Jan. 15. The teddy bear, which she has had since birth and goes everywhere with her, was always close by, until she lost it on a competitive trip to Florida later in the season.
Saed Hindash / The Star-Ledger
Gianna Antico hugs Andrea Lipkus to cheer her up after Andrea had a "mind block" and wasn't able to tumble during Twinkles practice in February at the World Cup All Stars Gym.
Saed Hindash / The Star-Ledger
Brighid Gibney reacts to the cold spray as she is spray-tanned by cheer mom Dorn Stephenson in a hotel stairwell the night of Jan. 27, before the Twinkles compete at the Athletic Championships in Providence, R.I.
Saed Hindash / The Star-Ledger
Nikki Ryan kills time by throwing her American Girl doll into the air while waiting for all the World Cup cheerleading teams to finish on the first day of the NCA All-Star National Championship on Feb. 25.
Saed Hindash / The Star-Ledger
Bella Matrone, center, and Brighid Gibney carry the NCA All-Star National Championship trophy and banner offstage after the Twinkles won in Dallas on Feb. 26.
Saed Hindash / The Star-Ledger
Alexis Adamo couldn't wait to go to sleep in her NCA All-Star National Championship jacket after the Twinkles placed first in Dallas on Feb. 26.
Leave a Comment:
im 1st,and ive got nothing.
Nice to see girls aren't learning young that their main value is that of a sexual object as they cheer on boys doing battle. No matter how much make up you put on it and try to disguise it with euphemisms, these "good little girls" won't develop any self-worth here beyond that of a professional stripper. Good to see so many parents are encouraging their girls to develop their minds, that it's what inside them not the cheap veneer that counts. Then they can scream at the boys doing battle "Kill them! You can beat them! Be a winner!"
No wonder America is predominately a war loving culture that worships shallow, soulless people like the Kardashians.
You clearly didn't read the article or watch the documentary. These girls don't cheer on sidelines, for boys, girls, or anything. They're competitive cheerleaders. What they do is more akin to gymnastics. If the headline said 'gymnastics' instead of 'cheerleading,' would you still be ranting?
while I understand these young girls work hard for this, it is a shame to see them so exploited. Spray tans, makeup and outfits not suited for their age should be banned. It should be about the ability not the looks. Mom's you are to blame for forcign this on these girls as they will now forever determine that girls need to look like women of the night in order to be seen
ah shaddup
It is a little known fact about cheerleading that it can lead quickly to a very good job as an adult. Many companies actively recruit high-end salespeople from among the ranks of college cheerleaders. As just one example, the University of Kentucky has always prided itself on having every female cheerleader who graduates having at least two job offers from the pharmaceitucal industry. Big pharma apparently feels that a cheerleader has the "righ stuff" to sell mostl;y male physicians on drugs.
You can google cheerleader and pharmaceutical and find lots of information. Here's an article that makes interesting reading: http://saleshq.monster.com/sales_careers/articles/515-when-i-grow-up-i-want-to-be-hit-on-by-doctors?print=true
Many parents want to re-live their failed lives through their children and push them into these sorts of things. But other parents see cheerleading, or girls soccer or softball or other sports as a way for them to afford a college education and eventually a plush job in any major business that sells mainly to all-male professions, such as physicians offices. The average starting salary for a Univerity of Kentucky cheerleader in the pharmaceitucal industry is $82,000. Elsewhere on their site they show the average starting salary for a biology major (mostly males) in the pharmaceutical industry as $42,000.
As a former college cheer coach & parent of a college cheerleader, I can tell you that there are very, very few college programs for cheerleading like UK...most do not offer enough scholarship money to pay full tuition, let alone books & living expenses. And most of the lesser known Division I and most of the Division II and NAIA schools cannot afford to go to the competitions. The college squads still struggle to be considered a sport and programs like this one in the article only make it harder because the look like pageant girls.
I'm sorry but $82,000 a year to start for a salesperson, I call a great big BS.
Just to say these types of Uniforms have been banned by the cheer regulation bodies at this age from 2013 I think it is :)
the costumes can cost $600.00-and they will need several as they soon outgrow them. this is a very expensive "sport" and can be very dangerous. many suffer injuries from severe concussions to broken bones. the girls are quick to tell you they aren't cheering for anyone-it's just cheering. can't really understand this---parents should be putting the money to better use---such as saving for college.
