December 28, 2021 • 49 mins
No appearances near alcohol. No fraternizing with players. Being a Cowboys cheerleader has always meant living by a long list of rules. But do those rules help protect the cheerleaders, or control them? 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 (00:12):
Last spring, I went out to East Texas to a
nice golf course neighborhood by a lake to meet a
former Cowboys cheerleader named Dana Presley Kilmer co.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Thank you, this.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Is a nice play, thank you, thank you, And before
we sat down, we stood around in her kitchen chatting
while she made coffee. Then she pointed over to a
table where I saw something I thought I might never
get to see close up.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
One of my five uniforms, the one I got to keep.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I'd heard she still had one. It's one of those
open secrets among former Cowboys cheerleaders that some of them
managed to hold on to that uniform. One of the
rules strongly enforced by the cheerleaders director Suzanne Mitchell, was
that you had to turn it in when you left
the squad.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Suzanne I knew her so well. I knew she'd say
give me. I know you have more than that.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
So I purposely gave her through so good and she said, Presley,
I know you have more than that.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
And I said no, and she said, give me the
other uniform. And I had five, so I gave her
the other uniform.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
And then years later I said, I still have one
and she said, it's good for you enough.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
He was perfect. I'd become fascinated with the way the
cowboys protected that uniform, not just the copyright, but the
thing itself.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Was that because of the DEBI does Dallas situation it was,
and because people would sell them.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
There was no eBay back then, but people would sell them.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Dana once accidentally left her uniform shorts behind in a
Saint Louis hotel room and.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
They were in the newspaper a couple of weeks later
in Saint Louis and her sale or people trying to
sell you know, Warren By.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
It was just oh no, like it was just nasty
the way they did it.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, that sounds like there was a there was a
suggestion of yes, my personal partners, old parts have been
touching the fabulous Yes, yes.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Oh yes.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
And Suzanne was so upset she said, I'm not mad
about the shorts. We can get you more shorts, and
I'm not mad that you forgot them. I'm mad with
what somebody's going to do with them.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Dana joined the team in nineteen eighty one. It was
in the wake of the scandals at the late seventies.
Debbie does Dallas Playboy. Actually, there were still these little
aftershocks of scandal when she got there. In Dana's first tryouts,
there was a woman from Fort Worth named Kimberly MacArthur.
She got as far as the finals before she was cut.
(02:33):
The next year, she showed up in Playboy wearing a
blue T shirt she'd been given as a cheerleader finalist.
By her photo, it said the Dallas Cowboys fumbled when
they cut kim MacArthur. Their miss is our miss January.
Suzanne got serious about wardrobe security after that happened.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
She became very very careful.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
You signed it in, She had a spreadsheet, You signed
it in, you signed it out.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
She just she just didn't want it in the wrong hands.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, the uniform wasn't the only thing they had to
worry about leaving behind. Was it a rule during your
time that you had to bring your pantyhose with you
when you left?
Speaker 6 (03:10):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Yes, yes, you couldn't throw them in the trash. Susan
didn't want anybody selling anything. People can be really strange.
I mean that's what I was told. I asked somebody,
why can't you throw the pantos away? And they just
gave me that. Look. Yes, there's a lot of strange
people out there. I just loping.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I saw a deal.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
I just saw funny.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
I No throwing pantyhose in the trash, No keeping the uniform.
These were just a few of the rules the cheerleaders
had to follow, and after the scandals that rocked the squad,
the rules had only gotten stricter. But were they there
to protect the women or were the rules there to
control From Texas Monthly, I'm Sarah Huppola and this is
(04:05):
America's Girls, Episode five. The rules. I'm going to a
sheet of paper in front of me that's more than
thirty years old. It says Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders basic rules
and regulations. That may not sound exciting, but there's a
(04:26):
lot of drama in these rules. They had them as
early as nineteen seventy two with choreographer Texi Watermen, and
many of them never changed. No missing rehearsals, no gaining weight.
But over the next years, the cheerleaders director Suzanne Mitchell,
added a few more. No showing up at rehearsal without
your hair and makeup done, no wedding rnks on game day.
(04:48):
The sexual tease was still there, but through the eighties
the cheerleaders doubled down on kid friendliness and patriotism, and
the rules were one of the ways they maintained that aura.
They were like the Ten Commandments cheerleading for the Cowboys.
And then there's a line at the bottom of the
page in all caps. There will be many other unwritten
(05:10):
rules given during the course of the year. On Suzanne's squad,
the rules were a way of life, but by the
end of the eighties those rules would face a test
that threatened everything she had built. The Cowboys always excelled
at controlling the brand. In nineteen eighty two, a book
came out called A Decade of Dreams. It's a history
(05:33):
of the cheerleaders the way the Cowboys wanted it told.
This is Candy Evans who wrote that book.
Speaker 7 (05:39):
The cheerleaders were in their heyday at that time. They
were the hottest thing in Dallas. If you had anything
to do with a program where you wanted some marketing,
you got the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders there and everyone came.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Candy grew up in the Chicago area. She got her
masters in journalism at Columbia and came to Dallas to
start her writing career. When the Cowboys called her about
that book, she didn't really know much about the cheerleaders.
She told me she came to the project with some prejudices.
This wasn't exactly her scene, but she changed her mind
once she started spending time with them.
Speaker 7 (06:15):
And I saw girls who were, you know, from farms
in Oklahoma, and this was their ticket. They were using
their looks and they were using their talents, but this
was their ticket out of the farm life and out
of the small country into maybe a chance to go
to college and get educated and do all these wonderful things.
(06:35):
So what I came to realize, of course, when I
was working with them, is that they were a marketing
tool for the cowboys, and they were one of the
best marketing tools in the history of marketing tools for
the Dallas Cowboys.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Her book was part of that branding. It's out of
print now, but Decade of Dreams is the only book
ever published about the cheerleader's history that I could find.
I kind of can't believe that in fifty year there's
only been this one book. Candy's experience suggests why that's
the case. They're extremely careful with how this story gets.
Speaker 7 (07:09):
Told I did not know that I was like the
fifth or sixth writer that they had fired other writers beforehand,
because there were guys and they went in and they
wanted to write about all the scandals, like were the
girls sleeping with the players and were they drinking with
the players and all this stuff. Well, of course they were,
but I mean, you know, I wasn't going to write
about that. We'll save that for the future, right, And
(07:33):
I just saw what Suzanne wanted. She told me, I
want a book that a little girl can pick up
and then she can come try out an audition to
be a Dallas Cowboys too. I want this book to
be read by thirteen and fourteen year olds. I don't
want anything mean in it. I don't want anything sexy
in it. I don't think vulgar in it. I want
it out to be nice and wholesome and clean. And
that's the image that she tried to keep and that
(07:56):
she did really maintain for those cheerleaders.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
The book helped burnish that image, but the rules might
have been the biggest trick in keeping the balance between
sexy and wholesome.
Speaker 8 (08:08):
We would have a meeting, it'd be about two hour
in doctrination meeting we called it, and all the girls
would be in attendance and we would hand out a
little handbook.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
This is Debbie Hanson, who was Suzanne's assistant from nineteen
seventy nine to nineteen eighty nine, so back then her
name was Debbie Bond.
