Back in my day, cheerleaders were hot and gorgeous, at least at the University of Colorado/Boulder where I watched them. They were the best-looking girls on campus, and that was saying a lot at the time in Boulder.

After I graduated and left Boulder, they were evidently unable to attract the same quality without me. In fact, they resorted to male cheerleaders.

There were sniggers that the male cheerleaders were probably a bit light-footed, if you know what I mean. That was before light-footedness, if you know what I mean, became the Next Big Thing.

But male cheerleaders mostly faded away over the years. We see few male cheerleaders now.

At that pseudo-scientific source called Wikipedia, they explain that male cheerleaders today are mostly confined to “stunts” with the female ones. By “stunts,” they’re referring to something beyond being a male cheerleader. They’re referring to throwing the females into the air, catching them, etc.

So, what happened to the male cheerleaders? Why did they go away? There are two possibilities.

One possibility is that they are still there, but are dressed like women. It’s possible they’re transsexuals.

But I have a keen eye for women. In my discerning semi-professional opinion, the female cheerleaders today have two X chromosomes, among other things. I’m tempted to ask them to confirm my opinion, especially since I might enjoy their reaction.

The other, more likely, explanation for the absence of male cheerleaders is that male cheerleading simply fell out of fashion. Notwithstanding all the hoopla about genderism and anthropology and oppression, you see, gender-bending is mostly about fashion.

(Pity the children whose genitals and hormones are sacrificed on the altar of such fashion by their fashion-conscious parents.)

It’s widely believed that we passed “peak woke” a year or two ago when wokeism destroyed downtowns nationwide in our misguided glorification of a violent, drug-addled loser who accidentally killed himself under a policeman’s knee.

Similarly, I submit, we passed “peak gender-bending” a few months ago. The exact date was when Bud Light launched its advertising campaign where a fake woman asked beer-bellied beer drinkers to endorse her/his/their/its sex schtick by drinking more Bud Light. That didn’t succeed, to put it mildly.

Who would have guessed?

I don’t mean to imply that all male cheerleaders were gender-bending gays (as opposed to straight gays). A disproportionate number probably were, but that only means more than the 2-4% of the general population that are gay. (As a measure of the fashionability of gayness, surveys show that people think about 20% of the population is gay, while the actual percentage is around 2-4%.)

More likely, the men decided they didn’t like the role of merely cheering for other men without actually picking up a gun or a hammer. Merely cheering other men, without actually helping or hurting them, is not a natural male thing. (Sorry, fanatic sports fans.)

Rather, the natural male thing in response to males competing physically is to either (1) join them, or (2) beat them.

That explains the recent absence of male cheerleaders. But it leaves a question: What happened to the female ones?

In my careful semi-professional data-gathering on the subject this Thanksgiving weekend of food, friends, family, football and femmes, I’ve noticed that the female cheerleaders are still there but they’re not THERE. They lack the, um, charisma of their predecessors.

I conclude that the reason female cheerleaders for male sports teams have declined in number and quality is the same good reason that the male cheerleaders have. They’ve decided they want to either (1) join them, or (2) beat them.

Welcome to the game, ladies. No kicking, please.