Dark secrets of cheerleading revealed

Cheerleading is as much a part of the American identity as hot dogs, apple pie, and of course, the sports that cheerleaders cheer for. At high schools and colleges across the country, communities organize around game days, and cheerleaders are as integral to the experience as are the marching bands and the athletes themselves. There exists an iconic image in the public imagination of the cheerleader in a pleated skirt and varsity sweater, with her hair done up in a ponytail, waving pom poms or shouting rhymes into a megaphone. That image projects wholesome, clean-cut, small-town femininity. But the stereotypical ideal is just that ... a facade that hides the darker reality of this unique cultural phenomenon.

Scantily clad girls with pom-poms dancing on the sidelines of a football game are as American as apple pie ... which Mashed says is actually English, but that's a whole other story. While it might seem like they're having the best time of their lives cheering on their team's men, accusations and allegations made by NFL cheerleaders from multiple teams suggest that there's something incredibly dark going on behind the scenes.

Cheerleading is a distinctly American sports tradition that combines dance, gymnastics, and of course, cheers. Though nowadays the sport is more associated with women, and far more athletic and acrobatic than in the past, a surprising number of male politicians took up cheerleading in high school and college. Four went all the way to the Oval Office.

For decades, NFL fans have enjoyed watching not just the action on the field, but the actions of groups of women (and a handful of men) dancing and gyrating. Cheerleading had, of course, existed for decades before the NFL brought the sport on board as a sort of sideshow, particularly at the high school and collegiate level. But it wasn't until 1954 that the Baltimore Colts brought them on, marking the first time that cheerleaders were part of the NFL landscape, as Stadium Talk reports.

On a summer night in 1984, Alex Arnold answered his door. A teenage girl with curly brown hair named Kirsten Costas stood there. She told him she'd been at a nearby church with a friend who had "gone weird," according to People. Alex's wife, Mary Jane, saw someone else at the end of their walkway — another young girl with "a roundish face and light brown hair."