Is Chicago a tyrant for wanting to ban the taking of up-skirt images & video?

It is an argument I hear occasionally from people with conservative beliefs on social issues – the problem with government trying to regulate our lives is that every time they pass a new law, they manage to steal another piece of our freedom.

Protecting us from perversion? Or hurting our rights?

As though the theoretical version of paradise is no government, and people having the ability to do whatever they want without risk of prosecution.

OF COURSE, THE more rational of individuals realize that government serves as the balancing act, of sorts, to ensure that one person’s pleasure isn’t someone else’s horror.

That certainly is what will be at stake when the City Council meets on Wednesday and includes among their activity a measure meant to protect the women of Chicago (and those ladies who choose to visit our fair city) from having their most private parts placed on the Internet for perverts of the world to view.

It got some ridicule and derision last week when a council committee reviewed an ordinance that includes up-skirt photographs and images among the list of things that can be considered an invasion of privacy.

Some may want to think that this is political people getting worked up over a non-issue. Others may actually think it is their right to take pictures up the skirts of women who happen to catch themselves in a moment of indiscretion.

ACTUALLY, IT’S ABOUT taking into account the fact that some people who try to get these pictures are of the approach that they’re somehow entitled to make some money off of someone else’s exposure.

These are the people to whom I want to scream, “Get a Job, you Loser!!!!” Of course, they probably think the rest of us are “suckers” for working for a living.

Aldermen in recommending the measure pointed out the fact that these up-skirt pictures that will soon become a criminal act have value for the people who take them.

Sure enough, look up “Chicago upskirt” on a search engine and you’ll find a string of websites that feature video snippets and still photographs that seem to be taken by people who hang around underneath staircases (think “el” trains and the stairs leading to lower Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive) with cameras ready.

PERSONALLY, I FELT a tad sleazy looking at these images, which seem to grasp the attention of those amongst us who get a rise out of a few seconds glimpse of panties – or no panties in some cases.

Then again, being in the news-gathering business, most of the up-skirt shots I have seen in my lifetime were those taken by photographers at basketball games who happened to be positioned near the cheerleaders. The pursuit of the perfect view of a player stuffing a ball also produces the occasional shot of a cheerleader with her skirt flopping up over her waist.

Those, of course, become images that never actually make the newspaper.

Personally, I feel a bit stupid that our City Council is compelled to have to pass an ordinance on this issue. It ought to be a common-sense idea that taking pictures up a woman’s skirt without her consent is downright creepy.

THEN AGAIN, WE have a society with some fairly creepy elements. Let’s hope we’re able to get this particular measure approved by the aldermen without anyone making some sort of stink that claims supporting the would-be photographers amounts to “freedom” and the “American way.”

But I’m also realistic enough to know that some people will try to find a loophole to try to get around it.

What happens on windy days when a sudden gust blows a woman’s skirt up in public and we get the perfect glimpse of her panties? Will we now get would-be photographers whipping out their camera-equipped phones in search of the “money shot?”

  -30-

What makes cheerleading worthwhile?

Let me state up front that I agree with the mother of a six-year-old girl from Michigan who was offended that the cheerleading squad her daughter was a part of was doing chants that were sexually suggestive.

To hear a six-year-old chant about her sore back, tight skirt and jiggling “booty” is in poor taste. Only a complete nitwit (including the coaches of this particular squad) thinks there are any circumstances under which this is appropriate.

BUT WHILE THAT particular six-year-old has received international news attention for her plight (she got kicked off the squad when her mother complained that the chant was trashy for such little girls), a part of me can’t help but wonder what was going through that mother’s head to begin with.

To me, the whole idea of cheerleading at age 6 is just inappropriate because I do associate it with attempts to put sexual images into the atmosphere surrounding a ballgame. So why should we be surprised that this particular squad was doing the same thing that many other cheerleading squads across the country are doing?

Admittedly, there is a difference between a six-year-old and a 16-year-old saying such things – although one could argue that even a 16-year-old (who legally is considered to be underage for sexual purposes) shouldn’t be chanting such things.

But I can comprehend why someone running this particular youth cheerleading program might be misguided enough to think they’re standing up for the rights of the majority – who probably got into cheerleading because they want to do the same things as the older girls.

WHAT REINFORCED THIS idea in my head was an experience I had Sunday while waiting to get my hair cut. It was a unisex salon, which means that among the women and men ahead of me in line was a 16-year-old high school cheerleader whose mother was also there to watch to ensure that her daughter didn’t try to get her hair cut in any style that might be considered trashy.

It was during that point that I heard her talk about the chants her daughter does. She wasn’t complaining about taste as much as the fact that the cheerleaders often didn’t seem to have a clue what was actually happening on the playing field.

As she put it, one of her daughter’s squad’s cheers involved saying that the other team was “playing like shit,” then giving pelvic thrusts to emphasize the dirty word. The only problem was that the squad’s team was getting its own butt whipped at the time.

That IS the attitude of modern-day cheerleading – crude taunts, combined with those short-skirted uniforms that often feature plenty of bare midriff. Teenage girls doing these things under any other context would create a situation for the police to have to deal with - particularly for the men in the stands who happen to be watching.

IT IS A sexual display. I honestly believe that if people tried to alter cheerleading to de-sex it, we’d head much more in the way of grumbling and moaning. In fact, that’s what we’re hearing from the squad involved in the Michigan incident, which justifies kicking a six-year-old off the squad on the grounds that they defending “what everybody wants” as opposed to “what one person wants.”

Which is why I wonder how naïve the mother in this particular instance was if she thought that having her six-year-old become a cheerleader was somehow protecting her from such lascivious images. I would think that it amounts to deliberately exposing the kid to such an atmosphere, which I think is wrong.

