December 14, 2021 • 38 mins
A group of former Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders pose topless in Playboy, and the Cowboys go to court to protect their brand. For episode transcripts and bonus content related to the show, visit texasmonthly.com.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Texas Monthly.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
In January nineteen seventy nine, a made for TV movie
came out. It was all about the Cowboys cheerleaders. It
starts with a magazine editors in his high rise office
in New York watching football.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
I've been watching that cassette of the super Bowl for
a week. You know what, The TV cameras spend most
of the time on those girls, the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
And like plenty of real life magazine editors around that time,
this gets his wheels turning. He's determined to get the
dirt on the cheerleaders.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
All that goody goody look but don't touch nonsense. I
want to cut through all that phony pr and show
those girls for what they really are.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
He dispatches his ex, a feminist journalist played by Jane Seymour,
to try out for the team and get a real scoop.
The premise borrows from a famous expose written by Gloria Steinem.
She posed as a playboy bunny at Hugh Hefner's New
York club and wrote about the ugly truth of life
is a sex object, But this movie is a little
(01:14):
less hard hitting. Cheerleaders director Suzanne Mitchell got to approve
the script, and the journalist searched for dirt ends with
a twist. Us and Spence.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
I've been thinking, and maybe we're on the wrong track.
There just is no story to the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders
are everything that their pr says they are. They are
just a lot of nice, down home girls having some fun.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Reviews of the movie ranged from corny to junk to
one of the worst made for television movies since Man
Eaters are Loose, But it became a smash. It was
the highest rated made for TV movie of the year.
You've heard a lot about how popular the cheerleaders were,
but there was something else behind the ratings, because in
(02:01):
the months before the movie aired, a scandal rocked the NFL,
A scandal about sex and who gets to sell it.
It was about the meaning of exploitation. It was about money,
and it began with five former Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders opening
their haltertops.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
We were the first Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders to ever show
our breast to the world, and that one thing I
think caused so many problems.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
I just saw.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I'm Sarah Happela from Texas Monthly. This is America's Girls,
Episode three, Naked Ambition. Debbie Kepley joined the squad in
(03:05):
nineteen seventy six, right as the cheerleaders were taking off.
She tried out in secret. She didn't want anyone to
know if she didn't make it, and she mostly thought
being a cheerleader was fun. She liked the rehearsals, like
learning to dance with the other women.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
It's the sisterhood. It was like, oh, this many women
can get together and get along. Then you build up
a friendship with all these different girls.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
She spent two seasons with the cheerleaders. When she started,
she'd been working as a clerk at a federal court,
but she quit because the cheerleader schedule was so unpredictable.
She took a job bagging groceries at Kroger instead. Before
her cheerleading days, she'd love the Dallas nightlife.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Lots of nightclubs, the point Papa Guio's Les Jardins. Let
me see Playboy Club. There was so many nightclubs, and
do you get free drinks if you dance? And you know,
I knew all the guys who opened the nightclubs.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
But once she joined the squad, she couldn't go out
dancing at night on her own. That was cheerleader director
Suzanne Mitchell's rule. Cheerleaders weren't allowed inside the Playboy Club
at all, even though it was in the same building
as the Cowboys headquarters.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
I guess they're always in fear of that somebody's going
to find out you're a Cowboy cheerleader and you did
something wrong. They always put this fear over you. Either
do this like we say, or you can be replaced
because we have alternates sitting in the wing waiting.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
To take your job.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Sometimes being a cheerleader wasn't so great, especially when she
was making fourteen dollars and twelve cents a game.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Just shake your pom pomps. Does it glow? And shake
your pom pomps, But don't talk to anybody. We get
the camera, smile at the camera, but don't talk to anybody.
I don't like people telling me what to do. I
think it comes from being raised as a by a
single mom and hers of you know, taking on the world,
(05:02):
and raised me by herself.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Debbie was willing to conform to the squad in a
lot of ways. She was a brunette and a blonde
world and she did what she could to get her
body to look more like the others.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
I didn't have cleavage, so a lot of people don't
notice that. There was a certain way we had to
tie our shirts, and because they wanted you to have
the most cleavage, so the knot had to be tied
a certain way so you had that look.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
But there was this one moment when she drew the line.
When Debbie came back for a second season, Suzanne Mitchell
told her to start wearing her hair and pigtails.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
And she grabbed my hair and she pulled it up
my ponytails again. She said, I want you wearing pigtails again
all year. And I'm like, oh, I don't want to,
and she said, yes, she will, And so I went
and cut all my hair off. And she didn't fire me,
but she could have because I didn't abide by the rules.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Of course, this was the same makeover Susanne wound up
giving Tammy Barber the look that made Tammy a star.
Looking back now, Debbie realizes her decision probably cost her
a lot of money, hundreds of dollars for every one
of the appearances Suzanne might have chosen her for if
she'd just warned, the pigtails playing along had its rewards.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
It's the girls, the goodie too shoe girls is what
I call them. The ones who never said no to
the system or questioned the system. Those are the ones
that got all the work.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
But while Debbie chafed against the system, it was still
an exciting ride, especially at the end of her second
season when the squad went to New Orleans.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Welcome to Super Bowl twelve. I'm Pat Summer all the time, Brookshire.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
It was January nineteen seventy eight. This time the TV
cameras really spotlighted the cheerleaders as a central piece of
the action.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
But that's when you see the impact of the daviscon
word cheerleaders.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
This is the historian Frank Andre Griddy. He says, if
you were watching this game at home, you couldn't miss
how valuable the cheerleaders had become.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
There literally, Tom Brookshire and Pat summerl who were calling
that telecast, say, oh, this is about the cheerleaders as
much as it is of the players on the sideline.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Heavens, there is a great rivalry between the Denver cheerleaders,
that's one of them, and the Dallas cheerleaders.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Frank writes about this game in his book The Sports Revolution.
The cameras keep cutting away to linger on the Cowboys
cheerleaders as they swish their pompongs, or to the Denver
Broncos cheerleaders the Pony Express in their silver fringed bikini
tops and tiny sarongs. Monday Night football did this sort
of thing all the time, but Frank says this Super
(07:41):
Bowl game took it to a whole new level. The
cheerleaders were practically foisted into a honey shot throwdown.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Competition going on down there?
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Do you feel that?
Speaker 5 (07:53):
Also, there is a game third and eighteen.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
So that really gives you a sense of the ways
in which these women are becoming famous, but too completely,
almost completely through the lens of the male gates.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
One hundred million people watched that Super Bowl game, and
the cheerleaders now more than ever, we're a major part
of this winning package. The backstage, Debbie says, the cheerleaders
were treated more like an afterthought.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
The performance was great, and then the game was great.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
We won, and the.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Afterpart was the sad part. We were hurried off back
to the bus, put we were taken behind the gate,
not even through.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
The airport, like normal people.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
We were put behind security onto a plane where we
sat and sat with no water, no food, no nothing
for hours and hours.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
It was a commercial plane, and the cheerleaders sat there
all night, stuck in a post Super Bowl runway traffic jam. Meanwhile,
the Cowboys got a big victry bash near their hotel
with performances by Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Jerry Jeff Walker.
