I just read another story where the cheerleaders:
A. Ran the school's social scene.
and
B. Vote in or out the other cheerleaders
I don't know about the rest of you, but that wasn't the way it was when I was in school. Admittedly, that was over 50 years ago. Our cheerleaders were elected by the student body the year previously. Yes, they were prominent in the social scene, but they were not the all-powerful bitches that I see in some stories on this site.
I don't think I ever went to a school that had cheerleaders at all. They're not as popular in Canada in the first place and I mostly went to private schools, so the girls just had their own sports teams anyway. No reason to cheer the boys when you can play in your own league.
Of course, I don't really remember big cliques, either. Even the two years I went to public school my entire grade was fewer than 100 kids. The private schools were smaller than that. There are different friend groups, but not enough kids for true cliques.
School size matters a great deal. At fewer than 100 kids in a grade, everyone can know everyone, more or less. My high school was in the low 400s per grade. My kids' first high school was about 50 per grade; the high schools they actually graduated from were around 1200-1500 per grade. The dynamics were hugely different.
Size usually matters a great deal in all sorts of things, as a tubby 500-pounder ain't setting any track records, whatever the school and class sizes. Just like larger book tend to be more, unyieldly and tedious? ;)
Yep, it's mostly a Hollywood fantasy premise. However, when I was in high-school back in the '70s, the cheerleaders WERE incredibly self-entitled bitches so the whole premise of HS cheerleaders connecting with 'average guys' is just as ridiculous. They're fun, but utterly unbeleivable.
Not for me. Our cheerleaders (late 70's) never came off as entitled. Nor were they the prettiest girls in the school — they were athletic and energetic, but that was about it. Maybe I just went to a boring school.
Well, two out of my three high-schools were larger than my college was, so that's probably indicative of … something. And by a significant factor too.
But then, they'd never consider dating me, just as I never considered asking them either, so my views on the matter may be just a tad biased. But mostly, I was just a nerd, getting by as best I could so I could graduate and move on. We did have cheerleaders in college, yet they were entirely different than our HS cheerleaders.
Back in the early 60's in NJ, Cheerleaders had to try out for the Cheer coach just like all the boy's sports. There were the Varsity and the JV teams. Varsity members qualified for "Letters" just like the varsity football team. Once they passed try outs, the members of each team elected their own captain and assistant captain. I don't remember them ruling the social scene. But then again, neither did the football stars. I remember one of the backs asked me, a lowly nerd, for a ride to our senior prom for him and his date.
My story "Spring Break - When it all began." includes a flashback scene where that is how several people in the story become cheerleaders.
It's set in an alternate history universe that includes several major differences - including the state of Texas being in a country that almost exclusively has used the metric system for over 210 years at the time of the story.
Our cheerleaders had tryouts with the cheer coach deciding who to accept.
As for social groups, there were basically three — cheerladers/jocks; stoners; nerds/geeks. Nobody dominated the school, but the groups were pretty well defined (this was late 70s, early 80s).
Ditto for our cheerleaders. Our social groups were a bit different, though. Some of the jocks hung out together, but mostly they were part of the general flow of the school — many (most?) of them took a lot of pride in their scholastic accomplishments and were supporters of the nerds and geeks. The only group that seemed to keep to themselves were the large contingent of ag/FFA people. They could be a bit standoffish.
Ditto for our cheerleaders, on which my story's treatment of cheerleaders are based. The squad itself was determined by the cheer coach, with the leadership within the squad voted in by the cheerleaders themselves. The general student body had absolutely no input on the cheerleading squad at all.
That said, odds are that the cheer coach and the head cheerleader would be fairly close and the coach would likely listen to the head cheerleader both in terms of 'you should give her a chance' and 'no, not that one.' That's an informal relationship, to be sure, but if the head cheerleader felt strongly that someone was either a really good fit or a really bad fit, a wise coach would probably listen.
In terms of social groups, I have the 'socialites' (generally people with truly rich parents or those who could get close enough to one of them to join the clique), the 'jocks/cheerleaders', the 'stoners', and the 'nerds/geeks' (which have subsets). On the other hand, it's an academically superior school (~10% of the student body at the National Merit Scholarship level - top 0.5% nationally, ~70% of the student body taking at least some honors classes, 99% of the student body going to college), and that means many of the people outside of 'nerd/geek' would be 'nerd/geek' at most schools.
For various reasons, band is in the cheerleader/jock orbit much more than the others, while orchestra/choir/etc are not.
Amusingly, my story's college destination (Texas A&M) features 'Yell Leaders' rather than cheerleaders. Yell Leaders are all male (always have been, since it dates back to the university being an all-male school) and are elected by the student body. The majority come from the Corps of Cadets even today (even though the Corps is well under 10% of the student body), but it's not a requirement.
Remember that most of the cheerleader stories here are erotic fantasies. I've posted a couple of them. And, yeah, the cheerleaders in my stories have nothing in common with the ones in my high school.
Except for competitive cheerleading, cheerleading is last century. The real hot girls are now on the dance team.
Well, the 'hot' white girls and those who associated with them. Otherwise in the black community, it's the step dancers who receive most of the attention, from their peers, not the supposed trend setters. Of course, I don't think 'stepping' is even a thing anymore, as I haven't had any kids attending HS in quite a few decades.
It's a situational trope. Easy shorthand so that a writer doesn't have to establish everything about the world/setup and can get straight into their story.