Why do people think cheerleading isn't a sport?

It really gets under my skin when people say that cheerleaders are athletes and what they do is easy. CORRECTION: cheerleading is NOT easy. Yeah, its so easy to make fun of cheerleaders after silly movies like bring it on and fired up because of all the cheer drama that goes on in those movies but it real life, 99% of that does not happen. As cheerleaders we are nice to our teammates AND the teams we compete against. we aren' all catty b*tches that get what they want and if they don't whine about it. I will be fair though, yes, game cheerleading is not a sport. I think of it more as a people being super fans, but once you throw in the element of stunting and tumbling in though it becomes more of an athletic thing. I don't understand how people think that tumbling and stunting are easy! Girls, and sometimes guys, are being tossed at least 5 feet in the air over your heads and are expected to hit difficulty skills like fulls (where they twist in the air) and toe touches. Scary much am I right? Don't forget tumbling, one little wrong move and your face has a new best friend... the floor and i can say from experience, ouch. Another thing that irritates me is that some people think that to be a cheerleader you need to be skinny, hot, and slutty. WRONG! Most girls lose weight once they join cheer because we work, train, and sweat just as much as any athlete in any sport. I know the cheerleading uniforms also get some people a little flustered saying that it isn't appropriate to wear and such but when you think about it, it isn't as bad as other sports. Swimmers wear bathing suits and speedos for goodness sake! We wear these type of uniforms because they are easy to move in. The less material that is on our body while we are competing makes it easier to not get tangled in when we are tumbling and stunting. We add things like sparkles and sequins to make things look nice however because we still are cheerleaders and we still like to make things look nice. A lot of people tell me cheer isn't a sport because it isn't in the Olympics or on TV. Actually, cheerleading is on TV around April when they show the Cheerleading Worlds on ESPN every year. That is where the best allstar teams around the world compete to win and show the world what they got! Everyone says that football is a sport correct? But from what i recall... football isn't in the Olympics either, so i guess that excuse is out as well. So far I have not heard one thing that would direct cheerleading into an un-athletic or non-sport category. Leave a comment saying why you don't believe cheer is a sport or help defend cheerleaders case on why they ARE athletes!