Okay, all that makeup and those tiny skirts are just plain disgusting. Is there a reason why they can't cheer in something a little more modest? They're awesome athletes, but do they have to be groomed at such a young age to be "Oh so pretty"
While I agree with some of what you're saying, the fact of the matter is that the uniforms are made so that you can move and execute almost gymnastic moves in them. Would you say the same thing about gymnastic uniforms on kids?
Cheerleading has progressed much further than I ever dreamed of doing back 40 years ago. Nowadays, you've almost got to be a gymnast to execute the moves they do in competitions. Merely staying on the sidelines and clapping and yelling went the way of the dinosaurs.
Look at it this way - I'd MUCH rather have my daughter doing this than an ignorant beauty pageant, which, by the way IS much more exploitative than this. Pageants are nothing but pimping your kids out and making them look like hookers.
Being a Father of a Cheerleader of Pop Warner thru high school. I watch some of these parents who push their girls a little too hard. Some people don't believe that Cheerleading isn't a sport that would cover part of the Title IX requirements. Let me say this. These girls love what they do and they work hard. The workouts they do would leave alot of Football and Basketball Players on the floor exhausted. This 8-12 year old group should put away the make up and have a little more age appropriate attire. But other than that , You go girls. Parents of these girls need to watch for injuries. All the tumbling and gymnastics pushes their bodies to the limits. You don't see too many Olympic gymnastic repeaters do you?
@onermailliw,
On August 8, 2012, "A federal appeals court ruled that colleges cannot count competitive cheerleading as a sport when trying to comply with gender-equity requirements, upholding a United States District Court decision against Quinnipiac University. In a decision released Tuesday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that competitive cheerleading does not yet meet the standards of a varsity sport under Title IX, the 1972 federal law that mandates equal opportunities for men and women in education and athletics." So, its more than "some people."
When the University of Alabama cheerleaders won the SEC championship the university athletic department refused to allow them to have championship rings with the university's icons on them, let alone pay for the rings as they would in men's football. They were told they could buy their own as long as they did not use the university's trademarked symbols. The Crimson Tide web site still refuses to list cheerleading as a "sport." Maybe the resistance is coming from within the athletic departments.
A university such as Alabama spends $10-15 million a year funding athletic programs such as women's badminton so that it can have a football program that is claimed to be "self-supporting." They fail to mention, however, that if the university stopped all spending on athletics (and saving $10-15 million a year) the football program's number of scholarships would be effectively halved. So universitites that claim that their athletics departments are self-supporting are a fabrication made from the cloth of not telling the whole truth. But the point is that universities' budgets are coming under more and more scrutiny and they would like to keep cheerleading as something that can cut back to "volunteer student activity with no university funding" without causing too much of an uproar.
That's an interesting take, Chris and the opposite of my understanding. The way I understand it the colleges would love to make cheerleading a Title IX compliant sport because then they wouldn't have to spend any money on non-self-sufficient sports like women's tennis, swimming, volleyball, etc. As it is they must have equivalent number of female scholarships as male. Cheerleading is inexpensive compared to swimming, volleyball, tennis, etc.
Generally speaking the men's basketball and football teams pays for all the other sports combined although there are some exceptions where very strong women's teams are net positives for revenue. As an example, the Supreme Court case you quote came about because the Athletic Dept. of Quinnipiac school in Hartford tried to eliminate the volleyball team in lieu of the cheerleading team.
Tom
I suppose there are worse activities to be involved in. That said, the premium placed on ridiculous facial poses, makeup and often-questionable body image goals is enough to nauseate. At a gymnastics event in Florida years ago, we shared the venue with a cheer competition that was running concurrently. To my amazement, I watched a cheer mom stuffing tissue into the top of her 6 year old's competition uniform. When I asked her what she was doing, she replied that the judges "like a little cleavage." I viewed it as a sign of poor coaching, bad parenting and, perhaps, the Apocalypse! I could only respond with "Wow, that's too bad." If you want to spark contentious debate, ask if this is a sport or not...
That mom reminds me of the trash moms who "grace" the kids pageants. Sad, really.
Clearly the women's liberation movement failed in some important ways.
Hey even a bowel movement is never complete, there's always more crap to come
What a screwed up society. Little girls dressed like this, in poses like this... pushing a homosexual agenda at every turn, ... be proud America.... no one else is.
I don't see anything "homosexual" about any of this--but it is definately way too "sexual" for 8 to 12-year-old girls.
We once attended a 6th grade basketball game while visiting family out of state. A man near us called out "Bring on the dancing girls" when it was time for the cheerleaders to perform a half-time routine. Everyone around laughed.
