"Sweet potato!" shouted coach Emma Darquié. Immediately, a group of 22 men formed up on the mat of a dojo in the northern French city of Lille's Rue de Wazemmes on a Tuesday evening in September. They slowly wiggled their arms and hips, then divided into groups of three to form mini-pyramids, to the cry of "Bring the action!"
Created in 2016, the Scrimmage People are France's first group of male cheerleaders. Wearing black T-shirts and gaiters, mini shorts, suspenders, headbands and red pompoms, its members, aged between 25 and 55, train one evening a week and put on a show at women's sports competitions in northern France and Belgium. On October 26, they will open the third Skate of the Dead roller derby in Anderlecht, Brussels. This contact sport on roller skates, which originated in the United States and has been widely practiced by women in France for the past 10 years, is their usual playground. The troupe was born out of a workshop organized by the Vienna Fearleaders, the Austrian pioneers of male cheerleading in Europe, who gave them their foot in the door after offering them show outfits.
Nathan Bounie, a teacher in his 30s with rosy cheekbones, was a figure skater for 10 years while all his classmates were playing football. "I used to get comments because they thought it was a girl's sport, whereas I didn't feel at all like I was less of a guy than they were." As an adult, he took up jazz and contemporary dance. Then, with two children born in less than four years, his free time evaporated and Bounie put his passion on hold. One day, his wife happened upon the existence of the cheerleaders and enthusiastically enrolled him in the Lille club. She was right to do so: "At last I could play a team sport with other men, but men who were kind and never judgmental..."
Over the years, the Scrimmage People have carved out a place for themselves in Lille, embracing a certain and unique form of activism. They admit to not having the physique of an Apollo, but they are eager to engage in sports and embody the spirit of competition. "In the beginning, with our bellies and our hair, we just wanted to have fun and break codes with glitter." In other words, they wanted to shake up the fixed world of female cheerleaders in miniskirts.
It's worth remembering, however, that in the US, the acrobatic prowess of male cheerleaders is nothing new. American presidents such as Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were themselves cheerleaders when they were in college. From the mid-19th century until the early days of the Second World War, when young men went off to war in droves, cheerleading was exclusively male and considered as prestigious as American football, as Slate reported in 2013.
You have 43.24% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.