Guest Post on Men's Day at Church and the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders

And my first Hot Feminism lecture at Clemson February 9th!

Two things I’m pretty excited about: in a couple of weeks I’ll be speaking to students in the Women’s Leadership program at Clemson (directed by the dynamo Diane Perpich) about writing Hot Feminism and the history of feminist newsletters AND today’s newsletter is written by one of my Honors students, Emma Kate Bradley. Emma Kate has one of the most sardonic takes on growing up queer in South Carolina. She’s one of SEVEN of our English and Creative Writing majors doing Honors this year (in addition to fourteen others completing really rockstar Capstone projects—small liberal arts colleges FTW for real), and I’m really grateful for her time and energy in sharing this story with us this week.

Here’s the info for the Clemson talk! Spread the word and hope you can join us!

Emma Kate on Southern Baptist Churches and the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders

By Emma Kate Bradley

“It’s a great day to praise the LORD,” the preacher announced.

The crowd murmured its agreement.

“Some of y’all are still sleeping. I said it is a great day to praise the LORD,” he boomed.

All at once the congregation boomed back, “Amen!”

I was at church with my father, who I had made a special effort to spend time with after my parent’s divorce. I had been raised in the Southern Baptist tradition all my life and all my life I have bucked against organized religion, especially during high school when I came out as a lesbian. Now that I’m older, I am more at ease with religion generally and I try to enjoy time with my father doing something that makes him happy.

On the day that I visited my father’s church, it was Men’s Day. The choir was all men, and the sermon was given by a guest speaker who wanted to give his thoughts on problems faced by Christian men by sharing his testimony. Hearing a testimony in church is a fancy way of describing when someone of faith shares a series of unfortunate events in their life and ends it by saying that God had saved and/or forgiven them for the aforementioned series of unfortunate events. This man described how years of his life were plagued with alcoholism, porn addiction, repeated instances of him cheating on his wife. As a result of his sin, God brought his actions to the light; he lost his job, his reputation, and was almost left by his wife. I looked around the crowd for any faces showing shock or discomfort, but it seemed that the congregation held no judgement for this man.

Photo credit

I couldn’t help from feeling irritated and shameful. I felt that if they had known the reality of my life, they would not be so forgiving. When the preacher had told the congregation to say hello to one another and shake hands, the church people commented on how pretty I was and if my daddy had to keep the boys away with a shot gun, and why didn’t I have a boyfriend? The assumption felt heavy around me. My girlfriend of seven years, my high school sweetheart, didn’t exist. My father never corrected them and neither did I.

With a strange pit in my stomach, I continued listening to the guest give his testimony on Christian men. “Living the Christian life is harder than ever,” he said, “We don’t even know what bathrooms to use anymore.” A man to my left shouted, “Amen!” at the bathroom comment. My skin crawled. He went on to commend the male choir who had sung that morning because of how hard it was for men to be vulnerable and sing in front of a crowd. Surprisingly, I agreed. I wish men were more comfortable sharing their emotions. He continued, “In society, men are being emasculated—we have to show them how to be strong.” My agreement stopped again, and my discomfort grew when he finished off his testimony by describing the growing need for a traditional family. My face burned red with embarrassment and anger that I wondered if my father noticed.

I’m in my senior year at Presbyterian College where my Honors Research project for my English major is focused on Southern lesbian literature. One of my goals with my research is to provide an alternative perspective of living in the South, with all its particularities, like the emphasis on religion and community, without all of the heteronormativity that makes me feel like shit early on a Sunday morning. 

After church, my dad dropped me off at what used to be our house, but now is just my mom’s and mine. When I walked in, my mom was watching a show with a much peppier example of Southern heteronormativity, the tryouts for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. The DCC is a group of highly athletic, competitive young women who come internationally to represent this staple of Southern femininity. Training camp starts with hundreds of applicants and whittles down the competition to just 36 women who officially make the team. Their training is extensive, and they are judged on everything: their ability to learn choreography, their professionalism, their smiles, their high kicks, their leadership qualities, and their weight.

Photo credit

On the television, the DCC director has brought a potential cheerleader into her office, “Your stats are showing that you’re eleven pounds heavier than when you first came into bootcamp. We’re seeing some pudge around the tummy area,” she says to one of the most in-shape girls I’ve ever seen. The girl hangs her head and promises to eat better and to exercise more. I always remembered loving this show when I would watch it with my mom during middle school but seeing it as an adult explained where some of my own body-shaming beliefs came from.

When the next episode came on, the team had been finalized and the 36 women got to wear the traditional Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader uniforms. The cheerleaders are decked out in self-tanner, tiny shorts, and white cowboy boots. They say “yes ma’am” when called and their hair is more vertical than their high kicks. Each of them are perfect examples of the pressures of heteronormativity on Southern women. Looking at them as they shake their pompoms feels like seeing the pinnacle of the male gaze. Of course, I am passing no judgement on the character of these women; they are all motivated, talented, beautiful girls, but I can’t help but wonder about the standards they’re held to and where those standards originated from in the first place.

Since I started my Honors Research and have read some of the defining Southern lesbian literature that constantly brings implications of heteronormativity into question, I’ve been noticing where my real life overlaps with my theoretical research. I see the Christian men caged by their masculinity and the women, even my mother and myself, fascinated and enthralled with the idea of perfect femininity. Exploring the way heteronormativity prevails in Southern literature, specifically women-centered lesbian fiction, has been really insightful for understanding how my identities have been molded by gender expectations and just how prevailing of a force heteronormativity is in a white Protestant world.