Now I know I’m going to hear from some mother-types who are going to tell me that I’m being a dirty old man for thinking that cheerleading is inherently about sexual decoration for the gym or the football field during the game. They’re going to claim that it is about the athletic movement and the stunts.

The flips and leaps and splits in mid-air.

IN SHORT, THEY’RE going to claim it is a more colorful version of gymnastics. Which I might believe if not for the fact that I have never seen any kind of serious gymnast perform in a uniform with a skirt so short that it continually rides up so we can constantly see brightly-colored panties on display.

This is the reason why so many people have a hard time keeping a straight face whenever cheerleader advocates argue that their activity is a full-fledged sport, rather than just a sexily-clad pep squad for the real sports.

That ought to be the reason we appreciate the “cheerleaders” who work for professional football and basketball teams. They’re honest. There is no pretense that anything they’re doing in those tight, tight shorts and halter tops is in any way athletic.

No amount of broadcasts on ESPN2 of the cheerleading competitions are going to cover up the fact that many of the people who are tuning in to watch are merely into ogling the girls, with a few other twisted types rooting for an accident that leaves someone injured.

PUTTING A SIX-year-old on the track to want to do this when they’re really too young to comprehend the significance of what they’re doing strikes me as a lack of judgment on the part of a parent, even if it is not quite as sleazy as the people who really think that six-year-olds should be chanting about “shaking our booties.”

I just can’t help but think there are more worthwhile activities for six-year-olds to take part in. Such as my own niece who went through a brief cheerleading phase, but now at age 8 is showing some interest (and talent) at the piano.

-30-

Does Chicago soccer have the power to give new life to athletic squads?

I stumbled across a happening (trivial, to be sure) in the Chicago Sun-Times that makes me wonder if professional soccer in Chicago carries some sort of resuscitation power.

Can being connected to a Chicago soccer team enable one to have a life – even after one ought to be deceased in the athletic sense?

WHAT AM I babbling about, you may ask?

It was an item in the sports section that said the cheerleading squad of the Chicago Shamrox (a professional lacrosse team) would continue to exist, even though the Shamrox went out of business in December, and the National Lacrosse League is on the decline.

Now insofar as the Chicago sporting scene goes, the Shamrox weren’t exactly big players. They existed for two seasons, and many people who consider themselves sports fans may not have even known they existed (they played their matches at the Sears Centre arena in Hoffman Estates).

Most of the attention they received was because of their cheerleading squad (the Hot Rox Dancers). Many sports sections got their kicks from publishing photographs of women in fringes that pass as short skirts and low-cut halter tops who were willing to jiggle their hips a bit.

IN FACT, THAT was probably the biggest motivating factor in the Sun-Times publishing an item saying that another sports team has adopted the Hot Rox Dancers as their own cheerleaders.

That team? The Chicago Fire, our city’s entry in Major League Soccer.

The Hot Rox Dancers will now perform their routines at Fire soccer matches in their nice new stadium on the edge of Chicago (it’s located in the southwest suburb of Bridgeview) not far from Midway Airport. That’s in addition to the non-sports event performances they give in their own right as they travel around the world.

For the record, Cardinal Fitness (the chain of health clubs that is spreading throughout the Chicago area) will sponsor them at Fire soccer matches.

BUT THE IDEA that the Hot Rox Dancers will outlive the Shamrox themselves due to professional soccer struck me as ironic, because it reminded me of the fate of Chicago’s previous professional soccer team.

I would be referring to the Chicago Sting, which in their 14 years of existence won two championships in the now-defunct North American Soccer League. Their title in 1981 was the first championship for a Chicago-based team since the Bears won an NFL title in 1963, and their title of 1984 (won on the same day that Leon Durham let a ground ball go through his legs and the Cubs blew a shot at a National League pennant) was the final one ever awarded by the NASL.

But while the North American Soccer League (including the high and mighty New York Cosmos – the team of international stars such as Pele, Beckenbauer and Chinaglia) disappeared after that year, the Sting actually continued to have a life.

They had previously shifted into a dual existence, playing summers in the NASL and winters in the Major Indoor Soccer League (playing a goofy version of soccer that more closely resembled a life-sized pinball match).

BUT WHEN THE North American Soccer League ceased to exist, the Sting continued to play the indoor soccer game – continuing until that league ceased to exist following the 1987-88 season.

Now I realize there is a difference between an actual team continuing to exist by playing a variant of their sport, and a team’s cheerleaders continuing to perform.

Some people who just can’t handle any sense of irony will probably wish they were reading this commentary in a newspaper so they could wad up the page into a ball and fling it into a trash can, while shouting a choice obscenity or two.

But hearing that the Hot Rox Dancers will live on at soccer matches gave me a chuckle, while also making me remember the old days of the Sting (I still remember watching them roam the playing field of Comiskey Park in the early 1980s, when they were on top of the U.S. soccer world).

SO IF YOU happen to find a reason to show up at Toyota Park this summer to see the Fire, give a thought to the Shamrox when you see their dance squad shimmy and shake themselves in an attempt to get the crowd worked up into a frenzy.

After all, it likely will be the only attention most of you paid to the Shamrox themselves. I will be just as guilty of that sin of omission of thought as any of you. If one thinks the Hot Rox Dancers are too obscure a squad to have a continued life, I think it puts them on a certain unique platform in the history of Chicago sports.

I must admit that the factor of the first Chicago Bears game I ever went to (a pre-season game in 1979 at Soldier Field against the New York Jets) that I most remember was watching the Honey Bears parade around the sidelines.

Would anyone have thought less of the Honey Bears squad had another team adopted them after the Bears prudishly dropped them following the 1985 Super Bowl-bound season?

-30-