“Boys will be boys.”

That’s something that I heard a lot back when I was cheerleading in high school.  A football player grabbed your ass while he was running out on the field?  Someone told you that the team lost because you didn’t smile more?  At the after-game party, you were called a tease if you didn’t drink enough to excuse whatever happened later that night?  It was all just a case of boys being boys.

“They’ll grow out of it.”  “They’re under a lot of pressure right now.”  “Your job is help them celebrate when they win and to make them feel better when they lose.”  I heard all of that back when I was cheerleading and, because I usually heard it from older women who were supposed to be looking out for me, I usually accepted it.  If someone said something that made me cry, I told myself it was my fault for not understanding how difficult it was to be a good player on a bad team.  If someone accused me of sending out mixed signals or giving someone the wrong idea, I didn’t say, “That’s your problem for not paying attention.”  Instead, I felt guilty about it, as if I had done something wrong.  My job was to support the team.  I was there to cheer for the boys.  Half of the time, I loved being a cheerleader.  I loved the sisterhood.  I love the thrill of pumping up the people in the bleachers.  I enjoyed feeling as if I had played a role whenever one of our teams won a game.  The other half of the time, I was a nervous wreck because I worried I had done something wrong.

I guess that’s why I related to the main character in Stand Against Fear when I watched it earlier today.  (It’s on YouTube.)  Sarah Chalke plays a cheerleader who is inappropriately touched by a football player (Lochlyn Munro).  He thinks that he can get away with anything because he’s the star of the football team and his father’s rich.  When the police and the school refuse to do anything, the cheerleader sues the football player for sexual harassment.

I don’t know if this movie was based on a true story but watching it brought back a lot of memories of high school.  The dread of knowing that you’re going to be treated like an object, the fear of not fitting in, and the helplessness of knowing that no one is going to be on your side, Stand Against Fear captured all of that.  When Sarah Chalke and her family finally stood up for themselves, I wanted to cheer.  It was inspiring to see.

As for me, it wasn’t until a few years after I graduated from high school that I looked back and realized just how messed up all of that was.  Whenever I run into any of my old cheerleading friends today, we inevitably start talking about the past and we always agree that we spent way too much time worrying about the boys when we should have been worrying about ourselves.  As this movie shows, it takes strength to stand up for yourself but it’s always the right thing to do.