BIZARRE INDIE CHEER SQUADS GIVEN BENIGN TREATMENT: NEWSWEEK has a big web piece today on the rapid growth of independent cheerleading squads across the world.

Teams from Europe, South America and Asia are now participating in the annual World Championship of Cheerleadering. But if a mag like Newsweek is covering this, you knew something has to be fishy about it.

Sure enough, nowhere to be seen are the cheerleaders 99% of the population associates with the activity: Fit, scantily-clad adult women.

Instead, we get a breathlessly benign treatment of the oft-bizarre world of non-team/school affiliated youth cheer squads.

Run by house mothers living lives of quiet desperation, the organizations are stocked with shrill, prepubscent girls who also probably moonlight as Joan Benet-esque beauty contestants. While the gelled-and-fake-tanned boys involved appear to be of still-indeterminate sexual orientation (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

But the story is made somewhat worthwhile when “L Palmer” asks the question in the post-story comments that we’re all thinking.