As a way to dissociate from political news, I’ve spent the past week mainlining stories about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders; it started when I binged the new Netflix docuseries “America’s Sweethearts,” which follows the women trying out and training for the 2023-2024 squad.
I’m a New York Jew who got kicked out of ballet class when I was 4 because I lacked any discernible talent or interest. So I didn’t expect to fall in love with a show that is so steeped in Southern and dance culture. The Atlantic’s Caitlin Dickerson describes the old-school “cult of femininity” that requires these women to be “windup dolls of positivity.” In the docuseries, one bright-eyed, deeply earnest hopeful named Reece, trying out for the first time, exemplifies this ideal. She says that she wants the Lord to use her as a vessel when she dances: “I pray that whoever watches this one day sees him and not me.”
I came to adore her and the rest of these talented and beautiful women as they worked against incredibly tough odds — hundreds of women try out for the 36 spots on the squad. Because the newbies are competing for positions against veterans, the acceptance rate in any given year can be comparable to that of an Ivy League school.
The seven episodes of the Netflix series weren’t enough for me. So I watched a 2018 documentary about Cowboys cheerleaders, “Daughters of the Sexual Revolution.” I even started on the CMT reality show about the squad, “Making the Team,” which ran for 16 seasons, and is much less polished than the Netflix show.
Ultimately, I wanted a better understanding of how becoming a Cowboys cheerleader remains such a coveted prize, despite the low pay: Most of the cheerleaders have day jobs. In the Netflix series, we meet one of the squad leaders who is a nurse to a disabled little girl, and she rushes from her demanding job to cheerleading practice, getting by on very little sleep.
Much has been made over the years of the cheerleaders’ paltry compensation; one veteran describes the pay as what a full-time Chick-fil-A employee would make. And the cheerleaders make what they do only because a former cheerleader named Erica Wilkins sued the Cowboys in 2018 for back wages. As my friend, Sarah Hepola, who was a story consultant on the Netflix show, wrote in 2022 for Texas Monthly, after the suit, “The cheerleaders’ game-day pay went from $200 to $400, and rehearsal pay went up to $12 an hour. But that still isn’t a drop in the bucket given the Cowboys’ oceans of wealth.”
So why do they do it? It doesn’t take long before the answer becomes clear: It’s because they love it and have been dancing their whole lives at the highest levels — and cheerleading for pro sports is one of few opportunities to continue to use their talents professionally. Their families have poured a staggering amount of money into their dance training, and for many prospects, cheering for “America’s Team” is seen as the ultimate goal, even though they could probably be making more as social media dancefluencers.
When you watch early episodes of the CMT show, which first aired in 2006, you get a different vibe than from the Netflix series. Not that long ago, there seemed to be a somewhat more relaxed standard for making the squad. Fewer of the women trying out seemed to have years of dance training, and got by on Texas-size charisma (and other Texas-size physical attributes). The CMT show’s portrayal was much crueler — especially at the beginning, the coaches seemed to enjoy humiliating the cheerleading aspirants — and over the years that the show aired, the dancing got much better. The cheerleading squad “was designed as a side hustle, a fun hobby, and as the brand exploded, the competition increased, the demands increased,” Hepola, who also did a podcast about the cheerleaders called “America’s Girls,” told me via email.
As I watched, I realized that this extremely high level of competition reminded me of the dynamic I see today in kids’ sports: a lot of people making a lot of money off the passion and talent of young athletes. Once upon a time, you could play many sports through the high school level mainly for the love of the game. Today, there’s an ever-more-competitive industrial complex behind youth athletics. Increasingly, the hoped-for payoff is going pro, winning a college scholarship or just gaining an edge in college admissions, even though most young athletes in organized sports never get any of these things.
The way this kind of punishing and extractive system plays out in pro cheerleading is illustrated best in the Netflix documentary by a hopeful named Kelly, who says, in the third episode, “I have wanted to be a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader my whole life,” explaining that her family sacrificed money and time for her to pursue dance. Kelly’s parents, we learn, are now divorced, but her mother says that she stayed married longer than she otherwise would have so that Kelly could keep dancing. “Kelly was, you know, dancing seven days a week, day in and day out. I did not want to break that dream, what she loved, her routine, her life. That was her life,” her mother says through tears. “Financially there was absolutely no way I could have provided that for her alone, so I waited. And I’m thrilled I did it.”
Kelly is cut from the team before the end of the episode because, the coaches tell her, “You look very nervous all the time” and “we hate that.”
Although it’s hard not to feel that the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders give more to their organization than they get back, you won’t catch me saying that it’s not worth it. “That is the job I signed up for,” a veteran cheerleader named Victoria, who has become a fan favorite, says in the first episode. And as Hepola said, “I wonder if you ran the scanner over our lives, how many of the things that we love the most actually pay?”
I wish they were paid better and treated with more respect (Hepola does, too). And that they could still experience the glory of being a Cowboys cheerleader without the attendant possibility — likelihood — of being sexually harassed and body-shamed; we see both things happen to these dancers along the way.
Victoria, who’s the daughter of a former Cowboys cheerleader, had been told in previous years that she needed to lose weight (“She is not at her trimmest state,” we hear a coach say in a clip from the CMT series as the camera zooms in on her midriff). She developed an eating disorder and took a year off from cheerleading to recover her mental health. Some of the retired cheerleaders talked about needing hip surgeries after doing so many jump splits.
Once the dancers are fitted for their uniforms, they’re forbidden from going up a size. And they have to give the uniforms back at the end of every season; they don’t get to keep anything but their memories and the friends they made along the way. For some of them, that’s enough.
But I can’t help thinking about the women we didn’t hear from in the series, who maybe didn’t have such a good time. “I tried to track down a lot of women for my podcast who did not want to be found,” Hepola told me. If there’s another season of the Netflix show, perhaps a more complete picture of the Cowboys cheerleading experience could force this elite institution to evolve, and it may make more of these talented women reach the conclusion that making the team isn’t worth the cost.
Victoria explains in an early episode that her whole life has been about becoming a Cowboys cheerleader. “Since I grew up right in the middle of it,” she says, “I didn’t know or think of any other opportunities.” By the end of the series, though, she decides she’s not coming back for more; she can see outside the stadium, beyond the lights, to something different.
The post Becoming a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader Is Like Getting Into Harvard appeared first on New York Times.