Remember when Texas State Representative Al Edwards proposed legislation that would fine high schools whose cheerleaders performed sexually suggestive moves? According to Edwards, cheerleaders — young women who were once considered (in the era of knee-length cheer skirts) to be the ideal of moral character and womanhood — were degrading themselves, serving as veritable Rossetti’s damsels. Though the legislation never passed, he served as one man in a long line of leaders who have decided it is their moral duty to protect young women from sexuality and having to make their own decisions.
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This article is reprinted from Campus Progress.org, the youth-oriented magazine of the Center for American Progress.