The cheerleaders had not been paid a dime for their appearance,
not even their usual fifteen bucks. The Cowboys didn't even
(09:13):
pay for the cheerleaders traveled at the Super Bowl. They
had a sponsor cover the expenses. Sports Illustrated wrote about
this a few months later. When it came to being
cheapskates with their cheerleaders, they said, Dallas may hold the record.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Which if they can't, they have enough money. It's ridiculous,
but it just made you feel worthless. All the hours
you put in to be a part of the Cowboy cheerleaders,
all the hard work, the sweat, the tears, the blisters
on your feet and doing everything they tell you to do,
and you finally go to Super Bowl, they win, and
(09:48):
then you're stuck on a plane for hours and it's
like nobody cared.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
While the cowboys were celebrating in New Orleans and fans
in Dallas were throwing parties back home, but cheerleaders had
to celebrate on the tarmac.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
I just remember a lot of the girls that consumed
alcohol were drinking quite a bit, and you know, talking
to the regular public that were stuck on the plane
with us, and after a while, we just there's a
lot of said, I'm not going back for this. This
is ridiculous that they leave us sitting on a plane
like this. And it's just I was over it.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
It wasn't just the women who had been stuck on
that plane. Conflict had been brewing around the cheerleaders for
a while. Women who hadn't made the squad, women who
had made the squad but were tired of the low pay,
the rules, the feeling of being controlled, women who'd gotten
a taste of the spotlight and wanted more. And in
the summer of nineteen seventy eight, a bunch of them
(10:48):
joined forces. They called themselves the Texas Cowgirls. A former
cheerleader named Tinajimenez came up with the idea. She was
an enterprising single mom who had cheered for the Cowboys
in nineteen seventy six and been cut in the next auditions.
She figured, why should the Cowboys be the only game
in town. I tried to reach Tina, but she never
(11:10):
responded to my messages. Here's Debbie.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Tina fant of Texas Cowgirls because she kept seeing a
lot of girls that auditioned and didn't make it or
had to leave because of issues other you know, they
didn't follow the rules. So she figured their dancers, their
beautiful young girls, they didn't know how to you know,
do promotions.
Speaker 6 (11:34):
Yeah. I had way more fun being a Texas Cowgirl
than I did a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Janice Garner was another member of the Cowgirls.
Speaker 6 (11:43):
Oh, fewer rules, more money, just easygoing and fun.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Janis was twenty one when she became a Cowboys cheerleader.
She loved dancing at the games, but she says she
never quite fit in.
Speaker 6 (11:57):
It was wonderful and horrible at the same time. The
fun part was being on the field and feeling all
that energy that was coming from the stands and focused
on the field.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
But she struggled to pick up the dance moves and
she got in trouble with Suzanne for things she'd never
even imagined were problems.
Speaker 6 (12:17):
Oh, I got called in for a couple things, and
one was for showing too much cleavage. She wanted me
to look more like the girl next door.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
And that's really interesting.
Speaker 6 (12:29):
I know it. I go figure because I guess I
tie the bow two tied. I can't figure out how
I could have too much cleavage.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
This was the needle the cheerleaders were always trying to thread.
You had to have cleavage, but not too much cleavage.
You had to be sexy, but not too sexy. Janis
didn't try out again. She joined the Texas Cowgirls instead.
There were twenty five of them in all. Here's Debbie Kepley.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
We had these silver boots, and we had electric blue
spandex type one piece that zipped up the front and
a cowboy hat.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
And the money they earned wouldn't get sucked up into
a giant corporation. It would be shared among the women.
The best opportunities wouldn't go to a few favorites. Everyone
got an equal chance to earn money. Their pitch was simple.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
We're former Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders that would make personal appearances
usually where Dallas cowboy cheerleaders would not make an appearance.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
So like private parties where alcohol was served or anywhere
Suzanne decided she didn't want her squad, they.
Speaker 6 (13:41):
Would hire us to appear in sign autographs, like at
car dealerships, auto shows, openings, parades.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
And we would do ducks unlimited auctions, which means we
would walk across the stage with whatever it was that
was being auctioned, and then it was all men yelling
and screaming at.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
You along the way. They got to boogie on merv Griffin.
They performed at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, and
they appeared in the movie North Dallas forty, which was
a fictionalized version of life inside the hard Party in
the nineteen seventies. Cowboys.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Hey, je Quirls, River Trock Quarterback Sandwich, Well that sounds
that's me.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
The movie poster has two Texas cowgirls and they're shiny
blue spandex and silver boots. Debbie's one of them.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
So there this rogue outfit that's like, you know what,
we're sick and tired of the cowboys' rules, with sick
and tire of the exploitation, We're just going to go
out and make money ourselves.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
This is Frank Griddy and that's what they do.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
Right at least for a little while. And one of
the things that makes them famous is the Playboys shoot
that was eventually published in December nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 7 (14:45):
We always had interest in putting our own editorial spin
on what was going on in society.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Jeff Cohen was a photo editor of Playboy back then,
and Playboy was a huge deal in nineteen seventy eight.
This December issue is as fat as a phone book.
Speaker 7 (15:03):
The NFL was having an explosion in popularity and with
it were the cheerleaders that were struting their stuff along
the sidelines.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Jeff would travel the country scouting for talent. He had
come up with other big features like Girls of the
Big Ten and Women of Mensa Cheerleaders and Playboy It's
Not Rocket Science. The package included members of the Chicago Honeybears,
the San Diego Chargettes, the Seattle Seagals, and the Los
(15:36):
Angeles Rams cheerleaders. The Embraceable US That's EWE. In case
you missed the pun. Some of the squads gave the
women permission to pose only if they kept their clothes on.
Other teams didn't put any limits on their cheerleaders, and
about half the women are semi nude. Jeff was surprised
by how gamely some NFL teams opened their doors when
(15:58):
Playboy came knocking.
Speaker 8 (16:00):
Maybe in a way, and I never thought of this
until now, but maybe in a way they were envious
of Dallas. And Dallas was the one that always would
get any sort of publicity or TV or or magazine
coverage about the NFL and cheerleaders. So clearly they were the.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
Ultimate cheerleading group.
Speaker 8 (16:20):
And if indeed, we Playboy we're going to do a
feature on pro football cheerleaders, there's no question Dallas had to.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
Be part of it.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Well, the Cowboys front office was not so enthusiastic, but
when the team said no, Jeff knew just who to call.
Speaker 6 (16:37):
Oh Tina told us, you know, she was all all
over it and thought it'd be a great thing. And
most of us were struggling back then. You know, who
doesn't want to make a bunch of money.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
And then, at least for some of them, there were
the bragging rights to say, Ben and Playboy, here's Debbie again.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
I grew up in a generation where the Playboy magazine
was around and men would have it, and then teenage
boys had it, and then it's like, what's so special?
Why do you want to look at this girl in
this magazine? If I'm your girlfriend, why is that so
much better than me? And I thought, well, if I
(17:18):
ever get the chance, I'll do it. And for me,
it's like to all the guys I ever dated, I
just like see see now.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
For Janis it was just the opposite. She didn't want
anyone to see it.
Speaker 6 (17:35):
It's pretty lame. But I honestly thought, Okay, my parents
go to church, they're you know, good upstanding citizens. They
don't read Playboy magazine. Don't ever see it? Right, We
didn't have the internet back then, so I thought, you know,
it's just going to be a magazine and then it'll
(17:56):
be over with and end of story, right, no big deal.
Well it turned out to be a big deal. Unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
More after this, on the day of her shoot, Janis
Garner shows up at a stranger's house and meets the photographer,
a guy named Arnie freytag.
Speaker 6 (18:20):
Yeah, so I asked Arnie what am I going to wear?
And then he holds up the little bear panties and
a scarf, and I just I was mortified, you know,
then it really set in.
Speaker 9 (18:35):
You know.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
In the photo, Janis perches herself sideways on a couch
with that thin scarf around her neck. Her long legs
are draped across the cushions. Debbie also got a solo
shot in the magazine, emerging topless from swimming pool. It
took hours to get everything just right.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
I mean, it's like a workout beyond belief to make
a picture look the way it does because they didn't
airbrush back then the way they do now. But you
had hair and makeup people on you, costume people, people
taking care of you like you're a queen to get
this one photograph.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
But the centerpiece of the issue was a group shot.