Speaker 8 (08:25):
A lot of people don't know this. We were a
groomy school too. Some of these girls didn't know how
to dress appropriately, or maybe they couldn't afford to buy
a nice dress and tie heels. So before we would
go on a trip, we'd have them bring their clothes
to practice and show us what they were going to
wear to the airport so we could look at it,
(08:47):
and if they didn't have it, we would give them something.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
So the rules were an old fashioned crash course and
how to be a woman, at least a Southern woman
with a certain kind of refinement. And there was a
motivational aspect to the rules too, in improving yourself you
can improve the world.
Speaker 8 (09:05):
We were always improvising, thinking of waste that we could
do more. Do work for the girls, do work for society,
just to make a difference. That's what it's all about,
isn't it. Making a difference being a footprint.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Classy was a word Suzanne used a lot to describe
the cheerleaders back then. And to keep those cheerleaders classy
and above the fray, Suzanne had to plan ahead. She
had to think about every possible angle when she agreed
to book them for promotions. Here's Dana Presley Kilmer again.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
The wine press in Dallas called probably once a month
and asked us to do an appearance, but Suzanne would
never allows to appear where there was beer or wine served.
And every mattress company in Dallas would call and ask
us to come to their grand opening, and Suzanne said,
oh yeah, and they're going to ask one of you
to lay on the mattress, and once you lie on
the mattress, that's going to be all over the news.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
There was a time place for the come hither look.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
On Sundays we were supposed to be the sexy cheerleaders
on the sideline. The rest of the time, we were
supposed to be perceived as squeaky clean, high hills pantyhose,
business suit, makeup and hair done mannerly, good etiquette.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Was there any sense of you that felt that that
was unfair?
Speaker 9 (10:18):
No?
Speaker 1 (10:19):
I think there was a lot of Texans that behaved
that way at the time, whether it's sororities or drill
teams or college cheerleaders. I think that's a normal culture
for the South. I see now how it could be
perceived as strange, but it never felt strange to me.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
A lot of the cheerleaders told me they were rule
followers by nature, but these rules were especially powerful because
of how strictly they were enforced. Suzanne's right hand woman
in this task was her assistant Debbie. Through the eighties,
she was Suzanne's eyes.
Speaker 8 (10:52):
And ears, so the girls knew. They never knew where
I would pop up, and if I popped up at
a place where they shouldn't be, or I saw something
that they were doing that they were not to do,
that I would tell Suzanne.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
At times that took a little bit of spycraft. Some
of the squad figured it was appropriate for a woman
whose last name at the time.
Speaker 8 (11:17):
Was Bond, so I just got the name double O
sev I don't know. I don't think they were afraid
of me. They just knew I would tell Suzanne. I mean,
I do remember one time during tryouts, Suzanne had told
me that there was She had heard that there was
a girl in the preliminaries who was a stripper, and
(11:39):
obviously we didn't want that was not the caliber of
girl that we wanted to wear the uniform. So she
had me go to every strip up in Dallas. I
had never been to a strip club, okay, and I
I was hiding in the corner because I didn't want
anybody to recognize we had dark glasses on. My quote
(11:59):
was the winner. It was freezing, and it was just
that was a moment, a double seven moment.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
She and Suzanne had to manage the press. If the
tabloids got a hold of these tenbits, they could easily
blow up. And so Debbie and Suzanne had to keep
a tight rein on those thirty six cheerleaders. Meanwhile, over
on the football side of things, the press was smothered
in access and goodwill. Tech Shram always had a cozy
relationship with anyone who wrote about the team.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
And this is the thing I think a lot of
people never did understand. I'm the only one dumb enough
to admit it.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
This is Dale Hanson, a legendary TV sports reporter who
just retired. He's made big waves in recent years for
his commentaries about racism and homophobia in the NFL, and
he spent forty years getting to know the Cowboys media machine.
Speaker 5 (12:48):
Shram was brilliant at massaging the media that he was
so agreeable, and he made sure that everybody in his
organization was media friendly. It's just human nature that the
media coverage is going to be better and suit your
purposes better.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Reporters had the home numbers of the players, that's how
much access they got. They saw plenty of wild nights
and drunken carousing, but it was understood that beat reporters
didn't write about the player's personal lives back then, and
you didn't write about the cheerleaders either.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
Well, you know, we would do the Cowboys cheerleader stories.
It was almost like, well, you can't come in here.
I mean you well, we got to have video then practicing. No,
you're gonna have your camera focused on the wrong thing.
No we're not, you know, but yeah, I mean you
had to jump through hoops just to get interviews with
the cheerleaders on the occasional audition type story. And again
(13:47):
it's back to well they were up on this pedestal.
They were they were the untouchable they were unreachable.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
The most important rule was so well known it didn't
even appear in the cheerleader's basic rules and regulation. No
fraternizing with the players. That meant coaches, cowboy staff, and
journalists too.
Speaker 5 (14:07):
Cowboys cheerleaders were off limits, and I think that only
added to the aura of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, which
separated them from a lot of other cheerleader groups around
the country. It might've been a harsh rule for some
of those young women to follow, but I think for
the benefit of the organization, I think it's a heck
(14:29):
of a good rule.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Of course, some cheerleaders did date players, and when they
were caught, they were shown the door, but nothing ever
happened to the players. The rule only worked in one direction.
It's an obvious double standard, but I guess it's not
so different from the culture at large. Women can take
a reputation hit for any sexual behavior. Well, men mostly
(14:51):
get high fives when I hear stories about women getting cut.
It's hard not to make a mental list of all
the outrageous nonsense have gotten away with over the years.
But for the cheerleaders on the team, the rule was
just the way things were here's Dana.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Even Bill Bates, the famous football player. Bill Bates, got
down on one knee jokingly and it proposed to me
at a football game, and I said, get up. You'll
survive this. I won't. You know, you're a famous football player.
Everybody knows your number and your name. I will get
kicked off the team. Get up, Get up, Get up.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
What Dana knew, what all the cheerleaders knew, was that
even for a lighthearted joke, punishment could be swift.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Halloween in Dallas and the eighties, during the disco era,
they had these wild costume parties in Incognito and the
Stark Club and the Cowboy and all the clubs that
were hot in the eighties. You could literally win thousands
of dollars just by going if you had a great costume. Well,
two cheerleaders and I won't name their names, so I
(15:51):
want to embarrass them. There was a little girl in
the stands that was called the Cowboy Baby at that time.
Her parents would hold her up. She had the middrift
crop top and vest that we wore. Someone had custom
made one precious little blonde girl. She became like an
unofficial mascot. When you got to that corner of the
field you looked for cowboy baby, and her parents would
(16:12):
hold her up. They went to one of the clubs
as cowboy Baby. They had their boots on, their cheerleader
top on, and an adult diaper.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
It's actually, it's a good customer.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
It's hilarious. It's hilarious. Suzanne didn't think, so she kicked
him both off the team.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
So the Cowboys didn't want cheerleaders dressing like babies. What
they did want, though, was babies dressing like cheerleaders. The
Little Miss Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader contest blunched in late nineteen
seventy nine with ten thousand entrants age four to twelve.
