American Football, whatever your opinion about it may be, is one of the largest commercial businesses in the country. Its constantly an argument that NFL players are over-paid and receive a plethora of resentment from the public for it. I really want to bring up an issue that is not vocalized nearly as much as it should; professional Cheerleaders in the NFL. According to an article reported by CNN in May of this year, the average rookie in the NFL gets paid about 15 million dollars a season. The top draft pick was paid 22 million dollars. The NFL raked in about 10 billion dollars in 2012. That should give you an idea of how much money this sports league is raking in& rationing out. Professional cheerleaders, however, are left out on payday. These women spend about 90 hours a week practicing, working-out and preparing to cheer on their teams. However, there are a lot of misconceptions about cheerleaders in the NFL. How much money would you guess that a cheerleader make? Well, on average, a cheerleader gets paid $125 per home game. Thats approximately $1250 per year, depending of course on how well the team does. Thats not even minimum wage. Not to mention that each cheerleader must pay her own expenses. That includes hotels, makeup, tanning and all other prerequisites each cheerleader must fulfill in order to do her job. Lets take another moment to discuss the indigent tasks that cheerleaders are contracted into doing. Next year, there will be an app one may install on their phone in order to ORDER a cheerleader to the stands. So essentially, beautiful women are being ordered by drunken men to come and entertain them? Thats putting these women in the position to be harassed. Fund-raising doesnt sound too bad, huh? Well, cheerleaders cater events as well. These women are sent to fund-raise for money that they will never see. They are constantly put in a position where they arent necessarily comfortable. Theyre love for cheer-leading leads them to be put in these situations. The infamous giggle-test is also given, where these women are told to do jumping-jacks. If any part of their body is giggling, then they are told that they must sit out of the next game until they tighten up. As if women arent criticized enough for their body-image. Those in charge claim that this is their measure to ensure that women are not criticized on the field and is all apart of the uniform. It doesnt matter if you think that cheer leading is essential or not. However this makes me wonder how the NFL can allow this to go on. Not complying with government regulations? Not taking this under their wing by now? You could classify this as a womans rights issue, but I also believe that its a human rights issue. These women cant complain, because the moment they do, there are thousands of other women waiting to take their place. Its astounding to me that in the sport, which rakes in the most money of any sport in this country, would allow such an injustice to go on.
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 20:14:40 +0000
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