Just thought the cheering moms should be aware of your daughters' admirers.
Timothy, you must realize that I'm one of those people pushing for the "homosexual agenda" of equal rights. And trust me, this is contrary to everything I stand for. The parents of these kids should loose their custody.
It's a wonderful thing that the kids are doing physical activities that keep them fit and active. We preach all the time about getting kids up from off the couch, away from their electronic gadgets, and out doing excercise ... the whole childhood obesity issue. But I question the wisdom of dressing them up to look like street hookers in the process. They are little girls. There's something really tawdry about that.
I find myself thinking, that out there there are a whole bunch of sick men looking at this photos and getting off on these precious girls that are just having the time of their lives. I think the photographer might be one of them? I hope that I'm wrong. I'm a father of 3 two boys one girl, all college grads so I am a very proud Dad! I wish I didn't feel this way, it is so painful to know that there are so many sick and evil men preying on on young girls and young boys. Oh hell lets just go there, there are so many sick pieces of @!$%# out there preying on woman, when will or will it ever stop. Who are the people raise this @!$%#ing Monster. I think we should put them all on a deserted Island with know way off and let them prey on each other. I would like to see the punishment for people to so extreme that some of them might think twice about commenting a crime.
you're a weird dude, jeff...and a terrible speller
Chris... you seem like part of the problem... like one of the sickos Jeff is referring to.
timothy -
1. nice name.
2. your comment about the homosexual agenda was also weird and completely off topic.
I agree, Jeff, as I was reading the article I noticed that nearly every photograph made sure to show what appears to be little girls in panties. With my daughter being born in less than 2 months I could not help but think what I would do if I was to find some man taking pictures of her at that age and in such poses. I guess the crux of the issue could be shifted to the fact that the little girls are wearing the outfits in the first place, however, I believe that there HAD to have been a better way to photograph them in a way that did not seem so sexual. After all, girls at the pool wear bathing suits and no one (should) think anything of it. But the reaction of the parents if someone showed up snapping pictures of them I feel would be instantaneous and more than likely violent.
jeff - just say know to commenting a crime
Between this, and the prepubescent dancers/models on cable, remind me again how some people are in jail for looking at some photos of kids dressed just as skimpy, and these parents, fans, judges get a pass?
Exploitation is exploitation. The only difference here is if there is a an award, its cute and entertaining. If not, then its child porn.
Ten to fifteen years down the road, most of these girls will probably still be dancing. Except it there will be a pole and a g-string stuffed with $20 bills involved.
Oh well, it gives us grown men someplace to go.
Oh I almost forgot Laus Laus What the hell kind of poem is that are you sick or are you jut an IDIOT!
It's a verse from Oingo Boingo, an 80s group.
One the one hand they are amazing little athletes and the outfits are somewhat necessary for freedom of movement. On the other hand, perhaps I'm getting old but the hair and makeup just creep me out.
This is no different than the kids in Toddlers and Tiaras. Cheerleading when there is no team to cheer? Why do little girls have to get into something that is for high school and college aged girls? How about gymnastics instead? Of course, in this day and age, we can't just let little girls be little girls. We have to spackle them in makeup and spray tan and tight clothes and whore them out for the world to see. Sick. Sick. Sick.
These photos are a pedophiles dream. Wake up ignorant parents.
You can blame the media for including so many of the photos as well just as the Olympic coverage by one of the major networks on female competitors and then showed all the "compromising and contorted photos". Sex and sensationalism sells unfortunately and most of our media doesn't care of the consequences unless it costs them viewers or readers and money.
The ages seem to lessen each year and the makeup and uniforms a little extreme or over the top...it will be 7 year or younger in a few years. It seems like mothers are pushing their daughters to be what they were or couldn't be. I just hope no "Jon Benet Ramseys" will tragically occur from this type of pressured training and conditioning. I guess this happens to other girls for modeling and talent shows, some may do that and cheerleading; and it happens in sports with young boys also but maybe not so young. We should let our boys and girls enjoy their youth.
who is the genius that decided to put up multiple pictures of prepubescent girls with their legs spread? i dont know what is more disgusting this article or that my toddler is a stripper show. f'ing dolts.
I see nothing wrong with the athletic/competitive side of this. It keeps these young girls fit, active and gives them a goal. It's similar in that to dancing and gymnastics.