Within a couple of years, forty thousand girls entered. The
(16:52):
winners were picked based on their essays. One essay, supposedly
written by a six year old read, I don't want
to wait until I'm twenty one to be sexy. I
want to be a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader now. In nineteen
eighty one, the Dallas Morning News ran a story on
parents who were worried about this cheerleader mania. Girls who
(17:12):
were suddenly swiveling their hips and shaking their pom poms.
But the team had discovered that there were plenty of
girls like me who saw the cheerleaders not as sex
objects but as role models, and they kept pumping out
merchandise to meet that demand. Frisbees, chewing gum, sleeping bags.
The cheerleader's logo was a cartoon drawing of a little
(17:35):
blonde girl wearing that same midriff, revealing uniform but looking
like a kindergartener. She popped up in coloring books and
playing cards, and the cheerleaders introduced a line of clothing
for girls that included jeans and pom poms and a
blue satin jacket. Suzanne's assistant, Debbie Hanson, told me they
didn't feel the need to be so protective of the
(17:56):
brand when kids were wearing the logo.
Speaker 8 (17:59):
Well, we have market over it, okay, and we had
more control. I think if children wore the clothing line
versus like, let's say, if we had the clothing line
for adults, that could go in a different direction.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
The cowboys were always pushing the idea that these women
in boots and haltertops were good role models, that they
were more than sideline entertainment. Suzanne had long emphasized the
importance of service, and in late nineteen seventy nine, the
cheerleaders began another tradition. They went on their first USO
tour to entertain and hang out with soldiers who were
(18:37):
serving in Korea.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Mostly what we did was sign autographs and shake hands,
and just as many women in the military hugged us
and asked for autographs as the men did. Everybody just
wanted to see somebody from home, and it was shocking
how lonely they were, so we felt like we were
doing a lot of good.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
It's a weird coincidence that the same year the Cheerleader
began these USO tours, the movie Apocalypse Now came out,
and it's got a wild scene with dancers helicoptering in
on a good will.
Speaker 9 (19:08):
Mission, tough with all heart, it's been yeah, and if
the proven, we're gonna give you some of the tens
when you're gonna like Miss.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Augustine in the movie, their playboy playmates shimmying on stage
and hip thrusting into machine guns with soldiers whooping in
the audience, and one of them in a tiny blue
haltertop looks a lot like a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. The
scene makes USO tours look like an orgy of repressed
(19:40):
male desire, but the cheerleader's show was less sex pot
and more earnest. Flag waving. Dana and another cheerleader used
to close the show by singing Lee Greenwood's God Bless
the USA. The cheerleaders became favorites on these trips. They've
made eighty three tours in forty two countries. I'm pretty
(20:01):
sure only Bob Hope did more. And those tours could
be a real education.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
When you auditioned to be a Dallas Comme a cheerleader,
you think you're going to be on the sidelines of
eleven home games, and you're twenty three years old, and
you land at the Beirut Airplort and as you're getting
off of your commercial airplane there's a jumbo jet on
fire at the end of the runway.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
And at times they did face real danger on these trips.
There was one harrowing ride through the route when Dana
and Suzanne were in a jeep being driven by a soldier.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
What they'd done is they put a jeep in between
each of us with marines in it, because we now
had to go down the Israeli Highway, which is just
a gravel road. And there was a curfew and we
had broken the curfew and we got shot at on
the way back to the boat, and Suzanne actually got hit.
And the crazy thing is my next door neighbor of
(20:56):
sixteen years was the marine driving the jeep and he
saved her life. He slammed her head down just as
that bullet hit, or she would not have she wouldn't
have lived past nineteen eighty three. And she had headaches
till the day she died from that because the bullet
scraped her forehead. Anyway, that was that night. But then
fast forward to six months later, a kamikaze truck driver
(21:17):
drove a truck with a bomb into the barracks the
men were sleeping in and killed two hundred and nineteen
Marines in their sleep. And they were the men that
we'd met six months earlier.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
It was an experience that stuck with Dana the rest
of her life. It changed the way she saw cheerleading
and the world around her. Back at home, the cheerleaders
found themselves in the middle of a cultural battle too.
The women's movement that had grown through the seventies started
to take aim at the cheerleaders.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
The only time we really felt that feminist vibe of
women saying you shouldn't do that. You're setting us back
a decade by doing that. Well, is from my experience,
was when we went to Fresno State University.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
It was nineteen eighty two and the cheerleaders were there
to dance in a halftime show and raise money for
the school's athletic department.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
But that's where we showed up, and they had signs
that said hearts and Minds, not bumps and grinds, and
they told us there were signs that Saidallas cowichulders go home.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
The protest was led by a physical education professor from
Fresno State named Rita Flake. She started a petition and
wrote a complaint to the university. Her letter called the
cheerleaders demeaning to women since their quote primary function is
apparently to provide sexually suggestive entertainment for male sports fans.
Suzanne Mitchell fired back in an interview with a reporter.
(22:45):
She pointed out that one of the suggestive songs the
cheerleaders would be performing was the Neil Diamond song America,
and she said, quote, the first thing I'd like to
ask rita flake is what has she ever done for
her country? We helicopter into the DMZ. By the time
the cheerleaders got to Fresno State, the tension had been
(23:07):
building all week. A crowd of protesters met their bus.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
And it was so nasty that evening that the faculty
at the university had to form a human fence on
either side of us so that we could get out
of the bus and get onto the field without them
throwing rocks at us. What do you think is going
on there?
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Like?
Speaker 8 (23:26):
Why?
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Evidently there was a real strong movement in the female
athletic department against anything that objectified women, and they felt
like we were doing something to make that worse. There
was no changing their mind that we weren't being manipulated
or objectified and that we were doing what we wanted
to do. But we really were doing what we wanted
to do. No one forced me to be a Dallas
(23:48):
Cowich cheerleader.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Certainly the cheerleaders were objectified by some fans, but they
saw themselves as more than that, performers, goodwill ambassadors, glamorous celestes,
and plenty of other people did too. The word exploitation
gets thrown around a lot with the cheerleaders, But who
decides that they're being exploited if they say that they're not.
(24:12):
Nineteen eighty two was also a year when the NFL
players went on strike and eight weeks of the season
were canceled. When the Dallas Morning News asked why the
cheerleaders weren't on strike, a five year veteran named Terry
Richardson said, this is the way it should be. We're
in this for love. The eighties were an era of
big oil and mink coats and conspicuous consumption in Dallas,
(24:36):
and the cheerleaders were an emblem of that glamour. But
that year wasn't so glamorous for the cheerleaders. Shannon Baker Worthman,
whose fan mail you heard in episode two, remembers how
hard that season was morale wise.
Speaker 9 (24:50):
We didn't go on strike. We were busting our butts.
I remember, we weren't a Texas studio anymore. We were
in this podunk studio. We had to still work every
night because you didn't know when they were gonna go
off strike.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Shannon to become the cheerleader's new choreographer. Texi had retired
and she'd chosen Shannon to replace her. Does that mean
you don't get paid for the games as a cheerleader?