It's a riff on the famous nineteen seventy seven poster
that the Cowboys released. This one has the five X
cheerleaders standing in a v formation, smoke billows around their
white go go boots, and they're wearing very similar uniforms
to the original, but this time the halters are untied
(19:33):
to reveal their breasts as each locks eyes with the camera.
Front and center is a blonde ex cheerleader named Linda
Kellum flashing her top wide open. It's an image that's
part seduction, part satire, and part defiance. And then there's
Janis just to the right of center, standing with her
(19:55):
palm palms resting on her hips and her face just blank.
I'd seen this photo so many times trying to read
their expressions, but I look at it now and I
wonder if Janis's face is betraying how she really felt
about being there, about how badly she wanted not to
be there.
Speaker 6 (20:15):
I wanted to back out. I felt horrible. I thought
I can't do this, and I think I had like
a big boohoo there.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
At one point, Jani's told me there was pressure on
her to go through with the shoot.
Speaker 6 (20:27):
But how should I say that without pointing the finger
at any.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
You know, I don't want to put words in your mouth.
Speaker 6 (20:35):
Yeah, I do have a member. We did hire a
lawyer to try to, I think, get out of it.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Maybe you can hear it in her voice. But this
part of the story gets a little messy because the
photo was destined to be bigger than a page in
a magazine. Remember, the Cowboys poster had been a best
seller of the year before it made millions for the team.
The photographer Arnie fry Tag figured there was a lot
more money to be made if he sold his topless
parody shot as a poster too. It's a little unclear
(21:06):
when he made that decision. A story in The Washington
Post from nineteen seventy nine says the cowgirls only learned
there would be a poster after they agreed to the
shoot and signed contracts. That year, Tina Jimenez told the
Dallas Morning News that she and the cowgirls were quote
kind of tripped into the deal, but once she learned
about the poster, Tina made sure she and the cowgirls
(21:27):
would get a good cut.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
First, there was a there were going to offer us
a flat fee, and then Tina negotiated us to get
so much per poster. I think it was we were
going to get like fifty cents a poster, and she
got ten cents of that. We got forty cents.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Janis told me the pressure she felt mostly came from Tina.
Speaker 6 (21:46):
Yeah. Tina kept telling us about how much money were
going to make, and she said each of us could
stand and make about fifty grand. And that was a
lot back then, right, what would that be in today's dollars?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
I wonder I looked it up. That's more than two
hundred thousand dollars today. Not bad, especially when you consider
that the Cowboys cheerleaders on the official poster only got
paid one hundred and fifty dollars. The cowgirl's photos ran
in Playboy, alongside a story that pokes fun at an
industry eager to sell sex but pretends it's not. And
(22:19):
this article is one of the more fascinating parts of
this whole thing. It's by a writer named Robert Blair Kaiser,
a guy who studied to be a Jesuit priest before
he switched to journalism. He spent much of his career
trying to reform the Catholic Church. He supported women's rights
and birth control. He pushed back against church leaders with
too much control, and he spotted this same dynamic in
(22:43):
the NFL. His Playboy story describes his conversations with NFL executives,
mostly men, as they decide whether to allow their cheerleaders
to participate in the photo feature. Cowboys General manager Tech
Shram is among them. Shram the others say they want
to protect the cheerleader's reputation at the same time they
clearly want the publicity of one of the biggest magazines around.
(23:06):
Kaiser calls out the Cowboys and other teams for profiting
off these women's bodies but not letting the women do
the same, all while paying them no more than fifteen
dollars a game.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
The issue is playing up very skillfully, smartly, because playboy
riders are smart.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
This is Frank again.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
Really highlighting the exploitation of the hypocrisy of the NFL.
That's what the text of the story is doing, even
as the photoshoot is objectifying the women themselves as the
classic playboy. Right.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
They got to have it both ways, criticizing the Cowboys
for profiting off women's bodies and then getting to do
it too. The magazine hit newsstands in late nineteen seventy eight,
and tell me the reaction to this issue. Here's Jeff Cohen.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
Well, the issue came out and.
Speaker 7 (23:56):
It was a part of the expression that should storm, and.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
The backlash was swift. Several of the current cheerleaders who
posed in the issue were fired, even the ones who
had permission. The San Diego Chargettes were folded entirely. At
a league meeting, the NFL commissioner Pete Rizzell told teams
to screen their candidates better and crack down on the
(24:21):
women's behavior off the field. The strict rules Suzanne Mitchell
made for the Cowboys cheerleaders were spreading to the other teams.
Speaker 8 (24:30):
I was a little surprised by the knee jerk reaction
that many of them had.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
But at the same time, we.
Speaker 8 (24:39):
Also know, and we're smart enough about this. The more
stint that they made about it, the more magazines we sold.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Oh wait, that works.
Speaker 8 (24:47):
And I think if it wasn't the number one selling
issue we've ever had, I think it was either.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
Second or third.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
The fantasy that the NFL had introduced to American homes
was getting difficult to manage. But he minded the cheerleaders
being sexualized. But sexual this was a problem. Here's Debbie Kepley.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
It's like America sweethearts, pure wholesome. The girl next door
is representing the Dallas Cowboard cheerleaders. But we're gonna put
them in these sexy little costumes and make them dance
very sexual on the on the TV and on the field.
But we don't want you to think of them in
a sexy way.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
And Playboy wasn't the only problem. A month before the
Playboy issue dropped a movie premiered in a Times Square theater.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
I got a great idea, What do we all work
hard to raise money so we can go to Texas
with them? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Bad acting, bad writing, It didn't have much going for it.
Speaker 6 (25:46):
Well, mister Browning, we're not just washing cars anymore.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
I mean you'll do anything I like, except a hell
of a name starring in Debbie Does Dallas. What plot
the movie had followed up woman hoping to make a
famous cheerleading squad, which funny enough, is called the Texas Cowgirls.
Ads claimed that the star, Bambi Woods, was a former
Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, which wasn't true, but in one graphic scene,
(26:14):
she does wear something close to that iconic blue and
white uniform. The movie could have easily slipped into obscurity,
but the Cowboys sued the movie's distributor, a company that
actually had ties to the mob. A fearless Suzanne Mitchell
went up against them in court, and the Cowboys eventually
got all references to the cheerleaders in their uniforms cut
(26:35):
from the film. Ironically, the endless coverage of that trial
turned Debbie Does Dallas into one of the top selling
porn movies of all time. It opened in theaters across
the country, and Dallas local authorities brought an obscenity case
against the theater operators who showed the film.
Speaker 5 (26:53):
The movie, Debbie Does Dallas supposedly traces the adventure of
some high school age women who aspired to move to
Texas become Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, and the movie drew perhaps
as many people to the courtroom as did the trial itself.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Along the way, the Cowboys spent one million dollars to
protect their brand, an amount that could have covered the
salaries of those cheerleaders for about one hundred and eighty
five years. And the Cowboys weren't done in court. There
was still the issue of that poster. Arnie frytug shot
of the cowgirls had already been on shelves for about
(27:28):
a month and selling well at mall stores like Spencer's
before the Cowboys sued him too. They claimed the poster
violated their copyright and did harmed their image. They said
people would assume these were current Cowboys cheerleaders posing topless.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
The Arnie tell thing was like, okay, was freedom oppress?
What happened to the First Amendment. The Dallas Cowboys can
overrule the First Amendment? What kind of power does that
kind of organization have?
Speaker 2 (27:58):
The cowgirls never got rich that poster. Debbie says. Playboy
paid the meet six hundred dollars for posing. Fry Tag
spent upwards of fifty thousand dollars fighting in court. He
didn't want to talk about this for the podcast, but
his defense was that the photo was a parody. His
lawyer told a reporter that the poster was itself a
(28:19):
social statement about the cheerleaders. It was posing a question,
are the cowboys selling football or are they selling sex?
