This photo of VMI Cheerleader and the YouTube video of her in the middle of a fight during the VMI-Citadel game, has captured the imagination of America and defined the 21st Century woman.
It's a great example of what an episode of "Kate On Sports" called "Women And Muscle" was trying to explain, that society has made room for women to have muscle, but it's also given a space for women to use that muscle. This is a great example of that observation.
A search for "VMI Cheerleader" reveals over 24,000 results for a search on Google. Why is this event so fascinating to America, if not the industrialized world? Judging by some of the blog comments, it seems to be a mesh between two very primal scenes: one sexual: a blonde cheerleader, and the other physical: her placing a cadet in a headlock.
The other related attraction is that this "little blonde girl" or "Buffy The Cadet Slayer" who's been "going to the gym" as some have described her, actually took on one of the basic symbols of masculinity and male power, the military man.
She not only took him on, she threw him down as the video below will show. But in tossing him aside and to the turf, she may -- in one fell swoop -- may have slam-dunked hundreds of years of "weak-woman" stereotypes. I should add that if you look at the video, the cadet actually was thrown with such force, he turned over in a body-roll on the ground once before stopping.
If you think about it, she also may have caused many young women -- especially in college -- to reconsider working out and getting strong as an "ok" thing to do, and thus push American society to a continuation of this redefinition of what it is I'll bet some ad genius out there uses this video as the basis for a campaign of some kind. Just wait.
Meanwhile, just watch...
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