Speaker 9 (25:16):
Oh, you don't get paid if you and.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
You don't get paid for rehearsal. Now, so, the players
going on strike basically meant the cheerleaders going on strike too.
Speaker 9 (25:25):
Right.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
For all the transgressive spirit they brought to the NFL,
the cheerleaders were rooted in something very traditional, the idea
of women being supporting players, not the breadwinners. As cheerleaders,
their literal job was to encourage the men on the field.
But the eighties were a decade when women were pushing
into the workplace and starting to demand equal respect and
(25:49):
equal pay. You can see this in classic eighties movies
like Nine to Five and Working Girl. Dana Presley Kilmer
made that move too. She went on to become a
seat at a multimillion dollar company, but before that, she
got a job in the Cowboys front office. After four
seasons cheering on the sidelines, she was an assistant director
(26:10):
for the cheerleaders, and that meant that, like Suzanne, she
also pitched in as an assistant to Tex Shram, the
Cowboys general manager.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Mister Shram was such an amazing man and he was
a visionary and a genius, but he scared people. He
was very tall, he was bald, he wore cowboy boots,
and he had this big booming voice.
Speaker 10 (26:32):
He'd say, Dana, I mean, he had this big booming voice.
So Suzanne was his executive assistant, but he had someone
else that would answer the phone, go greet people, bring
him coffee, make him cocktails.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
And Dana says, the women in that job didn't last long.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
And in between I had to do that job, and
that was hilarious because at ten o'clock in the morning,
mister Shram would yell, Dana, bring me a bloody bull
and I said, I walked to the stands off, what
is that? She said, It's a bloody mary with a
beef bully on cube in it. So that sounds horrible.
She said, well, learn to make it. That's what mister
Sham drinks, and he drank them all day.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
I kept thinking about how the cheerleaders couldn't even be
seen in uniform around booze will the boss drank all
day long. I never got the sense that bothered Dana.
But for me, hearing stories like this, I can't help
seeing another double standard. But what I would call a
double standard. Dana might just call the rules and she
(27:32):
considered that a small price to pay to be a cheerleader.
Here's Debbie Hanson again.
Speaker 8 (27:37):
What I can tell you is every year we made
more rules because they were necessary, because the times changed
and the situations that the girls were put into changed.
I mean, we're always changing the rules to protect the girls,
I think, and the image and the times that were changing.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
So as the culture moved in one direction loosening up
the rules for women, the cheerleaders went the exact opposite way.
That's after this. I have a copy of the rule
book from the nineties. It's a hefty three ring binder
with hundreds of pages, and you can see how the
(28:19):
rules continue to pile up over the years. It's full
of specific things like when do you use which fork
and reminders to answer yes ma'am when corrected, and not
to talk about your boyfriend in front of fans, And
there are warnings about how to dress off the field.
It says, quote, it is dangerous even to be out
(28:40):
in your car in a skimpy manner. If you had
car trouble, you were asking for trouble in the past
ten years or so. High profile. Sexual assault cases have
really shifted the way a lot of people think about
the rules women follow in college, at work, wherever. A
rallying for women and men fed up with blatant abusive
(29:03):
power and sexual harassment.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Victim blaming, and the excuse that some are giving that
boys will be boys needs to stop one.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Ad because the group took out a full page ad
in the school newspaper.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
It congratulates the class of twenty sixteen and ask the
community to stand up against rape culture.
Speaker 11 (29:19):
On a.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Burke is the creator of a movement that shifted the
world with just two small words, me too. This idea
that was explicitly spelled out in the rule book, if
you dress skimpy or asking for trouble have become fighting words.
I won't pretend to agree with the rules, especially one
(29:40):
like that, because I'm one of those women who flinches
when someone tells me what to do. But when I
talk about the Cheerleader rule Book with my friends from Texas,
a lot of them tell me these were the unofficial
rules of their childhood too. Don't go out without your
hair and makeup done, don't dress provocatively. Image management and
safe kind of bleed together. Being a lady becomes a
(30:04):
way to protect your reputation and yourself. What's different about
the cheerleaders is that it was literally their job to
dress provocatively at work, and then the rest of the
rules were in place to manage that.
Speaker 12 (30:18):
It's so fascinating that the idea that they need protection,
but they're not sex objects, they're proper ladies.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
This is Jessica Luther. She's a journalist who's broken stories
about violence against women in college and pro sports. In
twenty fifteen, in Texas Monthly, she and her co writer
Dan Solomon broke the story about sexual assault by several
members of the Baylor University football team. And I wanted
to ask Jessica about the cheerleader's rules because as intense
(30:48):
as they could be, I also found myself wondering if
some of the rules never walking to your car alone
at night, or even the rule against fraternization didn't offer
these women certain protection.
Speaker 12 (31:02):
It's interesting because the whole idea of like cheerleaders can't
fraternize with players, which is such a fascinating idea of
like why do they need protection? Like who's making them unsafe?
And like how do we think about what that means
that men are dangerous or characterized as dangerous. It's hard
(31:22):
for me because on some level I can see that
I can see that probably the intention was good, that
the idea is to protect these women who are not
like who understands what it's like to be a Dallas
cowboy cheerleader who's never been one before. I'm not going
to pretend like I have any idea what the scrutiny
on you is.
Speaker 13 (31:42):
Like.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
I could feel Jessica struggling with this question, which I
appreciated because I had struggled too. I'd heard those stories
like the ones in episode two about cheerleaders getting creepy
calls or opening their eyes in bed to find a
strange man in their house.
Speaker 12 (31:58):
I know that there are probably very scary men who
like you too much, and so I can see this
sort of we've got to keep them. It's so hard, though,
because like, as soon as I want to verbalize it,
I'm like, oh, that makes me feel gross.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
This is an ongoing debate in feminism in life. Really,
what kind of rules do we need? For so long
the rules were a way to keep women from harm,
but they also kept them in their place.
Speaker 12 (32:23):
I do get the intention there, and I do think,
what can you do about the fact that there are
bad people out there who will fixate and you can't
control all of them. So like there's an idea that
if you control the women, they'll be safer. But as
soon as I say that out loud, I just want
to reject it because I understand that, like women can't
do anything, and there's like very little that you can
(32:45):
do to make yourself quote unquote safer through your actions
if someone has decided that they are going to hurt
you in some way, and so then that just that
just leaves me with these teams and like what they
get out of having that kind of control over these women,
And then I just get real cynical.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
So I wanted to ask Suzanne's assistant, Debbie Hansen, what
she thought about this argument about a younger generation of
women who see the cheerleader's rules is an unfair burden.
Speaker 8 (33:18):
I can't even either what. I can't even wrap my
head around it. I just I just have no comment.
I just know we know the generations are different. The rules,
dear Fred.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Debbie says, the generations are different, and to me, that's
a sign of progress. We grew up with different rules,
and that shapes our ideas about the world and what's possible.
I think the truth is that rules are necessary. We're
just fighting over what kind and who follows them. But
the drama that came next was a lesson and why
(33:52):
the rules were there in the first place, because the
rules were about to change.
