All-Star One Thing That's Really Bothering Me

[Sterling von Shimmer]

I'm relatively new to IG and so have been casually searching for teams and accounts to follow. A couple times I've followed a cheer account to find that it's more of an "adult" cheer site where the goal is not to highlight cheer as a sport, but more to publish images of women in cheer uniforms. Some are actual pro cheerleaders in their element, others are just models in costumes. But whatever. That's not my issue. If people want to post publicly available pics of appropriately-aged women in cheer attire, fine.

It's the pics of little girls and teenagers placed literally right next to them that bother me.

There are way too many accounts out there that do this. I've reported them to IG but since they're technically not doing anything wrong, there's not much they can do. Placing one pic next to another isn't against the rules. But the implication is there: "Here's a pic of a twenty-something cheerleader with a bunch of cleavage. Now here's a pic of a five-year-old in a crop top that you should also find sexy." And you don't even want to read some of the comments directed at teenage cheer-lebrities on these sites. So disturbing.

So anyway, I just thought maybe I could create a post where we can list these accounts and then report them en masse. That might get their attention.

That's my only goal here. I don't really want to get into who's really "at fault:" the pervs for sexualizing these perfectly benign pics of kids, or the parents for making their kids accessible in the first place (it's the pervs who are at fault, btw... you should be able to post pics of your kids without some scumbag exploiting them).

So in the spirit of last year's epic pervert takedown -- the one where we all got that pathetic POS fired, arrested, and kicked out of his house for comments he made about extremely underage AS cheerleaders -- I thought I'd create some place we could report inappropriate social media stuff and maybe do something about it. I don't know how much good it will do but I also feel like if I don't at least try to do something about it, I'm complicit. Plus cheer already has enough unnecessary BS surrounding it. We don't need this too.

 

[quitthedrama]

IG can be a cesspool. Unfortunately there are many "mommy run" IG accounts and these parents will do anything for that next ambassadorship and follower. They swear up and down they monitor the account, but yet you can easily find more than a few men with very questionable profiles following them.
Add the fact that gyms have contests "when we get to 1,000 followers we will release the picture of the uniform" - most gyms aren't filtering followers either, and then those followers can easily go through and follow athletes. My oldest had an issue which involved the police, and upon investigation a cheer anon account was linked to this person, and several high profile gyms were following the account.
We can all be more careful on social media, but parents who are pimping out their kids for their own personal satisfaction are setting their kids up as targets and it's just plain selfish and stupid.

 

[Eyes On The Prize]

Sorry to say, but social media companies won't do anything until someone does something blatantly illegal - and even then their actions are spotty. I've reported accounts that have posted extremely hateful rhetoric (and I mean borderline terrorist level kind of speech) and the platform came back with "if you don't like it, don't follow it, but it's not our problem." You can't hold these companies accountable to take action. Most of this social media stuff isn't taken seriously until law enforcement is involved either, and law enforcement wont get involved until someone has broken a law or someone's in immediate danger. So if someone's in danger or a law has been broken, you should contact them.

Your efforts might be better directed at the industry rather than social media itself. I think the most change would come from pressuring gyms and coaches to create age appropriate uniforms and choreography. Attack the problem (the environment of cheer and how it promotes sexualization of children) and not the symptom (the product of the environment being seen on social media). It's not a social media issue, it's a cheer issue. Sexualization of children has been around for forever, way before social media. Social media just makes it more accessible and easier to promote. But we don't have to support it or normalize it in the cheer industry.

 

[Sterling von Shimmer]

IG can be a cesspool. Unfortunately there are many "mommy run" IG accounts and these parents will do anything for that next ambassadorship and follower. They swear up and down they monitor the account, but yet you can easily find more than a few men with very questionable profiles following them.
Add the fact that gyms have contests "when we get to 1,000 followers we will release the picture of the uniform" - most gyms aren't filtering followers either, and then those followers can easily go through and follow athletes. My oldest had an issue which involved the police, and upon investigation a cheer anon account was linked to this person, and several high profile gyms were following the account.
We can all be more careful on social media, but parents who are pimping out their kids for their own personal satisfaction are setting their kids up as targets and it's just plain selfish and stupid.

I have noticed both some questionable and laudatory “follow” behavior. Once I got a follow request from some child — apropos of nothing and certainly from her mom — which I thought was weird because my profile was still new and thin and I could’ve been anyone behind my default pic. But ultimately that’s her decision, regardless of whether I think it’s wise or not.

On the other hand, every single Rays account followed me right back and I got the impression it was because they wanted to check out who was so interested in their kids. Which I applaud. And once they saw the rest of my interests were basically rescue dogs, smoothies, and cat videos, they let me hang around.

 

[Sterling von Shimmer]

Sorry to say, but social media companies won't do anything until someone does something blatantly illegal - and even then their actions are spotty. I've reported accounts that have posted extremely hateful rhetoric (and I mean borderline terrorist level kind of speech) and the platform came back with "if you don't like it, don't follow it, but it's not our problem." You can't hold these companies accountable to take action. Most of this social media stuff isn't taken seriously until law enforcement is involved either, and law enforcement wont get involved until someone has broken a law or someone's in immediate danger. So if someone's in danger or a law has been broken, you should contact them.

Your efforts might be better directed at the industry rather than social media itself. I think the most change would come from pressuring gyms and coaches to create age appropriate uniforms and choreography. Attack the problem (the environment of cheer and how it promotes sexualization of children) and not the symptom (the product of the environment being seen on social media). It's not a social media issue, it's a cheer issue. Sexualization of children has been around for forever, way before social media. Social media just makes it more accessible and easier to promote. But we don't have to support it or normalize it in the cheer industry.

There’s A LOT of grey area there that I don’t think we’ll ever get close to solving. For one thing, what’s “age appropriate”? You’ll get about a thousand different answers, especially because cheer demands that you have to be able to move and sweat comfortably, which usually means flexible — albeit tight — uniform fabrics on the body. Which, depending on what your definition of age appropriate is, might be a problem in and of itself.

I grew up cheering, dancing, and swimming. All of which required short and tight fabrics on all ages at one time or another. Consequently, short and tight things on kids don’t phase me. It’s when hyper sexual choreo and costumes/unis are forced on kids in the name of “cuteness” that I object to. That’s always seemed like a cheap ploy that made me super uncomfortable. But for the most part, I think AS cheer has done a decent job of avoiding this with their explicit rules that prevent such things.

That being said, I will never tolerate a “Well they were asking for it” type of attitude when it comes to predators preying on kids. Whether or not I think it’s gross, you should be able to put your kid in crop top and the fault will ALWAYS lie with the unbalanced scumbag for taking it to an inappropriate level. I understand there’s something to be said for proactively protecting your kid, but I hate the thought that we have to change our behavior when we’ve done nothing wrong.