*Cowgirls rolls of the tongue better. Sorry, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.

Emile Durkheim had a puzzle to solve. How to explain a rash of suicides in seemingly different subcultures. His theory was this: people’s lives are a mish-mash of individual identities and group norms. Imbalance between the individual and the group in either direction causes existential disorder such that people are driven to the point of no return.

It’s not a perfect theory. But it does shed some light on the complexities of social identity and belonging and the weight they hold in our lives. I was reminded of this whilst watching two reality shows (or docuseries) focused on two very different groups of women. In Netflix’s AMERICA’S SWEETHEARTS, we meet the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, and elite squad of women athletes who pour their talent and skills into their (barely) paid roles as cheerleaders for Dallas’s football team. These women are seriously impressive and they work to get and stay on this team in spite of the intense hours, the bizarre moral code they must stick to, and the ever-shifting metrics of who is the ideal cheerleader. I watched in horror as one woman who after being cut from the team the previous season, moved her entire life to Dallas and paid for a year of specialized training from a veteran cheerleader, was cut again because of her height. Her height. Something she cannot high kick of boldly sashay away. I watched with even greater levels of horror as previous cheerleaders in their early thirties recounted the multiple joint surgeries they’ve endured because of what the cheer routines have done to their bodies.

Over on Disney+, THE SECRET LIVES OF MORMON WIVES delivers a different flavour of insanity. We are introduced to MomTok, a purported invention of a group of young Mormon women building social media presences and careers as they navigate their faith, marriages and motherhood. Where to start? From ‘soft swinging’ scandals, to rating one another on a ‘Mormon scale’, to backbiting and shit-talking, the order of the day with these women is drama. Not without a purpose: the drama keeps us (or, you know, me) glued to their social media feeds and to their show. They have probably got a few more seasons coming, and with that, brand deals, and pay cheques.

While these seem like very different groups, they share the basic scaffolding of social groups that rely on highly regimented codes and norms. The principals in both these groups spend a significant amount of their energy tracing and retracing the boundaries around their group identities. What is MomTok? Is it the Mormonism? Is it the friendship? Is it for the likes or the vibes? Over in Dallas, the women on the current squad know that they are not guaranteed a spot on the team in the coming seasons. Just like the thousands of hopefuls across the country, they will need to reapply, re-audition and be re-inducted. Cycle, rinse, repeat. As Durkheim theorised, the true stakes of these processes lie in what the group identity means to the individuals. For the MomTok crew, it’s a delicate balance between challenging some of the more regressive norms of their religion but recasting those norms in a pastiche of popular culture and traditional gender roles, all while turning a profit and supporting their families. For the DCC women, it’s about casting a seemingly regressive and exploitative craft as prized identity and a sought-after achievement. I can recall at least three women featured on the DCC show whose mothers were cheerleaders before them. For those women, it is a family tradition, passed on in the form of pom-poms and go-go boots.

What’s the alternative? What are these highly contested groupings protecting their members from? According to Durkheim, the function of social groups is to offer individuals an order to which they can cling. In times of chaos and disorder, the groups offer frameworks with which individuals can make sense of the world around them and their place in it. The chaos of being a woman is constant. The COVID pandemic and all the ways in which it rearranged and redefined the work of women and mothers might be the source of the current disorder. MomTok and DCC might offer a subset of young women whose lives were especially jostled by the pandemic relative safe harbour and the tools to navigate the ever-increasing pressures of post-COVID existence.

I don’t make this argument to endorse either subculture. But I get the instinct to found, find and cling desperately to a group. I’m a third culture kid, an identity that is defined by existential chaos. The only way to survive is to find the closest group and carve out a niche for oneself. Sometimes, as Durkheim theorised, you end up with the wrong crowd and the balance between the I and the We is knocked off. If you’re lucky, you’ll eventually find a group that offers the right balance, and equilibrium will be established.

As weird as the MomTokers and the cowgirls seem to those of us on the outside, they are drawing on what they have to create something we all hope to find in our lifetimes: belonging. Who among us can judge that?

Featured image by Amer Mughawish on Unsplash