BUT ... like most of the other (rational) people up here, I DO see a big problem with the body image, clothes and make-up. Let these young people be young ATHLETES. They don't have to be an 8-year-old 20-year-old!
(Don't get me started on that toddler pageant nonsense!)
The parents are the ones that need therapy.
***Insert Lyrics from Aqualung***
"Sitting on a park bench,
(Dum, da-dum),
Eying lit-tle girls, with bad in-tent"...
(Title song from the album by Jethro Tull released 03/1971)
Its about time we rolled up the sleeves and get the country back on TRACK!!!
Hear, hear! More shotput, javelin and long-jumping!
The women who coach these little girls make the most insane and intense male Little League coaches look sedate-. Most of them are on a Krispy Kreme diet and should be ashamed- One thing is consistent- as is often the case- they all make sure it their kid showcased deserved or not- -Any of you younger parents - talk your girls out of this early on.
As a mother of a competitive cheerleader, please allow me to intergect. New rules are in place this year (or so I believe) that will allow crop tops to only be worn by senior teams. The gym my daughter is assciated with has full tops for the girls until they reach that level. Spray tans, this was this first I've seen it done. As for the makeup, it will vary from level to level. Our little girls, 5 and under, wear none. Even our girls under 10 wear very little. You also must realize that the gym depicted is a very well respected gym. Even at gyms across the country, the little ones look up to and want to be like the older girls they see at practice.
As for the impression that parents "make" their children cheer in the story being told. Highly unlikely. At least in my opinion. The team is a level 5 team. This equates to top skills, top tumbling and lots of focus. It's no easy task. They would have quit long ago, well before they obtained the skills they now have, if they didn't want to cheer.
All star cheerleading is amazing to watch, when done well. The little ones are adorable to watch. I often equate it to watching a dance recital. Then there are teams that can blow you away with their creativity and amazing tumbling. These girls and it many cases boys are extremely talented individuals and are learning teamwork, discipline and how to (hopefully) lose graciously.
Thank you. You said is so very well.
Quite the wrong social message being sent here! Is their dream of "Perfection" tied to an eventual place on the sidelines, stirring up testosterone for male athletic feats on the field!!? What are shallow dream!
Women have been fighting for centuries for recognition of their intellectual prowess - The "Lords of Sexism" have endorsed the physicalization of females - As an educator I say down with that! Let those in high places who care, put the emphasis on the "Excellence of the Female Intellect!"
Maybe they're too smart to give up their sexuality
these girls don't cheer for football. way to read the article. The are competitive cheerleaders... not sideline cheerleaders
While I agree that cheering is hard work and builds a lot of confidence in a young girl, I can't help to wonder if these parents who encourage this realize their "little girls" are the object of a lot of pedophiles dreams. Be careful!!
As a therapist who has heard "confessions" of pedophiles, yes, indeed, they hang out at games, under bleachers,watch, take pictures while the girls are jumping. They stalk all age groups. They also enjoy girl gymnists in their activities. Parents, for heavens sake, WAKE UP, protect your children
i realize you are a therapist and you know already but you are right. recently in the area i live they caught some guy at the local community pool taking pictures of kids in the 'baby pool'. and just like 'normal men' watching womens beach volley ball pervs go where they can see kids. i'm sure that is why the Boy scouts have kept homosexual men out of the troops, it would become a hunting ground for pervs and homos
I'm one of those concerned about this on many levels. I think it's letting kids define their self-worth by how 'perfect' they look and how 'flawlessly' they perform. I'm also concerned about the dangers of cheerleading. Paralysis and other terrible injuries are disturbingly common as kids get older and the tricks become ever more difficult and more dangerous.
The "perfect" look is more of a hit your routine "perfectly". Sometimes it hits, sometimes it doesn't. That's life and the coaches all know it, the kids know it. The parent's, well sometimes they have a hard time with it. As a cheer parent, I have seen some less than stellar behavior by parents at competitions. It has taken all I have not to ask the parent if he or she could have hit the same routine their child just preformed. As parents it is up to us to make sure we have our children working with coaches who keep up their certifications and are able to teach the more difficulty stunting and tumbling skills with knowledge and safety. Not ever coach is able.
As for an earlier comment on pedophiles, it is up the the parent to watch their children. Coaches, depending on the specific gym, have their own rules as to when they are under their watch and when they hand them over to their parents. But let's remember, that coming into contact with this sort of individual who preys on children can occur anywhere, the park, their school, a restaurant or other sporting team.
Just my opinion.