Speaker 8 (34:00):
Work on a Saturday, and I walked in. Mister Swan
wasn't there. Suzanne was, and there was a weekend. This
is a weird thing. Nobody was there. And I think
at that time the Dallas Cowboys had one hundred and
twenty employees. But I was the only one who happened
to go to work that day. And I walked in
and there were suits. The suits was all these people
(34:21):
I never seen. They were wearing black suits and tries.
So I called Suzanne at home. I said, Susan, there's
all these people in suits. Who are these people? And
she didn't know. I don't know how they got it.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
It was the day after at.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Valley Ranch, New Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was on the
phone taking charge as he promised he would do among
the items on his agenda.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
This moment, the way people talk about it, it really
might be the most profound turning point in the history
of the Cowboys.
Speaker 8 (34:53):
I was shocked because I just thought everything would ever change,
that'd be there until like today, I'd still be there.
We're head the Dallas Catboys, and Suzanne, We'd all still
be there, you know. That was our life. And Jerry
Jones had a press conference and the players lounge there
at Catboys Center and told all the employees their jobs
(35:16):
were secure and nothing was going to change. Within a week,
he fired almost everybody.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Legendary coach Tom Landry had been fired. Tech Shram resigned
soon after. Then one day in the dance studio downstairs
from their offices, Suzanne took Debbie aside and told her
she was leaving too. Her loyalty had always been to
tech Shram. On the Cowboys. She told a reporter, they
(35:46):
were America's team. Now they're Jerry Jones's team. W wasn't
sure what to do. It was all happening so fast.
Most of the media coverage focused on the changes to
the football team, but the cheerleaders quickly realized that things
would be different for them too. Here's the TV reporter
Dale Hansen again.
Speaker 5 (36:07):
There were so many stories in the early days. You
know that like Jones was bringing his friends and and
sponsors and clients and to watch the cheerleaders practice and.
Speaker 8 (36:20):
Hype having a rehearsal the dance studio and Jerry Jones
would come down with his friends and his cocktails and
it was just so different. It was just clinking the ice,
watching the girls, you know, rehearse, and I'm just like,
(36:40):
this is not like the old days.
Speaker 5 (36:42):
And it wasn't to learn the latest dance staff. It
wasn't to learn what the halftime routine was going to
look like. It was an incredibly sexist thing to do,
and I think a lot of the cheerleaders were upset
about it.
Speaker 8 (36:56):
So then mister Jones called me in his office and
just said that he wanted basically, he wanted to relax
the rules for the girls to be able to date
the players, date the people in the office, appear where
alcohol was served, and he wanted to change the uniform.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Those rules. They could be so stifling to women on
the squad, but had also helped define it. Now the
cheerleaders were being asked to get rid of them.
Speaker 8 (37:25):
I was not going to be pulled down and have
to make these changes that made the girl, so classy
and so admired and looked up to, and just have
him to destroy it and go down with the ship.
I just wasn't going to do it.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
DeBie remembers a meeting in Jerry Jones's office where she
told him, I.
Speaker 8 (37:44):
Said, I can't do this. People worked too hard for
this organization to be the way it is. Why would
you want to change it. He was just very arrogant, chauvinistic,
just very almost laughing at me. You know, She's just
basically told me how he wanted it to be, and
I just said no.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
This meeting is one of many things I wanted to
ask the cowboys about, but they declined to answer any
of my questions. Debbie calls a meeting with the veteran
cheerleaders to explain what's happening with Suzanne gone. With Jerry
in charge, suddenly the future of the cheerleaders wasn't so
certain anymore. The mood was tense. One of the cheerleaders
(38:26):
in the room was Cindy Villarial. She'd just finished her
first year on the squad and she couldn't quite figure
out what was going on.
Speaker 11 (38:34):
And I remember sitting there as they were saying that
they were going to leave, and I thought, wow, we're
going to miss you guys.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
And then they turned to us and said, who's with us?
Speaker 11 (38:49):
You know, are you guys ready to step up and
walk out with us? And as we go around the room,
you know we're leaving. I'm seeing all these upper level
veterans were walking. We're with you, We're with you and
with you.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Cindy was shocked because she loved being a Cowboys cheerleader.
She'd gotten to pose for the cheerleader's calendar and even
made the show group, which was their elite squad within
the squad who did the USO tours all in her
first season. Was she going to quit just because the
new boss wanted to make some changes?
Speaker 11 (39:23):
We were told, you know, that he wanted to change
the uniform and that he wanted to you know, there
were things that we wouldn't be able to control, such as,
you know, we might have to pose with beer ads,
and you know, all these protections that they wouldn't be
able to give us, you know, and keeping the brand
above reproach. I guess, but I had never heard it
(39:43):
from him. I didn't know whether that's true. I just
you know, you're listening and they're telling you this and again.
It was all a shocker. I'll never forget thinking I
don't want to leave.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
I don't want to quit.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
But she did. She agreed to quit the squad along
with thirteen other cheerleaders. Here's Debbie again.
Speaker 8 (40:06):
So I went home after the rehearsal, prepared a resignation letter.
This is the strange part. In the morning, I went
to work, got out of my car, and I was
met with the onslaught of television cameras. Somebody had linked
it to the media that I was resigning.
Speaker 14 (40:28):
For fourteen seasons, America's team has been cheered on by
the all American girls, pretty but decent, always wearing the
traditional uniform. The rules always said no fraternizing with the players,
no appearances near alcohol. But with a new season under
new management on the horizon, cheerleading director Debbie Bond, who
has resigned, says change is in the wind.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
I have received pressure from within the front office to
add to the cheerleaders uniform during the summer months, biking
pants and haltertok.
Speaker 14 (41:00):
Bond says she found that proposed uniform unacceptable. She says
she found unacceptable too. Team owner Jerry Jones's attitude towards alcohol.
Speaker 4 (41:09):
He smiled and he said, well, Debbie, alcohol is here
to stay.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Jones said, it was all a misunderstanding.
Speaker 13 (41:18):
It has been suggested to me that there was talk
about changing the uniform and possibly in a way to
make the uniform a little more whatever.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
You want to call it.
Speaker 13 (41:28):
That's just not the case. My intent is absolutely to
have our cheerleaders have and hold their head as high
and be as important for moms and dads and their
children in the future that there ever has been.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Jerry went on to call the cheerleaders the pick of
the litter, which was unfortunate, but he did persuade them
to rejoin the squad. The media interviews, cheerleaders agreed this
was all a misunderstanding that got blown out of proportion.
The cheerleader's new director after Debbie left, a former cheerleader
named Leslie Haines, told reporters that it was Jerry's commitment
(42:03):
to the no fraternization rule that helped convince her. Jerry
brought in his daughter, Charlotte to help smooth things over
with the cheerleaders. She was a Stanford graduate who'd been
working in Washington politics at the time she went on
to become the president of the squad, the uniform stayed
the same, the rule book was still in place, at
(42:24):
least in theory. But in this new era, the atmosphere
had changed.
Speaker 5 (42:29):
And I think a lot of that was simply Jones
trying to open up all his Christmas presents. At one time.
I mean, he was so incredibly excited about owning the
Dallas Cowboys, I mean, which was good for the team,
I think in many ways because it brought a passion
back to the organization. And I think he just wanted
to show off the team. He wanted to show off
all the toys that he now owns, and part of
(42:53):
that was the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.
