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.
