Pittsburgh Arts, Regional Theatre, New Work, Producing, Copyright, Labor Unions,
New Products, Coping Skills, J-O-Bs...
Theatre industry news, University & School of Drama Announcements, plus occasional course support for
Carnegie Mellon School of Drama Faculty, Staff, Students, and Alumni.
jezebel.com; The New York Jets are paying out approximately $324,000 to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by the team’s cheerleading squad over low wages.
3 comments:
Emma Reichard
said...
Ok, the treatment of cheerleaders in the football industry has always seemed so awful. And I don’t really understand why. They are considered a necessity at any game, the halftime shows are an integral part of any live sporting experience. People love watching the cheerleaders, and a team would be considered incomplete if they didn’t have them. They spend just as many hours training as a football player, and actually have a more dangerous job. Cheerleaders are more likely to receive a concussion than a participant in any other sport. Their job requires extreme levels of athleticism and training. And while you could argue that they are only side acts for the main event, the actual game let’s stop and take a look at what a football player does during a game. The actual playing time of a football game (the time the ball is in play) averages 11 minutes a game. Even if one player was on the field the whole time actively seeking out the ball, they’d still have less actual game time than the standard 12 minute halftime where the cheerleaders perform. So then why do football players get paid ten times what cheerleaders do?
I haven't followed this story as closely as I really would have liked to, but I'm glad to see that the women who brought this case to court got something for it. While I rarely partake in any NFL displays, I have been roped into this saga, simply for the outrageous unfairness of it all. That these highly trained, iconic women, who serve a face of the Jets franchise just as players and coaches, could me as neglected and dismissed as much as they were is astounding to me. I'd like to think it's simply because of some archaic accounting practice, or someone along the line forgetting to account for inflation from about 1983 to today, but I fear the real reason is much more sinister. The idea that a woman, or group of women so highly valued for their bodies (cheerleading is both physically taxing and rampantly sexualized) can be dismissed as mindless drones, or cute accessories, with no thought paid to the work taken to get to that point, or the well being of the woman, is something very real, and found in many places in American society. I hope that this lawsuit is the first step in rectifying, or at least recognizing, this problem.
Wow, I didn't know any of this, so I can't say I've been following the story, but wow. I don't know why, but I always kind of assumed the cheerleaders made really good pay, as well as the players? Maybe not MILLIONS, but like, you know, probably a LIVING WAGE. This reminds me of when in high school, guys would tell my friends (who were cheerleaders or dancers) "Oh, that's not s real sport. Not like football/soccer/hockey/basketball is." Uhm, no? Dancers bodies literally deteriorate because of how much physical stress they are put under. To the naysayers of cheerleaders, I say, do a split, right now. Now do a hundred. Now jump in the air and trust your teammates will not let you plummet back down to this cold, cruel earth.
I'm glad that there is some attention and action being brought to this issue, but something in the article confused me: when it says the women were compensated for lost wages, does that mean they literally only got the money they were owed in the first place? Or did they each get more from the settlement? I wasn't sure.
3 comments:
Ok, the treatment of cheerleaders in the football industry has always seemed so awful. And I don’t really understand why. They are considered a necessity at any game, the halftime shows are an integral part of any live sporting experience. People love watching the cheerleaders, and a team would be considered incomplete if they didn’t have them. They spend just as many hours training as a football player, and actually have a more dangerous job. Cheerleaders are more likely to receive a concussion than a participant in any other sport. Their job requires extreme levels of athleticism and training. And while you could argue that they are only side acts for the main event, the actual game let’s stop and take a look at what a football player does during a game. The actual playing time of a football game (the time the ball is in play) averages 11 minutes a game. Even if one player was on the field the whole time actively seeking out the ball, they’d still have less actual game time than the standard 12 minute halftime where the cheerleaders perform. So then why do football players get paid ten times what cheerleaders do?
I haven't followed this story as closely as I really would have liked to, but I'm glad to see that the women who brought this case to court got something for it. While I rarely partake in any NFL displays, I have been roped into this saga, simply for the outrageous unfairness of it all. That these highly trained, iconic women, who serve a face of the Jets franchise just as players and coaches, could me as neglected and dismissed as much as they were is astounding to me. I'd like to think it's simply because of some archaic accounting practice, or someone along the line forgetting to account for inflation from about 1983 to today, but I fear the real reason is much more sinister. The idea that a woman, or group of women so highly valued for their bodies (cheerleading is both physically taxing and rampantly sexualized) can be dismissed as mindless drones, or cute accessories, with no thought paid to the work taken to get to that point, or the well being of the woman, is something very real, and found in many places in American society. I hope that this lawsuit is the first step in rectifying, or at least recognizing, this problem.
Wow, I didn't know any of this, so I can't say I've been following the story, but wow. I don't know why, but I always kind of assumed the cheerleaders made really good pay, as well as the players? Maybe not MILLIONS, but like, you know, probably a LIVING WAGE. This reminds me of when in high school, guys would tell my friends (who were cheerleaders or dancers) "Oh, that's not s real sport. Not like football/soccer/hockey/basketball is." Uhm, no? Dancers bodies literally deteriorate because of how much physical stress they are put under. To the naysayers of cheerleaders, I say, do a split, right now. Now do a hundred. Now jump in the air and trust your teammates will not let you plummet back down to this cold, cruel earth.
I'm glad that there is some attention and action being brought to this issue, but something in the article confused me: when it says the women were compensated for lost wages, does that mean they literally only got the money they were owed in the first place? Or did they each get more from the settlement? I wasn't sure.
Post a Comment