Speaker 11 (42:56):
I did not know anything about Jerry Jens at all.
I had never heard the name before.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Here's Cindy again, you know.
Speaker 11 (43:04):
So I was really open to the fact that, well,
just because they say it could be this way doesn't
mean that it will be this way. You know, I
didn't really know. I was open. I don't like to
judge people, so you know, I wanted to find find
out what it would be like. I really loved being
a cheerleader, and so you know, I was set on
(43:27):
my second year.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Cindy had loved dancing on the sidelines, being in the spotlight.
She loved the goodwill visits to kids in hospitals. She'd
really embraced the spirit of the squad, but it didn't
last long.
Speaker 11 (43:42):
It was in late November when I had an appearance
request and it was on Jerry Jones' airplane.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Normally, cheerleaders might get an appearance request to visit a
hospital or a new business. This was something else.
Speaker 11 (44:00):
I saw the description that I had to be in
my uniform on this private jet with all of his
business men, and my thought was, why am I doing?
Why would I go on this This isn't a football game.
These people are not sick. They don't need a morale boost.
I'm eye candy on this plane, and this is not
(44:24):
what I signed up for. And I remember thinking, this
is exactly what they told us. In that locker room.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Cindy was told she'd been handpicked by Jerry, a detail
that made her even more uncomfortable, and she didn't know
what to do. She says. She called Debbie for advice
and I.
Speaker 11 (44:44):
Said to her, I said, I love being a cheerleader.
I wanted to give it a chance. You know, this
is like my dream, you know. And so she said, well,
if you feel that way, Cindy, you need to make
some decisions. I don't know what would have happened on
the plane, but I do feel like it was not appropriate.
(45:09):
It just felt outside of what our normal ambassadorship, you know.
And I think what he was doing was he was showboating.
Look at all the girls. I just bought this team.
I own these girls, and he didn't own me.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
And so she quit.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
So I went.
Speaker 11 (45:31):
And I packed up my uniform and I packed up
all of my show group outfits, and I walked across
the street and I went to meet with Leslie.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
She means Leslie Haynes, who had just taken over the
squad after Debbie quit. I reached out to Leslie to
ask about this, but didn't hear back.
Speaker 11 (45:53):
And I said, I'm turning in my resignation effective immediately.
And she said, can I ask you why? And I said,
I don't want to be on that appearance. And I
told you I didn't feel comfortable about it, and you
said I had to do it, and she said, Cindy,
(46:18):
she goes, I have to have you on that appearance,
she goes, can't you just stick around?
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Did a part of you ever think about just doing it?
Speaker 9 (46:25):
No?
Speaker 11 (46:27):
Because my first thought was why am I being asked
to be on an airplane with Jerry's businessman. I thought
it was raunchy, So what happens? I remember walking across
the street back to my apartment and I was in tears.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
I was really hurting.
Speaker 11 (46:53):
And I didn't feel like it was something I could
share with others. People did ask why'd you leave the team?
And why did you do this? And I was embarrassed.
Girls on the team surprisingly never called me. It was like,
all of a sudden, I was an outcast. I was
just no longer part of the team. So you know,
(47:14):
they didn't call me or anything.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
We want the world to be fair, but the rules
often come down to who's in charge. Cindy's story was
a sign that the culture of the cowboys was changing
and not playing along could come with consequences. Next time.
On America's Girls.
Speaker 6 (47:40):
Right there when you open up the door into the
locker room would be a white piece of paper with
the Dascowis Shilders logo had your names or all the
names listed in what they needed to work on Amber
one twenty eight Slash one sixteen. I would say buttocks
and thighs, like, that's what my issue was.
Speaker 3 (48:01):
I a.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
Son, a son.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
So you can read more about the early days of
the Cowboys cheerleaders in Kandy Evans's book, A Decade of Drinks,
and you can read more from Jessica Luther in her
latest book, co written with Kavatha Davidson, Loving Sports When
They Don't Love You back dilemmas of the Modern Faith News.
Footage of the beginning of the Jerry Jones era was
(48:32):
from w FAA and from the UNT Digital Library and
KXAS TV. For a transcript of this episode, visit Texas
Monthly dot com slash America's Girls. America's Girls is a
Texas Monthly production. I'm your host, writer and reporter Sarah Hepolo.
Executive producer is Megan Kriich, Produced and edited by Patrick
(48:54):
Michaels and edited by JK. Nichol, Produced and engineered by
Brian Standford, who who wrote the music. Additional research and
audio editing by podcast intern Harper Carleton. America's Girl's art
is by Emily Kimbro and Victoria Milner, and marketing by
Tory Moe. Our theme song is Enough by The bra Lets.
If you like the show, please subscribe and visit our
(49:17):
page at Apple Podcasts and rate the show there. See
you next week.
Texas monthly.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Last spring, I went out to East Texas to a
nice golf course neighborhood by a lake to meet a
former Cowboys cheerleader named Dana Presley Kilmer co.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Thank you, this.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Is a nice play, thank you, thank you, And before
we sat down, we stood around in her kitchen chatting
while she made coffee. Then she pointed over to a
table where I saw something I thought I might never
get to see close up.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
One of my five uniforms, the one I got to keep.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I'd heard she still had one. It's one of those
open secrets among former Cowboys cheerleaders that some of them
managed to hold on to that uniform. One of the
rules strongly enforced by the cheerleaders director Suzanne Mitchell, was
that you had to turn it in when you left
the squad.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Suzanne I knew her so well. I knew she'd say
give me. I know you have more than that.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
So I purposely gave her through so good and she said, Presley,
I know you have more than that.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
And I said no, and she said, give me the
other uniform. And I had five, so I gave her
the other uniform.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
And then years later I said, I still have one
and she said, it's good for you enough.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
He was perfect. I'd become fascinated with the way the
cowboys protected that uniform, not just the copyright, but the
thing itself.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Was that because of the DEBI does Dallas situation it was,
and because people would sell them.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
There was no eBay back then, but people would sell them.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Dana once accidentally left her uniform shorts behind in a
Saint Louis hotel room and.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
They were in the newspaper a couple of weeks later
in Saint Louis and her sale or people trying to
sell you know, Warren By.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
It was just oh no, like it was just nasty
the way they did it.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, that sounds like there was a there was a
suggestion of yes, my personal partners, old parts have been
touching the fabulous Yes, yes.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Oh yes.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
And Suzanne was so upset she said, I'm not mad
about the shorts. We can get you more shorts, and
I'm not mad that you forgot them. I'm mad with
what somebody's going to do with them.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Dana joined the team in nineteen eighty one. It was
in the wake of the scandals at the late seventies.
Debbie does Dallas Playboy. Actually, there were still these little
aftershocks of scandal when she got there. In Dana's first tryouts,
there was a woman from Fort Worth named Kimberly MacArthur.
She got as far as the finals before she was cut.
(02:33):
The next year, she showed up in Playboy wearing a
blue T shirt she'd been given as a cheerleader finalist.
By her photo, it said the Dallas Cowboys fumbled when
they cut kim MacArthur. Their miss is our miss January.