The Cowboys won, the court said fry Tag failed to
justify his parody claim. But Debbie has a simpler explanation
for why the case shook out the way it did.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Cause is Dallas. You don't go up against the cowboys.
In Texas, you don't go up against the cowboys. I
don't care who you are, you can't win.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
But for the women at the center of the Playboy scandal,
this wasn't just a legal matter, It was a personal one.
Debbie Kepley doesn't regret posing for Playboy. She'd do it again,
and actually she did in nineteen eighty for another feature
on the Women of the NFL.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
I'm glad I did it. Then I wish I had
You know, this sounds stupid, but I wish I had
bigger breast than what I had when I did it,
because but back then everybody was natural.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
So I love that you're happy that you did that.
Speaker 4 (29:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
To me, it's it's like, I don't know's it's I
accomplished a lot of different things, you know, from being
a cheerleader for two years. I got to do Super Bowl.
Then I was fortunate enough to know Tina, and I
got to do the Texas Cowgirl thing and the Playboy thing.
I've had a lot of opportunities like that, and it
all stimmed because I was a cowboy cheerleader.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
W is one of those women who has no hang
ups around nudity. She went on to star in a
touring production of a play called Oh Calcutta, which is
an erotic musical where the entire cast gets naked, but
not everyone felt so at ease about the play Boy issue.
Speaker 6 (30:01):
I was living with my boyfriend at the time, and
my mom comes.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Over, here's Janus again.
Speaker 6 (30:08):
And I had a feeling that she might because she
didn't explain, as you know, as to why she was
paying me a visit. And we sat in the couch
and she I can't remember how she put it, but anyway,
she knew the cat was out of the bag for sure,
and she she just starts to cry. Up to that day,
(30:33):
I had only seen my mother cry once, and that
was the second time that I had seen her cry.
And I felt horrible because I loved my mom and dad.
I loved them dearly, and I I really heard them
and that felt awful, and it feels awful to this day. Actually.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
And Jana says her boyfriend left her not long after that,
in part because of the Playboy Shoot.
Speaker 6 (31:03):
Yeah, I think he was embarrassed. He came from a
really strong religious background. Posing semi nude back then was
really scandalous. You know, people are half nude today just
in their clothes. Nobody gives a crap, But it was
(31:23):
a horrible thing back then.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
I have to say. That's one of the things that
surprises me about this story is how upset it makes
the people around you, because to me, the images seem
quite tame.
Speaker 6 (31:37):
Oh sure, compared to today. Yeah. So yeah, and then
there's the Internet if I got a new job, someone
would eventually out me, and then my bosses would find
out and they would assume that I was promiscuous, which
I wasn't, by the way, and they'd later fire me
because I wouldn't sleep with them. I picked deer over
(32:00):
the years for that, the shame, the embarrassment, just the
trying to hide it.
Speaker 10 (32:07):
You know, when I first learned about this story, I
kind of saw it as a rebellious act and I
thought it was like, really cool. Yeah, And it sounds
to me like that's not how you experienced it.
Speaker 6 (32:24):
No, I didn't see it as that at all.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Janna says she wasn't the only one.
Speaker 6 (32:31):
So there are three of us that felt the same
pretty much and had kind of the same backlash in
their lives because of it, and to this day they
won't even speak about it.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
I wanted to talk to everyone in that photo. They're
women in their mid sixties now, some of them are grandmothers.
But one woman told me the Playboy issue had brought
too much pain to her life. She didn't want to
reopen it. But you decided to speak to me.
Speaker 6 (33:03):
Yeah, I thought, I'm tired of hiding from it, and
I can claim it now. I feel better talking about it.
I can own it now and just go forward, you know,
just forget about it, like, hey, that was a long
time ago.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
So what for the women who were Cowboys cheerleaders at
the time. The double wallop of Playboy and Debbie Dos
Dallas was tough to take. The rules got stricter, and
the women on the squad found themselves torn. Still friends
with the women who posed for Playboy, but frustrated to
be mired and scandal. Here's Shannon Baker Worthman, who you
(33:40):
heard in the last episode.
Speaker 9 (33:42):
There was an awkwardness because I'm seeing, you know, my
friends in Playboy magazine and I thought that the Dallas
Cowboy Cheerleaders were kind of like a designer brand and
this was a knockoff, and I think that cheapens the brand.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
And this is Tammy Barber.
Speaker 11 (34:06):
Zann wanted to make sure we all knew that how
awful that was and how they were disgracing all of us,
And I thought, eh, not really. And I think Suzanne
even you know, tried to accentuate that in a way
by saying, well, you see what they're doing now, you
(34:29):
see what mistakes they made, you know, they're going to
regret this, blah blah blah, and I remember thinking, I
regret not paying my rent.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
The Cowgirl's story reveals the tricky bargain of women trading
on their sex appeal. The exposure they got came with rewards,
but also pitfalls, and the line between them would keep shifting.
I see this story as part of a larger battle
over how we understand the beauty and the danger of
a woman's body. What do we conc that are shameful,
(35:01):
what do we consider empowering. Both sides were selling sex,
but one side enjoyed the approval of preachers and parents,
while on the other side, at least some women were
punished for what they did. The Cowgirls have been banned
for many cheerleader events, deleted from the database of cheerleader alumni,
(35:21):
but they were only following through on the tees the
cheerleaders had been making for years. Here's Frank Caridi again.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
So when I look at the Texas Cowgirls phenomenon, I
don't see these women as you know, folks who were
just being you know, objectified. They certainly were, but they
were trying to sort of, I think, you know, get
compensated for the labor that they were doing.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Both the NFL and Playboy were reaping enormous benefits from
these women, and I think it makes sense that the
Cowgirls wanted to break off a piece for themselves. But
bucking that system isn't.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
So easy because I think there's also a fear of,
certainly at that time, of empowered women. And I think
that's what you're seeing there too. This is a moment
when feminism is making in rows in an unprecedented matter, right,
and so you know, you're seeing anxieties around that in
the society, and in a weird way, the story of
the cheerleaders and Playboy, you know, is really telling that
(36:20):
story as well. The tremendous anxiety is about women doing
things that they shouldn't be doing.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
You can still see these same issues playing out in
football today. In twenty eighteen, a New Orleans Saints cheerleader
posted a photo of herself on Instagram and a lacey
one piece, and the team fired her. The Cowboys cheerleaders
have cut women from their training camp too, after coaches
discovered racy pictures they took before they tried out. In
(36:48):
an industry trying to balance old fashioned morals and guilt
free voyeurism. It would continue to be a tricky question
when these women get to be sexy and when they
do not, who gets to decide and who gets to
profit next time on America's Girls. So then, where does
(37:09):
the uniform come from?
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Well, it really came from my imagination. I drew as
a skitch of what I thought it should look like.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Okay, so can you respond to that? It just didn't
happen that way.
Speaker 5 (37:25):
I signed.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Thanks to the Dallas History and Archives Division of the
Dallas Public Library for research health on this episode. You
can read more about the stories in this episode in
Frank andre Ga Riddy's book The Sports Revolution, How Texas
Changed the culture of American athletics. News footage of the
Debbie does Dallas trial is from the UNT Digital Library
and KXAS TV. For a transcript of this episode, visit
(38:02):
Texasmonthly dot com slash America's Girls. America's Girls is a
Texas Monthly production. I'm your host. Writer and reporter Sarah Heplo.
Executive producer is Megan Kriich. Produced and edited by Patrick
Michaels and edited by JK.
Speaker 5 (38:18):
Nichol.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
Produced and engineered by Brian Standifer, who also wrote the music.
Additional research and audio editing by podcast intern Harper Carlton.
America's Girl's art is by Emily Kimbrow and Victoria Milner,
and marketing by Tory Mode. Our theme song is Enough
by the bra Lets. If you like the show, please
subscribe and visit our page at Apple Podcasts and rate
(38:41):
the show there. See you next week.
