This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
The Bad Wolf: yea I wrote that paragraph at the bottom, basically I think at a lot of high schools especially in the north east where i went to school cheer leading isn't the big thing that it used to be. At my school the cheerleaders were thought of as quite unattractive and were basically girls that didn't make sports teams. I think this trope, while it may be still true at some schools (The south maybe ?) I think it's a lot less true at other schools and its still being used become they Did Not Do The Research
Lale: Outdatedness would mean it's due more to Totally Radical.
Morgan Wick: Kim isn't constantly hounded by boys, she has trouble even finding a date, and the reasons for this are expounded on in The Movie: "They see me on the news, round-housing some goon out a window...." Doesn't this touch on a related trope, the (real or perceived) tendency for guys to feel "threatened" by strong females, in some way apart from their being strong, i.e. injuring their mysogynistic ego. It's a television trope because it limits the number of women like Kim we see, but whether it's Truth in Television or merely a subset of Viewers Are Morons is left as an excersize for the reader. (I find the idea ridiculous myself, but then I'm a wimpy nerd in every sense of the term.)
Morgan Wick: That was quick for such a detailed entry.
Your Obedient Serpent: How does KP qualify as "the first Western Magical Girlfriend"? What about Jeannie and Samantha? They're arguably the prototypes of the archetype, since, IIRC, the first Magical Girl anime was a deliberate homage to Bewitched. I really need to put up an entry for Nohamotyo.
osh: Actually the expression Magical Girlfriend just means she's 'perfect', although lately there's a high chance it can apply to characters literally.
Ununnilium: Indeed. Lemme edit that up.
BT The P: I like the split, nice move, but you edited out the very relevant fact that Kim is the head cheerleader: without that, her relevance to the page is ambiguous, and people unfamiliar with the show might not already know.
Wiki: So where's All Girls Want Jocks?
Lale: I think it's more All Girls Want Greasers or All Girls Want Rebels- Grease, Fonzie, Troubled, but Cute...
Wiki: Maybe, I'm just saying that you can come up with plenty of examples for Jocks in particular (guess which country) for it to warrent being a counterpart trope all on its own.
Ununnilium: I don't think so. "Jocks", specifcially, tend to only have hangers-on, with much less of this trope; of course, that may be because Most Writers Are Male.
Solandra: How about Jerks Get All The Love? It's never the sweet, caring guy who gets the girl in the end (no, he can only be a friend to her); it's the Troubled, but Cute bad boy who does. A possible product of Draco in Leather Pants and an Anti-Hero fetish. Besides, who wants a squeaky-clean nice guy, anyway? Even the Dogged Nice Guy has jerkish tendencies at times.
Lale: Well, I gave it a try.
Lale: Moved that new paragraph here, since it seems more like discussion:
Silent Hunter: Since we're on the subject of uniforms, why are they so revealing? Isn't that rather a double edged sword?
Max: To make up for the utter lack of skill that some of them possess? "Wow, they suck, but hey, tits!" *Shrugs*
YF Leo: The point of a cheerleader uniform is the short skirt. How does that relate to breasts?
Silent Hunter: Wasn't a certain Ms. Summers a cheerleader in the TV series? She was in the movie.
Nornagest: Briefly. Not for most of the series, though.
DicloniusLilium: Hey... would this
(starting at 1:40) Axis Powers Hetalia Drama CD count as an example? It seems like it would, seeing as America states:" you will be treated as a sexy person!"
Would this count as Truth in Television.
YFLeo: The list of examples is pretty thin for a supposedly universal trope. The current article seems to describe Soapbox Sadie's relationship frustrations more than an actual trope.
The initial appeal of the cheerleading uniform is pretty simple: It's a short skirt on an athletic girl. I would guess that for decades in American high schools, becoming a cheerleader was the only way that a girl would be allowed to go to school in such a skimpy outfit. That was still true when I graduated HS in 1988. Perhaps it is less true today, through some combination of relaxed dress codes and more girls in sports.
It hardly seems a cosmic mystery that boys would be most attracted to the girls in the most revealing attire. It probably also helps that the cheerleader is an object of desire specifically authorized by school authorities. In the days before ubiquitous internet porn, cheerleaders were a rare safe focal point for a teenage boy's libido. It was officially a Good Thing to attend football games and pep rallies to stare at the cheerleaders in their short skirts.
Could we delete or radically alter the second, third, and fourth paragraphs? Especially the second and fourth. They aren't much fun to read, and they aren't really relevant to the trope. And perhaps instead we could note that, at least based on the example list, this trope is subverted more often than played straight. We might also ask whether All Girls Want To Be Cheerleaders is a valid trope.