Suzanne got serious about wardrobe security after that happened.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
She became very very careful.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
You signed it in, She had a spreadsheet, You signed
it in, you signed it out.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
She just she just didn't want it in the wrong hands.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, the uniform wasn't the only thing they had to
worry about leaving behind. Was it a rule during your
time that you had to bring your pantyhose with you
when you left?
Speaker 6 (03:10):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Yes, yes, you couldn't throw them in the trash. Susan
didn't want anybody selling anything. People can be really strange.
I mean that's what I was told. I asked somebody,
why can't you throw the pantos away? And they just
gave me that. Look. Yes, there's a lot of strange
people out there. I just loping.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I saw a deal.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
I just saw funny.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
I No throwing pantyhose in the trash, No keeping the uniform.
These were just a few of the rules the cheerleaders
had to follow, and after the scandals that rocked the squad,
the rules had only gotten stricter. But were they there
to protect the women or were the rules there to
control From Texas Monthly, I'm Sarah Huppola and this is
(04:05):
America's Girls, Episode five. The rules. I'm going to a
sheet of paper in front of me that's more than
thirty years old. It says Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders basic rules
and regulations. That may not sound exciting, but there's a
(04:26):
lot of drama in these rules. They had them as
early as nineteen seventy two with choreographer Texi Watermen, and
many of them never changed. No missing rehearsals, no gaining weight.
But over the next years, the cheerleaders director Suzanne Mitchell,
added a few more. No showing up at rehearsal without
your hair and makeup done, no wedding rnks on game day.
(04:48):
The sexual tease was still there, but through the eighties
the cheerleaders doubled down on kid friendliness and patriotism, and
the rules were one of the ways they maintained that aura.
They were like the Ten Commandments cheerleading for the Cowboys.
And then there's a line at the bottom of the
page in all caps. There will be many other unwritten
(05:10):
rules given during the course of the year. On Suzanne's squad,
the rules were a way of life, but by the
end of the eighties those rules would face a test
that threatened everything she had built. The Cowboys always excelled
at controlling the brand. In nineteen eighty two, a book
came out called A Decade of Dreams. It's a history
(05:33):
of the cheerleaders the way the Cowboys wanted it told.
This is Candy Evans who wrote that book.
Speaker 7 (05:39):
The cheerleaders were in their heyday at that time. They
were the hottest thing in Dallas. If you had anything
to do with a program where you wanted some marketing,
you got the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders there and everyone came.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Candy grew up in the Chicago area. She got her
masters in journalism at Columbia and came to Dallas to
start her writing career. When the Cowboys called her about
that book, she didn't really know much about the cheerleaders.
She told me she came to the project with some prejudices.
This wasn't exactly her scene, but she changed her mind
once she started spending time with them.
Speaker 7 (06:15):
And I saw girls who were, you know, from farms
in Oklahoma, and this was their ticket. They were using
their looks and they were using their talents, but this
was their ticket out of the farm life and out
of the small country into maybe a chance to go
to college and get educated and do all these wonderful things.
(06:35):
So what I came to realize, of course, when I
was working with them, is that they were a marketing
tool for the cowboys, and they were one of the
best marketing tools in the history of marketing tools for
the Dallas Cowboys.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Her book was part of that branding. It's out of
print now, but Decade of Dreams is the only book
ever published about the cheerleader's history that I could find.
I kind of can't believe that in fifty year there's
only been this one book. Candy's experience suggests why that's
the case. They're extremely careful with how this story gets.
Speaker 7 (07:09):
Told I did not know that I was like the
fifth or sixth writer that they had fired other writers beforehand,
because there were guys and they went in and they
wanted to write about all the scandals, like were the
girls sleeping with the players and were they drinking with
the players and all this stuff. Well, of course they were,
but I mean, you know, I wasn't going to write
about that. We'll save that for the future, right, And
(07:33):
I just saw what Suzanne wanted. She told me, I
want a book that a little girl can pick up
and then she can come try out an audition to
be a Dallas Cowboys too. I want this book to
be read by thirteen and fourteen year olds. I don't
want anything mean in it. I don't want anything sexy
in it. I don't think vulgar in it. I want
it out to be nice and wholesome and clean. And
that's the image that she tried to keep and that
(07:56):
she did really maintain for those cheerleaders.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
The book helped burnish that image, but the rules might
have been the biggest trick in keeping the balance between
sexy and wholesome.
Speaker 8 (08:08):
We would have a meeting, it'd be about two hour
in doctrination meeting we called it, and all the girls
would be in attendance and we would hand out a
little handbook.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
This is Debbie Hanson, who was Suzanne's assistant from nineteen
seventy nine to nineteen eighty nine, so back then her
name was Debbie Bond.
Speaker 8 (08:25):
A lot of people don't know this. We were a
groomy school too. Some of these girls didn't know how
to dress appropriately, or maybe they couldn't afford to buy
a nice dress and tie heels. So before we would
go on a trip, we'd have them bring their clothes
to practice and show us what they were going to
wear to the airport so we could look at it,
(08:47):
and if they didn't have it, we would give them something.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
So the rules were an old fashioned crash course and
how to be a woman, at least a Southern woman
with a certain kind of refinement. And there was a
motivational aspect to the rules too, in improving yourself you
can improve the world.
Speaker 8 (09:05):
We were always improvising, thinking of waste that we could
do more. Do work for the girls, do work for society,
just to make a difference. That's what it's all about,
isn't it. Making a difference being a footprint.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Classy was a word Suzanne used a lot to describe
the cheerleaders back then. And to keep those cheerleaders classy
and above the fray, Suzanne had to plan ahead. She
had to think about every possible angle when she agreed
to book them for promotions. Here's Dana Presley Kilmer again.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
The wine press in Dallas called probably once a month
and asked us to do an appearance, but Suzanne would
never allows to appear where there was beer or wine served.
And every mattress company in Dallas would call and ask
us to come to their grand opening, and Suzanne said,
oh yeah, and they're going to ask one of you
to lay on the mattress, and once you lie on
the mattress, that's going to be all over the news.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
There was a time place for the come hither look.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
On Sundays we were supposed to be the sexy cheerleaders
on the sideline. The rest of the time, we were
supposed to be perceived as squeaky clean, high hills pantyhose,
business suit, makeup and hair done mannerly, good etiquette.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Was there any sense of you that felt that that
was unfair?
Speaker 9 (10:18):
No?
Speaker 1 (10:19):
I think there was a lot of Texans that behaved
that way at the time, whether it's sororities or drill
teams or college cheerleaders. I think that's a normal culture
for the South. I see now how it could be
perceived as strange, but it never felt strange to me.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
A lot of the cheerleaders told me they were rule
followers by nature, but these rules were especially powerful because
of how strictly they were enforced. Suzanne's right hand woman
in this task was her assistant Debbie. Through the eighties,
she was Suzanne's eyes.
Speaker 8 (10:52):
And ears, so the girls knew. They never knew where
I would pop up, and if I popped up at
a place where they shouldn't be, or I saw something
that they were doing that they were not to do,
that I would tell Suzanne.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
At times that took a little bit of spycraft. Some
of the squad figured it was appropriate for a woman
whose last name at the time.