Texas Monthly.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
In January nineteen seventy nine, a made for TV movie
came out. It was all about the Cowboys cheerleaders. It
starts with a magazine editors in his high rise office
in New York watching football.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
I've been watching that cassette of the super Bowl for
a week. You know what, The TV cameras spend most
of the time on those girls, the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
And like plenty of real life magazine editors around that time,
this gets his wheels turning. He's determined to get the
dirt on the cheerleaders.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
All that goody goody look but don't touch nonsense. I
want to cut through all that phony pr and show
those girls for what they really are.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
He dispatches his ex, a feminist journalist played by Jane Seymour,
to try out for the team and get a real scoop.
The premise borrows from a famous expose written by Gloria Steinem.
She posed as a playboy bunny at Hugh Hefner's New
York club and wrote about the ugly truth of life
is a sex object, But this movie is a little
(01:14):
less hard hitting. Cheerleaders director Suzanne Mitchell got to approve
the script, and the journalist searched for dirt ends with
a twist. Us and Spence.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
I've been thinking, and maybe we're on the wrong track.
There just is no story to the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders
are everything that their pr says they are. They are
just a lot of nice, down home girls having some fun.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Reviews of the movie ranged from corny to junk to
one of the worst made for television movies since Man
Eaters are Loose, But it became a smash. It was
the highest rated made for TV movie of the year.
You've heard a lot about how popular the cheerleaders were,
but there was something else behind the ratings, because in
(02:01):
the months before the movie aired, a scandal rocked the NFL,
A scandal about sex and who gets to sell it.
It was about the meaning of exploitation. It was about money,
and it began with five former Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders opening
their haltertops.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
We were the first Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders to ever show
our breast to the world, and that one thing I
think caused so many problems.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
I just saw.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I'm Sarah Happela from Texas Monthly. This is America's Girls,
Episode three, Naked Ambition. Debbie Kepley joined the squad in
(03:05):
nineteen seventy six, right as the cheerleaders were taking off.
She tried out in secret. She didn't want anyone to
know if she didn't make it, and she mostly thought
being a cheerleader was fun. She liked the rehearsals, like
learning to dance with the other women.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
It's the sisterhood. It was like, oh, this many women
can get together and get along. Then you build up
a friendship with all these different girls.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
She spent two seasons with the cheerleaders. When she started,
she'd been working as a clerk at a federal court,
but she quit because the cheerleader schedule was so unpredictable.
She took a job bagging groceries at Kroger instead. Before
her cheerleading days, she'd love the Dallas nightlife.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Lots of nightclubs, the point Papa Guio's Les Jardins. Let
me see Playboy Club. There was so many nightclubs, and
do you get free drinks if you dance? And you know,
I knew all the guys who opened the nightclubs.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
But once she joined the squad, she couldn't go out
dancing at night on her own. That was cheerleader director
Suzanne Mitchell's rule. Cheerleaders weren't allowed inside the Playboy Club
at all, even though it was in the same building
as the Cowboys headquarters.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
I guess they're always in fear of that somebody's going
to find out you're a Cowboy cheerleader and you did
something wrong. They always put this fear over you. Either
do this like we say, or you can be replaced
because we have alternates sitting in the wing waiting.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
To take your job.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Sometimes being a cheerleader wasn't so great, especially when she
was making fourteen dollars and twelve cents a game.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Just shake your pom pomps. Does it glow? And shake
your pom pomps, But don't talk to anybody. We get
the camera, smile at the camera, but don't talk to anybody.
I don't like people telling me what to do. I
think it comes from being raised as a by a
single mom and hers of you know, taking on the world,
(05:02):
and raised me by herself.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Debbie was willing to conform to the squad in a
lot of ways. She was a brunette and a blonde
world and she did what she could to get her
body to look more like the others.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
I didn't have cleavage, so a lot of people don't
notice that. There was a certain way we had to
tie our shirts, and because they wanted you to have
the most cleavage, so the knot had to be tied
a certain way so you had that look.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
But there was this one moment when she drew the line.
When Debbie came back for a second season, Suzanne Mitchell
told her to start wearing her hair and pigtails.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
And she grabbed my hair and she pulled it up
my ponytails again. She said, I want you wearing pigtails again
all year. And I'm like, oh, I don't want to,
and she said, yes, she will, And so I went
and cut all my hair off. And she didn't fire me,
but she could have because I didn't abide by the rules.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Of course, this was the same makeover Susanne wound up
giving Tammy Barber the look that made Tammy a star.
Looking back now, Debbie realizes her decision probably cost her
a lot of money, hundreds of dollars for every one
of the appearances Suzanne might have chosen her for if
she'd just warned, the pigtails playing along had its rewards.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
It's the girls, the goodie too shoe girls is what
I call them. The ones who never said no to
the system or questioned the system. Those are the ones
that got all the work.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
But while Debbie chafed against the system, it was still
an exciting ride, especially at the end of her second
season when the squad went to New Orleans.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Welcome to Super Bowl twelve. I'm Pat Summer all the time, Brookshire.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
It was January nineteen seventy eight. This time the TV
cameras really spotlighted the cheerleaders as a central piece of
the action.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
But that's when you see the impact of the daviscon
word cheerleaders.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
This is the historian Frank Andre Griddy. He says, if
you were watching this game at home, you couldn't miss
how valuable the cheerleaders had become.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
There literally, Tom Brookshire and Pat summerl who were calling
that telecast, say, oh, this is about the cheerleaders as
much as it is of the players on the sideline.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Heavens, there is a great rivalry between the Denver cheerleaders,
that's one of them, and the Dallas cheerleaders.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Frank writes about this game in his book The Sports Revolution.
The cameras keep cutting away to linger on the Cowboys
cheerleaders as they swish their pompongs, or to the Denver
Broncos cheerleaders the Pony Express in their silver fringed bikini
tops and tiny sarongs. Monday Night football did this sort
of thing all the time, but Frank says this Super
(07:41):
Bowl game took it to a whole new level. The
cheerleaders were practically foisted into a honey shot throwdown.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Competition going on down there?
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Do you feel that?
Speaker 5 (07:53):
Also, there is a game third and eighteen.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
So that really gives you a sense of the ways
in which these women are becoming famous, but too completely,
almost completely through the lens of the male gates.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
One hundred million people watched that Super Bowl game, and
the cheerleaders now more than ever, we're a major part
of this winning package. The backstage, Debbie says, the cheerleaders
were treated more like an afterthought.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
The performance was great, and then the game was great.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
We won, and the.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Afterpart was the sad part. We were hurried off back
to the bus, put we were taken behind the gate,
not even through.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
The airport, like normal people.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
We were put behind security onto a plane where we
sat and sat with no water, no food, no nothing
for hours and hours.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
It was a commercial plane, and the cheerleaders sat there
all night, stuck in a post Super Bowl runway traffic jam. Meanwhile,
the Cowboys got a big victry bash near their hotel
with performances by Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Jerry Jeff Walker.
