But I'm a Cheerleader

Hot and Bothered

Not Sorry Productions

Society & Culture, Feminism, Books, Relationships, Arts, Intersectionality

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 29 July 2025

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Vanessa Zoltan and Hannah McGregor meet-up at True Directions to record this week’s episode of Hot and Bothered, all about But I'm a Cheerleader.

This week we discuss heteronormativity and the film's mise-en-scène, and revisit the idea of 'camp'. We finish the episode by calling Lynne Gerber to talk to us about the ex-gay organization, Exodus International.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	But I'm a Cheerleader is a 1999 swoony and hilarious romantic comedy set at a gay conversion camp.
0:12.4	Directed by Jamie Babbett and starring Natasha Leone.
0:16.2	It's about Megan Bloomfield, who loves her family, her friends, and more than anything, being a cheerleader.
0:25.7	Okay, we're going to kill the ranges this year, right?
0:28.0	Yeah!
0:29.1	One day, she comes home from school, and her friends, her boyfriend, and her parents have staged an intervention.
0:36.6	We're afraid you're being influenced by a way of thinking and unnatural.
0:44.5	Do you remember the woman on TV?
0:46.4	Honey, we think you're a lesbian.
0:49.6	Their evidence is, one, she doesn't really like kissing her boyfriend.
0:55.0	Two, she is a vegetarian.
0:58.0	And three, she really likes Melissa Etheridge.
1:02.6	Megan is shocked.
1:04.9	I'm not perverted.
1:06.8	I get good grades.
1:08.5	I go to church.
1:10.0	I'm a cheerleader. She can't be a lesbian.
1:14.6	But her family and friends are undeterred and send her to True Directions, a gay conversion therapy home.
1:23.5	Rupal plays Mike, an ex-gay, who will lead her deprogramming along with Mary Brown, played by Kathy Moriarty, who is the head of the conversion therapy home.
1:35.6	It's a long path to righteousness, Megan.
1:39.2	And it's a battlefield of temptation out there, and you're going to have to fight.
1:43.2	Once at the conversion camp, Megan makes her first step toward becoming straight.
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