“I Cheer, You Cheer, We Cheer”: Physical Technologies and the Normalized Body

Abstract

Located within a cultural space situated firmly in the political, technological, and historical context of the contemporary moment and predicated on the contention that all texts are dialogic, the author reads physical cultural technologies as constituents of the powerful techniques of self-regulation and self-surveillance of the young female body. “We Cheer” acts as a discursive technology, a noncentralized capillary-like force that works to “conduct the conduct” of subjects. Emanating from these media are digital discourses through which young girls are learning not only how to move their bodies appropriately but also how the have to be to fit the mould and “join the squad.” As a powerful and pervasive public pedagogy, “We Cheer” (re)establishes the position of the neoliberal girl norm, that is, a girl whose body is representative of her being (heterosexy) middle class, white, and a young consumer—citizen.