Report: Wisconsin School District Under Fire Over Coach Handing Out Gross, Objectifying Awards To High School Cheerleaders

Professional cheerleaders being subjected to degrading and objectifying appraisals and overall treatment is, infuriatingly, pretty much par for the course. Frankly, it’s probably old hat at every level, but anyway this story out of Wisconsin is a useful reminder of just how much gross shit cheerleaders—and women and girls in sports, and women and girls of every age, and women and girls everywhere—still have to deal with. The Tremper High School cheerleaders, at the team’s annual banquet, were subjected to an awards show that focused an appalling amount of attention on their individual physical proportions, to the horror of several parents and assembled faculty of the school. Per a :

There was the Big Boobie award for the girl with the biggest breasts. The coach giving the award, according to several parents among the 100 people in attendance, made a joke that the girl risked a concussion when she ran because of her “enormous boobs.” There was a Big Booty award for another girl. In a video from the event, held at a local catering hall, the coach presenting the award said: “We love her butt. Everybody loves her butt.”

The String Bean award went to a freshman who, as the Tremper cheerleading coach Patti Uttech later told school administrators, “was so light and skinny.”

As you’d expect, at least four adults reportedly complained to the school’s principle and school district administrators. The school’s track coach called the awards “extremely degrading to women;” a mother who attended the awards described the awards as “just so wrong, in so many ways.” The banquet was held in March 2018; it is now late February 2019, and all the school district has to show for it is “a clear expectation” that coaches giving high school kids mock awards for things like having “enormous boobs” is “not acceptable.” The cheerleading coach behind the awards, a woman named Patti Uttech, defended them with depressingly familiar language:

“We understand that we are in a politically correct world these days, but we do like to have fun and keep thing on the lighter side,” Ms. Uttech wrote to the principal.

Ah, the scourge of political correctness strikes again, this time targeting actual school officials who gave “Big Boobie” and “Big Booty” awards to teenage girls in a public ceremony in front of assembled students and parents. Hard to imagine anyone other than the PC police and feminazis having any problem with that sort of thing. For everyone else it’s just a little fun! Hey, while we’re here:

Two current cheerleaders spoke with The Times with their parents’ permission, and described how they felt when the coaches gave the awards. Neither girl won one.

One said: “When the girl went up to accept the Big Boobie award, what do you think everyone in the room was looking at? I would’ve died.”

The ACLU reportedly contacted the Kenosha Unified School District on Tuesday on behalf of the school’s cheerleaders, who the ACLU says are still being subjected to similarly body-focused “harassing language” during practices, and violations of federal nondiscrimination and equal protection laws, per the report. Read it and weep.