This Texas Preteen Was Kicked Off the Cheer Team for Not Straightening Her Hair

11-year-old Makayla Fallaw of Tomball, Texas, who was kicked off her cheer team. (Source: KTRK)

11-year-old Makayla Fallaw of Tomball, Texas, has reportedly been kicked off her competitive cheerleading team, Woodland Elites Cheer, for refusing to her straighten her naturally thick and curly hair to comply with a uniform hairstyle for competition. The preteen, who has been cheerleading since she was four years old, told local news station KTRK that her curls give her power and confidence. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to matter to officials.

“Just a few weeks ago is the first time I had heard about a special hairstyle,” Fallaw’s mother Jenny told KTRK. “I felt like I might make my daughter feel like her hair is not good enough because she’s not like other girls.” Fallaw’s mother met with the cheer director and owners of the cheer gym to explain why straightening the preteen’s hair would actually destroy it. The cheer director, Kevin Tonner, told KTRK: “When you come into the sport, you understand there is makeup to it. There’s hair to it. We were trying to make the exception. We were trying to find a compromise and a happy medium. And she wasn’t willing to have a compromise. She was very defensive.” Fallow insists she didn’t want to let her daughter’s natural beauty and talent be compromised. “It wasn’t about hair. It was about we don’t want this negativity on our team,” Tonner said, noting that not all cheerleading teams require straight hairstyles for competition, and that the entire team chose the hairstyle and would have only had to wear it for a few hours.

In the world of elite competitive cheerleading — think Bring It On meets club gymnastics — uniformity of movement and appearance is part of the judges’ scoring criteria. The Varsity All Star scoring rubric reads that in addition to stunting, tumbling, and dance, cheerleading teams will be scored on the “ability to demonstrate high levels of energy and excitement while maintaining consistent uniformity, genuine enthusiasm and showmanship.” The National Youth Cheerleading Championships outline “appearance of squad (uniform/grooming)” as a criterion on the scoresheets, with the same number of points as “precision (timing/synchronization/sharpness of movements)” and “stability of stunts/position & effectiveness of spotters / safety.” And one competition, the Elitch Gardens Spirit Fest 2015, awards up to 10 points for uniformity, grooming, neatness, and poise.

Having the same hairstyle isn’t mandatory at a cheerleading competition, but it can help with the uniformity/appearance score, especially one point can be the difference between first or second place. If you have a short bob, you won’t have the same hairstyle as someone with waist-length hair, but you will probably still be expected to pin your team’s hair ribbon in your hair.

As a former competitive cheerleader myself, our competition-day backpacks and duffel bags were filled with hairspray, curling irons, straightening irons, mouse, gel, hair pins, and elastics — we used everything and anything to make our hair obedient in the same way that we learned to perform in synchronicity, to make our hair stiff as a helmet so that not a single strand flies out of place on the performance mat. My teammates panicked when their buns were not perfectly centered and points were deducted when hair ribbons — or hair extensions — fell out on the dance floor. (These are often counted as safety violations.) Looking like cookie-cutter images of each other — to painful and extensive efforts — is central to elite cheerleading culture, and unfortunately, it can determine whether you win or lose, too.

As Fallaw resides in Texas, a state with an abundant and deep cheerleading culture that has spawned based-on-real-life movies and television shows, hopefully she will be able to join another nearby cheerleading team.

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