The cheerleaders had not been paid a dime for their appearance,
not even their usual fifteen bucks. The Cowboys didn't even
(09:13):
pay for the cheerleaders traveled at the Super Bowl. They
had a sponsor cover the expenses. Sports Illustrated wrote about
this a few months later. When it came to being
cheapskates with their cheerleaders, they said, Dallas may hold the record.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Which if they can't, they have enough money. It's ridiculous,
but it just made you feel worthless. All the hours
you put in to be a part of the Cowboy cheerleaders,
all the hard work, the sweat, the tears, the blisters
on your feet and doing everything they tell you to do,
and you finally go to Super Bowl, they win, and
(09:48):
then you're stuck on a plane for hours and it's
like nobody cared.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
While the cowboys were celebrating in New Orleans and fans
in Dallas were throwing parties back home, but cheerleaders had
to celebrate on the tarmac.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
I just remember a lot of the girls that consumed
alcohol were drinking quite a bit, and you know, talking
to the regular public that were stuck on the plane
with us, and after a while, we just there's a
lot of said, I'm not going back for this. This
is ridiculous that they leave us sitting on a plane
like this. And it's just I was over it.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
It wasn't just the women who had been stuck on
that plane. Conflict had been brewing around the cheerleaders for
a while. Women who hadn't made the squad, women who
had made the squad but were tired of the low pay,
the rules, the feeling of being controlled, women who'd gotten
a taste of the spotlight and wanted more. And in
the summer of nineteen seventy eight, a bunch of them
(10:48):
joined forces. They called themselves the Texas Cowgirls. A former
cheerleader named Tinajimenez came up with the idea. She was
an enterprising single mom who had cheered for the Cowboys
in nineteen seventy six and been cut in the next auditions.
She figured, why should the Cowboys be the only game
in town. I tried to reach Tina, but she never
(11:10):
responded to my messages. Here's Debbie.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Tina fant of Texas Cowgirls because she kept seeing a
lot of girls that auditioned and didn't make it or
had to leave because of issues other you know, they
didn't follow the rules. So she figured their dancers, their
beautiful young girls, they didn't know how to you know,
do promotions.
Speaker 6 (11:34):
Yeah. I had way more fun being a Texas Cowgirl
than I did a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Janice Garner was another member of the Cowgirls.
Speaker 6 (11:43):
Oh, fewer rules, more money, just easygoing and fun.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Janis was twenty one when she became a Cowboys cheerleader.
She loved dancing at the games, but she says she
never quite fit in.
Speaker 6 (11:57):
It was wonderful and horrible at the same time. The
fun part was being on the field and feeling all
that energy that was coming from the stands and focused
on the field.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
But she struggled to pick up the dance moves and
she got in trouble with Suzanne for things she'd never
even imagined were problems.
Speaker 6 (12:17):
Oh, I got called in for a couple things, and
one was for showing too much cleavage. She wanted me
to look more like the girl next door.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
And that's really interesting.
Speaker 6 (12:29):
I know it. I go figure because I guess I
tie the bow two tied. I can't figure out how
I could have too much cleavage.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
This was the needle the cheerleaders were always trying to thread.
You had to have cleavage, but not too much cleavage.
You had to be sexy, but not too sexy. Janis
didn't try out again. She joined the Texas Cowgirls instead.
There were twenty five of them in all. Here's Debbie Kepley.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
We had these silver boots, and we had electric blue
spandex type one piece that zipped up the front and
a cowboy hat.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
And the money they earned wouldn't get sucked up into
a giant corporation. It would be shared among the women.
The best opportunities wouldn't go to a few favorites. Everyone
got an equal chance to earn money. Their pitch was simple.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
We're former Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders that would make personal appearances
usually where Dallas cowboy cheerleaders would not make an appearance.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
So like private parties where alcohol was served or anywhere
Suzanne decided she didn't want her squad, they.
Speaker 6 (13:41):
Would hire us to appear in sign autographs, like at
car dealerships, auto shows, openings, parades.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
And we would do ducks unlimited auctions, which means we
would walk across the stage with whatever it was that
was being auctioned, and then it was all men yelling
and screaming at.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
You along the way. They got to boogie on merv Griffin.
They performed at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, and
they appeared in the movie North Dallas forty, which was
a fictionalized version of life inside the hard Party in
the nineteen seventies. Cowboys.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Hey, je Quirls, River Trock Quarterback Sandwich, Well that sounds
that's me.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
The movie poster has two Texas cowgirls and they're shiny
blue spandex and silver boots. Debbie's one of them.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
So there this rogue outfit that's like, you know what,
we're sick and tired of the cowboys' rules, with sick
and tire of the exploitation, We're just going to go
out and make money ourselves.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
This is Frank Griddy and that's what they do.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
Right at least for a little while. And one of
the things that makes them famous is the Playboys shoot
that was eventually published in December nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 7 (14:45):
We always had interest in putting our own editorial spin
on what was going on in society.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Jeff Cohen was a photo editor of Playboy back then,
and Playboy was a huge deal in nineteen seventy eight.
This December issue is as fat as a phone book.
Speaker 7 (15:03):
The NFL was having an explosion in popularity and with
it were the cheerleaders that were struting their stuff along
the sidelines.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Jeff would travel the country scouting for talent. He had
come up with other big features like Girls of the
Big Ten and Women of Mensa Cheerleaders and Playboy It's
Not Rocket Science. The package included members of the Chicago Honeybears,
the San Diego Chargettes, the Seattle Seagals, and the Los
(15:36):
Angeles Rams cheerleaders. The Embraceable US That's EWE. In case
you missed the pun. Some of the squads gave the
women permission to pose only if they kept their clothes on.
Other teams didn't put any limits on their cheerleaders, and
about half the women are semi nude. Jeff was surprised
by how gamely some NFL teams opened their doors when
(15:58):
Playboy came knocking.
Speaker 8 (16:00):
Maybe in a way, and I never thought of this
until now, but maybe in a way they were envious
of Dallas. And Dallas was the one that always would
get any sort of publicity or TV or or magazine
coverage about the NFL and cheerleaders. So clearly they were the.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
Ultimate cheerleading group.
Speaker 8 (16:20):
And if indeed, we Playboy we're going to do a
feature on pro football cheerleaders, there's no question Dallas had to.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
Be part of it.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Well, the Cowboys front office was not so enthusiastic, but
when the team said no, Jeff knew just who to call.
Speaker 6 (16:37):
Oh Tina told us, you know, she was all all
over it and thought it'd be a great thing. And
most of us were struggling back then. You know, who
doesn't want to make a bunch of money.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
And then, at least for some of them, there were
the bragging rights to say, Ben and Playboy, here's Debbie again.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
I grew up in a generation where the Playboy magazine
was around and men would have it, and then teenage
boys had it, and then it's like, what's so special?
Why do you want to look at this girl in
this magazine? If I'm your girlfriend, why is that so
much better than me? And I thought, well, if I
(17:18):
ever get the chance, I'll do it. And for me,
it's like to all the guys I ever dated, I
just like see see now.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
For Janis it was just the opposite. She didn't want
anyone to see it.
Speaker 6 (17:35):
It's pretty lame. But I honestly thought, Okay, my parents
go to church, they're you know, good upstanding citizens. They
don't read Playboy magazine. Don't ever see it? Right, We
didn't have the internet back then, so I thought, you know,
it's just going to be a magazine and then it'll
(17:56):
be over with and end of story, right, no big deal.
Well it turned out to be a big deal. Unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
More after this, on the day of her shoot, Janis
Garner shows up at a stranger's house and meets the photographer,
a guy named Arnie freytag.
Speaker 6 (18:20):
Yeah, so I asked Arnie what am I going to wear?
And then he holds up the little bear panties and
a scarf, and I just I was mortified, you know,
then it really set in.
Speaker 9 (18:35):
You know.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
In the photo, Janis perches herself sideways on a couch
with that thin scarf around her neck. Her long legs
are draped across the cushions. Debbie also got a solo
shot in the magazine, emerging topless from swimming pool. It
took hours to get everything just right.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
I mean, it's like a workout beyond belief to make
a picture look the way it does because they didn't
airbrush back then the way they do now. But you
had hair and makeup people on you, costume people, people
taking care of you like you're a queen to get
this one photograph.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
But the centerpiece of the issue was a group shot.
It's a riff on the famous nineteen seventy seven poster
that the Cowboys released. This one has the five X
cheerleaders standing in a v formation, smoke billows around their
white go go boots, and they're wearing very similar uniforms
to the original, but this time the halters are untied
(19:33):
to reveal their breasts as each locks eyes with the camera.
