The Cheerleader Trap

When the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders sashay onto the field, hair flying and pompoms fluttering, the stands erupt in thunderous roars. Fans know they’re about to witness a spectacle every bit as thrilling and athletic as the football game they’ve been watching.

Like the pro team they represent, the cheerleaders are elite athletes at the top of their profession, enduring grueling hours of training and pushing through pain and injuries. Like the players, they make promotional appearances, sign autographs, participate in photo shoots and do community outreach.

The D.C.C. have been bringing the sizzle to Cowboys games for over 50 years. “America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders,” a new Netflix series, follows a recent class of dancers, as well as their director, Kelli Finglass, and head choreographer, Judy Trammell, (both D.C.C. alumnae) through one complete season, from the arduous auditions — in which 500 women vie for 36 spots — to the final game.

Charismatic cheerleaders make for bingeable entertainment. In fact, the D.C.C. have already starred in an earlier series, CMT’s “Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders: Making the Team,” which ran from 2006 to 2022. While that show focused mostly on performance and auditions, this new one, directed by Greg Whiteley, looks a little deeper, hinting at some of the illogic and injustice lurking beneath the glossy surface.

As both shows make clear, the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders maintain near military-levels of discipline, in part because their rigorous, acrobatic, and precisely choreographed routines require it. But beyond all the physical discipline, the D.C.C. must also practice a kind of aesthetic discipline. D.C.C. membership requires meticulous grooming. We watch dancers curling their hair and putting on makeup. We follow new recruits as they undergo (sometimes dramatic) salon makeovers. And we watch them being watched, especially by Ms. Finglass, who scrutinizes the women’s images — in photos, videos and blown up to massive proportion on the stadium’s Jumbotron — critiquing everything from muscle tone to mascara placement.

D.C.C. rules dictate that dancers show up in full hair and makeup at all times, even when rehearsing outdoors in 100-degree Texas heat. They must also scrupulously maintain their slim figures, and may never change uniform size, even over multiple years. (Dancers can remain on the squad for five years, but must re-audition every year.) “It’s hard for girls not to want to starve themselves,” says one dancer.

It’s easy to understand the pressure. Their trademark sexy-cowgirl uniform is unforgiving: white hot pants; cleavage-exposing bra-tops; and white cowboy boots, topped off with beauty-pageant-style hair (long curls worn loose, to permit much provocative flipping). The choreography is a hybrid of jazz, ballet and Rockette-style precision dance, punctuated with seriously raunchy moves. Hips swivel, shoulders shimmy, bosoms bounce and legs kick. Sky high.

The kick line is among the D.C.C.’s crowd-pleasing signature moves, along with the “jump splits,” in which dancers link straight arms, leap in unison, and land in perfect splits, smiling brightly as their bodies hit the ground. The move is a literal “leap of faith,” since a single misstep by one dancer could injure many.

“I don’t know who came up with that,” says Caroline Sundvold, a former D.C.C., in the series. “That’s what kind of rips up people’s hips.” She should know. Ms. Sundvold, still in her 20s, has undergone hip and knee surgery, and in some scenes, relies on a walker as she recovers.

Yet she misses the team sorely, and seems a bit lost in her post-cheering life. “It’s like D.C.C. land is this mythical, magical world,” she says. “And once you start sipping that Gatorade, you do not want to come out.” Ms. Sundvold even offers D.C.C. audition coaching to her younger sister, Anna Kate, who is overjoyed when she, too, makes the team.

Beyond all the other attributes, the D.C.C. — and this series — promotes the dancers’ traditionally feminine sweetness, helpfulness and family values. Cheerleading is, by definition, devoted to celebrating the success of others.

“Thinking of others, it’s what cheerleaders do,” Ms. Finglass reminds her dancers.

It can also be a family tradition, and we meet several women whose mothers also cheered for the D.C.C. decades ago and remain deeply invested in the organization. The emphasis on altruism and tradition recurs often, as do references to Christian faith. Dancers are filmed chatting warmly with residents at a senior citizen home, praying before meals and attending an evangelical church service (where the pastor cries out, “God loves the Dallas Cowboys!”). The show devotes considerable airtime to rookie dancer, Reece Weaver, a soft-spoken former Miss Florida’s Outstanding Teen who says she dances only to “give glory to God.” Ms. Weaver was engaged during the series, and her fiancé (now husband), she says, was the only young man she ever permitted to put his arm around her shoulders.

This insistence on old-fashioned, girlish innocence appears even in the series’ title. The D.C.C. calls its members “America’s sweethearts”— an antiquated term that speaks volumes. “Sweetheart” conjures an ingénue in a 1950s movie — something like a girlfriend, but minus any adult sexuality. With this retro title, the D.C.C. declare themselves the chaste helpmates of not only the Dallas Cowboys (whose players they are contractually forbidden to date), but of all America.

Can we reconcile the “sweetheart” vibe with the D.C.C.’s bombshell look and come-hither moves? Not really. The inherent contradiction of women trying to uphold apple-pie wholesomeness while wearing so little and dancing so provocatively lies at the heart of this series, a reminder that the Madonna-whore dichotomy is still alive and um, kicking, in popular culture.

And what do these young women receive in exchange for trying to uphold such contradictory ideals? For their artistry, discipline and pain? For risking serious injury and subjecting themselves to being stalked, groped and harassed by fans, as several women recount in the show? Shockingly little.

The Dallas Cowboys are the most valuable team in the N.F.L., with player contracts reaching into the tens of millions. D.C.C. salaries, however, hover around that of the average “Chick-fil-A worker,” as one former dancer, Kat Puryear, remarks on the show.

While some senior dancers may earn up to $75,000 per year, most earn about $14 per hour, and $500 on game days (which can stretch to 11 hours), according to Sports Illustrated. Many of the women hold second jobs, and we see them rushing to evening rehearsals after spending entire days working — in medical sales, nursing, at a florist shop. One finalist for the team is an orthodontist.

When asked about this pay scale, Charlotte Jones, the Cowboys’ brand officer and daughter of team’s owner, Jerry Jones, responds: “They actually don’t come here for the money. They come here for something that’s actually bigger than that to them. They have a passion for dance.”

“It is about a sisterhood,” Ms. Jones adds, “about relationships that they have for the rest of their life. They have a chance to feel like they are valued, they are special, and they are making a difference.”

Indeed, the series offers a convincing, even moving portrait of the sisterhood the D.C.C. women enjoy: a sense of camaraderie, identity and belonging that lasts for decades. What is staggering, though, is the assumption that these benefits should replace financial compensation.

But this inequity is of a piece with all the other contradictions embodied by the D.C.C. It’s still enticing to many young women to be prized as objects of desire, even while knowing the attendant pitfalls, and even when being denied reasonable compensation. It’s still true that women are encouraged to be sexy but somehow also “pure.”

And as Netflix knows well, it’s still enticing to watch a television show, or a halftime show, that puts all this unfairness on full display, wrapped up prettily with music, dance and glittering, star-spangled costumes.