Girl Kept off Squad, Told Breasts Are Too Large, Suit Alleges : Spurned Cheerleader Regains Confidence

Nearly a year after she was rejected by the Fountain Valley High School cheerleading squad, allegedly because her breasts were too large, Vicki Ann Guest said she has regained her self-confidence but will pursue her lawsuit so the same thing doesn’t happen to someone else.

“It shattered my self-confidence and made me feel insecure,” Vicki said. “Now there are times when I feel really good about myself and times I think twice and wonder why she said it to me.”

Vicki, 17, filed a lawsuit against the Huntington Beach Union High School District last October alleging that her school’s cheerleading adviser told her after tryouts that she couldn’t be on the squad because her chest was too large. The suit also alleges that the adviser told her to have cosmetic breast-reduction surgery.

The suit asks for a declaration from the district that it was guilty of unconstitutional sex discrimination and that permitting a teacher to recommend cosmetic breast-reduction surgery to a student is unconstitutional.

Filed by feminist attorney Gloria Allred, the suit also asks for $1 million in damages and a permanent injunction barring the school district from advising students to obtain cosmetic surgery as a condition of participating in school events.

School district Supt. Marie Otto stressed that all cheerleaders in the district were selected by outside judges and the students were chosen on merit, not physical appearance.

Case Awaiting Trial

Allred said the case is in litigation and no trial date has been set. The attorney declined to discuss Vicki’s chest size because she felt that it was not a relevant criterion and that the teen-ager should not have to sacrifice her privacy.

A high school senior who has danced since she was 6, Vicki said she wanted to be a cheerleader to gain experience in performing.

“It was just a special activity that would have made my senior year a lot of fun,” she said.

A cheerleader at elementary and junior high schools, Vicki said she went to see the high school cheerleading adviser to find out why she wasn’t selected for the squad so she could work on improving those areas.

Vicki said the adviser told her that her skills, performance and teacher recommendations were good but that her breasts were too large and she should have cosmetic breast-reduction surgery.

“I was shocked and confused,” she said. “I was also devastated, but I went home believing this was true.”

Vicki, who said the cheerleading squad is coeducational, said she stayed home from school the next day and left school early the following day because she felt uncomfortable.

“It changed me a lot,” she said. “I found myself wearing baggy shirts and sweat shirts in dance class, and I wasn’t able to perform as easily.”

No one asked her why she missed school, Vicki said, and she didn’t talk about it.

“I felt really self-conscious about myself and the way I looked--I felt like people were staring at me.”

Until that point, Vicki, a four-year member of the school’s Advanced Dance Team, studied jazz, ballet and tap dancing six days a week. Her hobbies also include swimming, reading and modeling. But when she was rejected by the cheerleading squad last April, she dropped everything for a while.

After staying at home for several days, Vicki returned to school. Somehow students found out about the incident a couple of weeks later, she said. Although she was bothered that the news had leaked out, Vicki said she received support from students and teachers.

“I was really shocked that they knew,” she said. “Then I talked to my friends about it and they couldn’t believe it.”

“Nobody was ever mean to me or made wisecracks,” she said. “Everybody who came up to me gave me support. My teachers didn’t treat me any differently.”

The incident also brought her closer to her parents and two older brothers, Vicki said.

“I’m glad I was able to talk to my mom about it because if I couldn’t have, I would have walked around feeling really bad about myself,” she said. “My brothers were really, really supportive. They really helped me a lot.”

The family, who are born-again Christians, also prayed, she said.

Her parents, James and Ann Guest, said they met with Principal Michael Kasler three days after the incident.

The father said Kasler acknowledged the teacher’s reason for why his daughter had not become a cheerleader. He said he asked that the school write a letter admitting that the cheerleading adviser was wrong and requested that a policy be implemented prohibiting teachers from recommending cosmetic surgery.

“Here was a happy girl whose happiness was taken away,” said her father, who works in leasing and finance.

Kasler said he would not comment on the parent-teacher conference because those talks are confidential. But he said he believed the allegations were false and explained that three outside judges score the students who try out for the cheerleader squad.

“We don’t have a policy regarding physical appearance,” he said. “The decision on who makes cheerleader is based on skill.”

Otto declined to comment on the validity of the allegations but said, “To my knowledge, we’ve never had a teacher give medical advice to a student.”

After claiming to be “brushed off” by the school district for five months, her father said they decided to sue. Vicki’s mother said it was important for something to be done because of the way her daughter was acting.

“I didn’t feel we had an alternative,” Ann Guest said. “Vicki could walk around and feel bad forever, or we could try to get it resolved.”

Her daughter, who had never been inhibited, was suddenly withdrawn, she said.

“The problem is that Vicki wouldn’t believe us that nothing was wrong with her,” her mother said. “She thought that just because we were her parents we loved her.”

“We wanted a statement saying what the teacher said was wrong, so Vicki could read it and believe it,” the mother said. “I didn’t want to see my daughter go through having to build up her self-esteem.”

Ann Guest, a homemaker, said she spent a lot of time sitting on the couch with her daughter so she could “keep a handle on the situation and know where she was coming from.”

Vicki also received calls from students around the country and letters from Australia lending support, her mother said.

While the suit is pending, Vicki has resumed her previous active schedule and plans to attend a four-year college in California next fall and major in dance.

She is rehearsing three days a week for a March of Dimes benefit in May and recently won the title of talent queen in the American National Sweetheart competition.

“I feel a lot more confident now,” Vicki said, “but there are times I think about when she (the teacher) said it.”