Front and center is a blonde ex cheerleader named Linda
Kellum flashing her top wide open. It's an image that's
part seduction, part satire, and part defiance. And then there's
Janis just to the right of center, standing with her
(19:55):
palm palms resting on her hips and her face just blank.
I'd seen this photo so many times trying to read
their expressions, but I look at it now and I
wonder if Janis's face is betraying how she really felt
about being there, about how badly she wanted not to
be there.
Speaker 6 (20:15):
I wanted to back out. I felt horrible. I thought
I can't do this, and I think I had like
a big boohoo there.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
At one point, Jani's told me there was pressure on
her to go through with the shoot.
Speaker 6 (20:27):
But how should I say that without pointing the finger
at any.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
You know, I don't want to put words in your mouth.
Speaker 6 (20:35):
Yeah, I do have a member. We did hire a
lawyer to try to, I think, get out of it.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Maybe you can hear it in her voice. But this
part of the story gets a little messy because the
photo was destined to be bigger than a page in
a magazine. Remember, the Cowboys poster had been a best
seller of the year before it made millions for the team.
The photographer Arnie fry Tag figured there was a lot
more money to be made if he sold his topless
parody shot as a poster too. It's a little unclear
(21:06):
when he made that decision. A story in The Washington
Post from nineteen seventy nine says the cowgirls only learned
there would be a poster after they agreed to the
shoot and signed contracts. That year, Tina Jimenez told the
Dallas Morning News that she and the cowgirls were quote
kind of tripped into the deal, but once she learned
about the poster, Tina made sure she and the cowgirls
(21:27):
would get a good cut.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
First, there was a there were going to offer us
a flat fee, and then Tina negotiated us to get
so much per poster. I think it was we were
going to get like fifty cents a poster, and she
got ten cents of that. We got forty cents.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Janis told me the pressure she felt mostly came from Tina.
Speaker 6 (21:46):
Yeah. Tina kept telling us about how much money were
going to make, and she said each of us could
stand and make about fifty grand. And that was a
lot back then, right, what would that be in today's dollars?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
I wonder I looked it up. That's more than two
hundred thousand dollars today. Not bad, especially when you consider
that the Cowboys cheerleaders on the official poster only got
paid one hundred and fifty dollars. The cowgirl's photos ran
in Playboy, alongside a story that pokes fun at an
industry eager to sell sex but pretends it's not. And
(22:19):
this article is one of the more fascinating parts of
this whole thing. It's by a writer named Robert Blair Kaiser,
a guy who studied to be a Jesuit priest before
he switched to journalism. He spent much of his career
trying to reform the Catholic Church. He supported women's rights
and birth control. He pushed back against church leaders with
too much control, and he spotted this same dynamic in
(22:43):
the NFL. His Playboy story describes his conversations with NFL executives,
mostly men, as they decide whether to allow their cheerleaders
to participate in the photo feature. Cowboys General manager Tech
Shram is among them. Shram the others say they want
to protect the cheerleader's reputation at the same time they
clearly want the publicity of one of the biggest magazines around.
(23:06):
Kaiser calls out the Cowboys and other teams for profiting
off these women's bodies but not letting the women do
the same, all while paying them no more than fifteen
dollars a game.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
The issue is playing up very skillfully, smartly, because playboy
riders are smart.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
This is Frank again.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
Really highlighting the exploitation of the hypocrisy of the NFL.
That's what the text of the story is doing, even
as the photoshoot is objectifying the women themselves as the
classic playboy. Right.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
They got to have it both ways, criticizing the Cowboys
for profiting off women's bodies and then getting to do
it too. The magazine hit newsstands in late nineteen seventy eight,
and tell me the reaction to this issue. Here's Jeff Cohen.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
Well, the issue came out and.
Speaker 7 (23:56):
It was a part of the expression that should storm, and.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
The backlash was swift. Several of the current cheerleaders who
posed in the issue were fired, even the ones who
had permission. The San Diego Chargettes were folded entirely. At
a league meeting, the NFL commissioner Pete Rizzell told teams
to screen their candidates better and crack down on the
(24:21):
women's behavior off the field. The strict rules Suzanne Mitchell
made for the Cowboys cheerleaders were spreading to the other teams.
Speaker 8 (24:30):
I was a little surprised by the knee jerk reaction
that many of them had.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
But at the same time, we.
Speaker 8 (24:39):
Also know, and we're smart enough about this. The more
stint that they made about it, the more magazines we sold.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Oh wait, that works.
Speaker 8 (24:47):
And I think if it wasn't the number one selling
issue we've ever had, I think it was either.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
Second or third.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
The fantasy that the NFL had introduced to American homes
was getting difficult to manage. But he minded the cheerleaders
being sexualized. But sexual this was a problem. Here's Debbie Kepley.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
It's like America sweethearts, pure wholesome. The girl next door
is representing the Dallas Cowboard cheerleaders. But we're gonna put
them in these sexy little costumes and make them dance
very sexual on the on the TV and on the field.
But we don't want you to think of them in
a sexy way.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
And Playboy wasn't the only problem. A month before the
Playboy issue dropped a movie premiered in a Times Square theater.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
I got a great idea, What do we all work
hard to raise money so we can go to Texas
with them? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Bad acting, bad writing, It didn't have much going for it.
Speaker 6 (25:46):
Well, mister Browning, we're not just washing cars anymore.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
I mean you'll do anything I like, except a hell
of a name starring in Debbie Does Dallas. What plot
the movie had followed up woman hoping to make a
famous cheerleading squad, which funny enough, is called the Texas Cowgirls.
Ads claimed that the star, Bambi Woods, was a former
Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, which wasn't true, but in one graphic scene,
(26:14):
she does wear something close to that iconic blue and
white uniform. The movie could have easily slipped into obscurity,
but the Cowboys sued the movie's distributor, a company that
actually had ties to the mob. A fearless Suzanne Mitchell
went up against them in court, and the Cowboys eventually
got all references to the cheerleaders in their uniforms cut
(26:35):
from the film. Ironically, the endless coverage of that trial
turned Debbie Does Dallas into one of the top selling
porn movies of all time. It opened in theaters across
the country, and Dallas local authorities brought an obscenity case
against the theater operators who showed the film.
Speaker 5 (26:53):
The movie, Debbie Does Dallas supposedly traces the adventure of
some high school age women who aspired to move to
Texas become Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, and the movie drew perhaps
as many people to the courtroom as did the trial itself.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Along the way, the Cowboys spent one million dollars to
protect their brand, an amount that could have covered the
salaries of those cheerleaders for about one hundred and eighty
five years. And the Cowboys weren't done in court. There
was still the issue of that poster. Arnie frytug shot
of the cowgirls had already been on shelves for about
(27:28):
a month and selling well at mall stores like Spencer's
before the Cowboys sued him too. They claimed the poster
violated their copyright and did harmed their image. They said
people would assume these were current Cowboys cheerleaders posing topless.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
The Arnie tell thing was like, okay, was freedom oppress?
What happened to the First Amendment. The Dallas Cowboys can
overrule the First Amendment? What kind of power does that
kind of organization have?
Speaker 2 (27:58):
The cowgirls never got rich that poster. Debbie says. Playboy
paid the meet six hundred dollars for posing. Fry Tag
spent upwards of fifty thousand dollars fighting in court. He
didn't want to talk about this for the podcast, but
his defense was that the photo was a parody. His
lawyer told a reporter that the poster was itself a
(28:19):
social statement about the cheerleaders. It was posing a question,
are the cowboys selling football or are they selling sex?
The Cowboys won, the court said fry Tag failed to
justify his parody claim. But Debbie has a simpler explanation
for why the case shook out the way it did.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Cause is Dallas. You don't go up against the cowboys.
