How to Be a Hollaback Girl

It's 10:30 on a cool Saturday morning, and a girl tears through the parking lot at the Baptist Sports Park toward the same bubble where the Tennessee Titans practice. She's got a pair of shimmery, pink pleather knee-high boots tucked under her thin arm. The clunky heels bob and smack her tiny waist. She whips around and enters the door to the bubble, her teased brown hair whisking across a very made-up face. And she's quickly swallowed into the mix of glitter and glam—nearly 200 girls just as beautiful, tan and done up as she is, all sprayed and shellacked to perfection for the preliminary round of the Titans cheerleader auditions.

"Can you believe it?"

Another brunette with hair that trickles well below her shoulder blades tosses her hair back and checks to see that her glittering earrings are still attached to her lobes. She's been practicing what quickly emerges as the signature move of the day: the come hither hair toss. You know, the sexy, girl-on-the-hood-of-a-Camaro-in-a-music-video kind of move. The one that starts deep in the back of her neck and ends with her luscious locks swept across her face.

She's wearing a neon lime-green get-up that shimmers under the skylight. With her cleavage-boosting bikini top—equipped with underwire, of course—and a skirt roughly the length of a $1 bill, she's got the look nailed. But if it weren't for the color of her Lycra ensemble, she might not stand out at all against the horde of girls, similarly undressed, who stretch in lines set in five-yard increments from the 10- to the 50-yard line.

Each one seems to have received the same memo: Wear something stretchy, neon and shiny. Knee-high boots are a must. So are nude pantyhose. Bonus points for anything glittery, bedazzled or dripping with fringe and rhinestones. In fact, the whole place resembles a superhero convention. It's easy to see how this colorful spectacle would mesmerize your average, middle-aged Titans fan.

The girls get their directive from Stacie Kinder, the choreographer, leader and business manager of the group: Practice your high kicks. With her spandex workout gear, blonde hair and shapely body, Kinder blends in with the crowd until she gets on the mic, reminding them to only jut their long legs into the air on the even counts—2, 4, 6, 8, she reminds them. "We all went to school," she says.

And the girls get to kicking. It's like the Rockettes en masse, except here, there's one girl only kicking as high as her waist with bent legs and hunched shoulders for every three girls nearly knocking their noses with feet pointed to perfection. It's a lot harder than some of them thought it would be. It's a lot more than sexy.

Sure, there is a lot of hair. Curled hair, teased hair, long, shampoo-commercial hair—everywhere. The easiest way to describe the Titans cheerleader look is "very"—very tan, very thin, very busty, very bare, very heavy on the makeup, very tight and light on the clothing.

You never see this many tanned bodies in Nashville in April. Here, the deep bronze splashed across more writhing bodies than you'd find at a Cancun spring break is the norm. The one redhead in the bunch who doesn't seem to have a monthly tanning membership looks a little odd and sickly against the girls drenched in that intriguing shade of Mystic Tan orange.

But as the girls filter through in groups of four to perform a dance before the judges, a group of choreographers, former dancers, photographers, a few nameless men with permagrins and the like, it becomes apparent that this isn't just a beauty contest. Well, kind of. Kinder tells the judges to mark the girls as yes, no or maybe. "If they messed up but look really great, let them through," she says. "Clearly, weight management is important."

Judging from all the sucked-in stomachs, arched backs and the way the whole crew takes to ardently fanning themselves between dances to keep their makeup from streaking down their faces and ruining their "I always look airbrushed" façade, Kinder's requirement is no secret. In fact, she gives the girls this advice: "If you knock out the dance and look like a drowned rat, you're going to get points taken off."

But as soon as the lyrics to "Bringing Sexy Back" ricochet throughout the bubble, and the first unfortunate soul literally crumbles under the pressure, you know hot just won't cut it. Somehow, she gets offbeat and drops it too early. Her ass plummets to the turf as she bends her knees wide open. The other girls are still upright, shaking it like there's no tomorrow. A look of sheer terror washes over her face. And it becomes clear: The only way to really stand out in a field full of potential Playboy centerfolds is to be the one who massacres the routine or to be fat. It's hard to tell which is a worse offense.

"The NFL is the most prestigious sports league in the world," Kinder tells the girls. "So this tryout is definitely very competitive."