The Cheerleader/Playing With

Basic Trope: Cheerleaders are portrayed as stupid, mean, or both.

Straight: The cheerleaders at Troperville HS tend to fall into one of 3 categories: mean, stupid, or both.
Exagerated: Almost every single member of the school's cheer squad engages in mass murder on a regular basis. The only ones who don't are absolutely oblivious that their fellow students are being killed.
Justified: The competitive, elitist and athletic nature of the Troperville HS cheerleading team appeals to mean girls who lack scholastic talent.
Inverted: The cheerleaders at THS are nicer and smarter than the rest of the student body.
Subverted: It turns out that the cheerleaders each have a Jerkass Facade or are Obfuscating Stupidity, and are actually both nice and articulate whenever anyone gets them to lower their guard.
Double Subverted: The ones who were playing dumb are secretly evil Chessmaters. The ones with the Jerkass Facades are rather dim-witted and were pretending to be jerks because the means ones told them to.
Parodied: Sweet Alice joins the cheer squad. The moment she puts on her uniform, she instantly becomes an evil, drooling idiot.
Deconstructed:
- Mean: The cheerleaders actions have alienated a good number of their classmates. Hardly anyone ever shows up at the sporting events anymore and the school eventually loses its funding for extracurricular activities due to this.
- Stupid: The school gets rid of its squad because every single member is getting failing grades.
Reconstructed:
- Mean: The cheerleaders don't like their fellow students, but know that it's a bad idea to alienate people who might otherwise attend the games. Each member is pleasant, or at least polite, towards their fellow students, but secretly harbors a sense of disdain which they usually, but not always, manage to conceal.
- Stupid: The cheerleaders each regularly see a tutor, who has something of a Butt Monkey status because they are frustrated by the girls constantly saying and doing stupid things during each session.
Zig Zagged: ???
Averted: None of the cheerleaders are known for being meaner or dumber than anybody else.
Enforced: The writer was bullied by cheerleaders when they were in high school and this is their way of relating to audience members who have had similar experiences...or their way of wangsting about it.
Lampshaded: "Of course she humiliated you. She's a cheerleader. Need I say more?"
Invoked: Alice starts acting meaner and stops doing her homework because she thinks that will increase her odds of making the squad.
Defied: The cheerleading team only hires girls that have proven themselves smart and compassionate in order to protect their image.
Played for Laughs: The cheerleaders try to be mean, but their low intelligence makes their insults and scheming rather ineffectual and funny.
Played for Drama: The cheerleaders at her school are so mean that Alice tearfully begs her parents to send her to a different school.
Discussed: "You thought the cheerleaders here would be smart and nice? Shows what you know about high school."
Conversed: "What is it about dancing and waving around pom-poms that attracts sociopaths?"

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