In Texas, you don't go up against the cowboys. I
don't care who you are, you can't win.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
But for the women at the center of the Playboy scandal,
this wasn't just a legal matter, It was a personal one.
Debbie Kepley doesn't regret posing for Playboy. She'd do it again,
and actually she did in nineteen eighty for another feature
on the Women of the NFL.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
I'm glad I did it. Then I wish I had
You know, this sounds stupid, but I wish I had
bigger breast than what I had when I did it,
because but back then everybody was natural.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
So I love that you're happy that you did that.
Speaker 4 (29:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
To me, it's it's like, I don't know's it's I
accomplished a lot of different things, you know, from being
a cheerleader for two years. I got to do Super Bowl.
Then I was fortunate enough to know Tina, and I
got to do the Texas Cowgirl thing and the Playboy thing.
I've had a lot of opportunities like that, and it
all stimmed because I was a cowboy cheerleader.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
W is one of those women who has no hang
ups around nudity. She went on to star in a
touring production of a play called Oh Calcutta, which is
an erotic musical where the entire cast gets naked, but
not everyone felt so at ease about the play Boy issue.
Speaker 6 (30:01):
I was living with my boyfriend at the time, and
my mom comes.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Over, here's Janus again.
Speaker 6 (30:08):
And I had a feeling that she might because she
didn't explain, as you know, as to why she was
paying me a visit. And we sat in the couch
and she I can't remember how she put it, but anyway,
she knew the cat was out of the bag for sure,
and she she just starts to cry. Up to that day,
(30:33):
I had only seen my mother cry once, and that
was the second time that I had seen her cry.
And I felt horrible because I loved my mom and dad.
I loved them dearly, and I I really heard them
and that felt awful, and it feels awful to this day. Actually.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
And Jana says her boyfriend left her not long after that,
in part because of the Playboy Shoot.
Speaker 6 (31:03):
Yeah, I think he was embarrassed. He came from a
really strong religious background. Posing semi nude back then was
really scandalous. You know, people are half nude today just
in their clothes. Nobody gives a crap, But it was
(31:23):
a horrible thing back then.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
I have to say. That's one of the things that
surprises me about this story is how upset it makes
the people around you, because to me, the images seem
quite tame.
Speaker 6 (31:37):
Oh sure, compared to today. Yeah. So yeah, and then
there's the Internet if I got a new job, someone
would eventually out me, and then my bosses would find
out and they would assume that I was promiscuous, which
I wasn't, by the way, and they'd later fire me
because I wouldn't sleep with them. I picked deer over
(32:00):
the years for that, the shame, the embarrassment, just the
trying to hide it.
Speaker 10 (32:07):
You know, when I first learned about this story, I
kind of saw it as a rebellious act and I
thought it was like, really cool. Yeah, And it sounds
to me like that's not how you experienced it.
Speaker 6 (32:24):
No, I didn't see it as that at all.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Janna says she wasn't the only one.
Speaker 6 (32:31):
So there are three of us that felt the same
pretty much and had kind of the same backlash in
their lives because of it, and to this day they
won't even speak about it.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
I wanted to talk to everyone in that photo. They're
women in their mid sixties now, some of them are grandmothers.
But one woman told me the Playboy issue had brought
too much pain to her life. She didn't want to
reopen it. But you decided to speak to me.
Speaker 6 (33:03):
Yeah, I thought, I'm tired of hiding from it, and
I can claim it now. I feel better talking about it.
I can own it now and just go forward, you know,
just forget about it, like, hey, that was a long
time ago.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
So what for the women who were Cowboys cheerleaders at
the time. The double wallop of Playboy and Debbie Dos
Dallas was tough to take. The rules got stricter, and
the women on the squad found themselves torn. Still friends
with the women who posed for Playboy, but frustrated to
be mired and scandal. Here's Shannon Baker Worthman, who you
(33:40):
heard in the last episode.
Speaker 9 (33:42):
There was an awkwardness because I'm seeing, you know, my
friends in Playboy magazine and I thought that the Dallas
Cowboy Cheerleaders were kind of like a designer brand and
this was a knockoff, and I think that cheapens the brand.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
And this is Tammy Barber.
Speaker 11 (34:06):
Zann wanted to make sure we all knew that how
awful that was and how they were disgracing all of us,
And I thought, eh, not really. And I think Suzanne
even you know, tried to accentuate that in a way
by saying, well, you see what they're doing now, you
(34:29):
see what mistakes they made, you know, they're going to
regret this, blah blah blah, and I remember thinking, I
regret not paying my rent.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
The Cowgirl's story reveals the tricky bargain of women trading
on their sex appeal. The exposure they got came with rewards,
but also pitfalls, and the line between them would keep shifting.
I see this story as part of a larger battle
over how we understand the beauty and the danger of
a woman's body. What do we conc that are shameful,
(35:01):
what do we consider empowering. Both sides were selling sex,
but one side enjoyed the approval of preachers and parents,
while on the other side, at least some women were
punished for what they did. The Cowgirls have been banned
for many cheerleader events, deleted from the database of cheerleader alumni,
(35:21):
but they were only following through on the tees the
cheerleaders had been making for years. Here's Frank Caridi again.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
So when I look at the Texas Cowgirls phenomenon, I
don't see these women as you know, folks who were
just being you know, objectified. They certainly were, but they
were trying to sort of, I think, you know, get
compensated for the labor that they were doing.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Both the NFL and Playboy were reaping enormous benefits from
these women, and I think it makes sense that the
Cowgirls wanted to break off a piece for themselves. But
bucking that system isn't.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
So easy because I think there's also a fear of,
certainly at that time, of empowered women. And I think
that's what you're seeing there too. This is a moment
when feminism is making in rows in an unprecedented matter, right,
and so you know, you're seeing anxieties around that in
the society, and in a weird way, the story of
the cheerleaders and Playboy, you know, is really telling that
(36:20):
story as well. The tremendous anxiety is about women doing
things that they shouldn't be doing.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
You can still see these same issues playing out in
football today. In twenty eighteen, a New Orleans Saints cheerleader
posted a photo of herself on Instagram and a lacey
one piece, and the team fired her. The Cowboys cheerleaders
have cut women from their training camp too, after coaches
discovered racy pictures they took before they tried out. In
(36:48):
an industry trying to balance old fashioned morals and guilt
free voyeurism. It would continue to be a tricky question
when these women get to be sexy and when they
do not, who gets to decide and who gets to
profit next time on America's Girls. So then, where does
(37:09):
the uniform come from?
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Well, it really came from my imagination. I drew as
a skitch of what I thought it should look like.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Okay, so can you respond to that? It just didn't
happen that way.
Speaker 5 (37:25):
I signed.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Thanks to the Dallas History and Archives Division of the
Dallas Public Library for research health on this episode. You
can read more about the stories in this episode in
Frank andre Ga Riddy's book The Sports Revolution, How Texas
Changed the culture of American athletics. News footage of the
Debbie does Dallas trial is from the UNT Digital Library
and KXAS TV. For a transcript of this episode, visit
(38:02):
Texasmonthly dot com slash America's Girls. America's Girls is a
Texas Monthly production. I'm your host. Writer and reporter Sarah Heplo.
Executive producer is Megan Kriich. Produced and edited by Patrick
Michaels and edited by JK.
Speaker 5 (38:18):
Nichol.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
Produced and engineered by Brian Standifer, who also wrote the music.
Additional research and audio editing by podcast intern Harper Carlton.
America's Girl's art is by Emily Kimbrow and Victoria Milner,
and marketing by Tory Mode. Our theme song is Enough
by the bra Lets. If you like the show, please
subscribe and visit our page at Apple Podcasts and rate
(38:41):
the show there. See you next week.
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