Speaker 8 (11:17):
Was Bond, so I just got the name double O
sev I don't know. I don't think they were afraid
of me. They just knew I would tell Suzanne. I mean,
I do remember one time during tryouts, Suzanne had told
me that there was She had heard that there was
a girl in the preliminaries who was a stripper, and
(11:39):
obviously we didn't want that was not the caliber of
girl that we wanted to wear the uniform. So she
had me go to every strip up in Dallas. I
had never been to a strip club, okay, and I
I was hiding in the corner because I didn't want
anybody to recognize we had dark glasses on. My quote
(11:59):
was the winner. It was freezing, and it was just
that was a moment, a double seven moment.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
She and Suzanne had to manage the press. If the
tabloids got a hold of these tenbits, they could easily
blow up. And so Debbie and Suzanne had to keep
a tight rein on those thirty six cheerleaders. Meanwhile, over
on the football side of things, the press was smothered
in access and goodwill. Tech Shram always had a cozy
relationship with anyone who wrote about the team.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
And this is the thing I think a lot of
people never did understand. I'm the only one dumb enough
to admit it.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
This is Dale Hanson, a legendary TV sports reporter who
just retired. He's made big waves in recent years for
his commentaries about racism and homophobia in the NFL, and
he spent forty years getting to know the Cowboys media machine.
Speaker 5 (12:48):
Shram was brilliant at massaging the media that he was
so agreeable, and he made sure that everybody in his
organization was media friendly. It's just human nature that the
media coverage is going to be better and suit your
purposes better.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Reporters had the home numbers of the players, that's how
much access they got. They saw plenty of wild nights
and drunken carousing, but it was understood that beat reporters
didn't write about the player's personal lives back then, and
you didn't write about the cheerleaders either.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
Well, you know, we would do the Cowboys cheerleader stories.
It was almost like, well, you can't come in here.
I mean you well, we got to have video then practicing. No,
you're gonna have your camera focused on the wrong thing.
No we're not, you know, but yeah, I mean you
had to jump through hoops just to get interviews with
the cheerleaders on the occasional audition type story. And again
(13:47):
it's back to well they were up on this pedestal.
They were they were the untouchable they were unreachable.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
The most important rule was so well known it didn't
even appear in the cheerleader's basic rules and regulation. No
fraternizing with the players. That meant coaches, cowboy staff, and
journalists too.
Speaker 5 (14:07):
Cowboys cheerleaders were off limits, and I think that only
added to the aura of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, which
separated them from a lot of other cheerleader groups around
the country. It might've been a harsh rule for some
of those young women to follow, but I think for
the benefit of the organization, I think it's a heck
(14:29):
of a good rule.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Of course, some cheerleaders did date players, and when they
were caught, they were shown the door, but nothing ever
happened to the players. The rule only worked in one direction.
It's an obvious double standard, but I guess it's not
so different from the culture at large. Women can take
a reputation hit for any sexual behavior. Well, men mostly
(14:51):
get high fives when I hear stories about women getting cut.
It's hard not to make a mental list of all
the outrageous nonsense have gotten away with over the years.
But for the cheerleaders on the team, the rule was
just the way things were here's Dana.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Even Bill Bates, the famous football player. Bill Bates, got
down on one knee jokingly and it proposed to me
at a football game, and I said, get up. You'll
survive this. I won't. You know, you're a famous football player.
Everybody knows your number and your name. I will get
kicked off the team. Get up, Get up, Get up.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
What Dana knew, what all the cheerleaders knew, was that
even for a lighthearted joke, punishment could be swift.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Halloween in Dallas and the eighties, during the disco era,
they had these wild costume parties in Incognito and the
Stark Club and the Cowboy and all the clubs that
were hot in the eighties. You could literally win thousands
of dollars just by going if you had a great costume. Well,
two cheerleaders and I won't name their names, so I
(15:51):
want to embarrass them. There was a little girl in
the stands that was called the Cowboy Baby at that time.
Her parents would hold her up. She had the middrift
crop top and vest that we wore. Someone had custom
made one precious little blonde girl. She became like an
unofficial mascot. When you got to that corner of the
field you looked for cowboy baby, and her parents would
(16:12):
hold her up. They went to one of the clubs
as cowboy Baby. They had their boots on, their cheerleader
top on, and an adult diaper.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
It's actually, it's a good customer.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
It's hilarious. It's hilarious. Suzanne didn't think, so she kicked
him both off the team.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
So the Cowboys didn't want cheerleaders dressing like babies. What
they did want, though, was babies dressing like cheerleaders. The
Little Miss Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader contest blunched in late nineteen
seventy nine with ten thousand entrants age four to twelve.
Within a couple of years, forty thousand girls entered. The
(16:52):
winners were picked based on their essays. One essay, supposedly
written by a six year old read, I don't want
to wait until I'm twenty one to be sexy. I
want to be a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader now. In nineteen
eighty one, the Dallas Morning News ran a story on
parents who were worried about this cheerleader mania. Girls who
(17:12):
were suddenly swiveling their hips and shaking their pom poms.
But the team had discovered that there were plenty of
girls like me who saw the cheerleaders not as sex
objects but as role models, and they kept pumping out
merchandise to meet that demand. Frisbees, chewing gum, sleeping bags.
The cheerleader's logo was a cartoon drawing of a little
(17:35):
blonde girl wearing that same midriff, revealing uniform but looking
like a kindergartener. She popped up in coloring books and
playing cards, and the cheerleaders introduced a line of clothing
for girls that included jeans and pom poms and a
blue satin jacket. Suzanne's assistant, Debbie Hanson, told me they
didn't feel the need to be so protective of the
(17:56):
brand when kids were wearing the logo.
Speaker 8 (17:59):
Well, we have market over it, okay, and we had
more control. I think if children wore the clothing line
versus like, let's say, if we had the clothing line
for adults, that could go in a different direction.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
The cowboys were always pushing the idea that these women
in boots and haltertops were good role models, that they
were more than sideline entertainment. Suzanne had long emphasized the
importance of service, and in late nineteen seventy nine, the
cheerleaders began another tradition. They went on their first USO
tour to entertain and hang out with soldiers who were
(18:37):
serving in Korea.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Mostly what we did was sign autographs and shake hands,
and just as many women in the military hugged us
and asked for autographs as the men did. Everybody just
wanted to see somebody from home, and it was shocking
how lonely they were, so we felt like we were
doing a lot of good.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
It's a weird coincidence that the same year the Cheerleader
began these USO tours, the movie Apocalypse Now came out,
and it's got a wild scene with dancers helicoptering in
on a good will.
Speaker 9 (19:08):
Mission, tough with all heart, it's been yeah, and if
the proven, we're gonna give you some of the tens
when you're gonna like Miss.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Augustine in the movie, their playboy playmates shimmying on stage
and hip thrusting into machine guns with soldiers whooping in
the audience, and one of them in a tiny blue
haltertop looks a lot like a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. The
scene makes USO tours look like an orgy of repressed
(19:40):
male desire, but the cheerleader's show was less sex pot
and more earnest. Flag waving. Dana and another cheerleader used
to close the show by singing Lee Greenwood's God Bless
the USA. The cheerleaders became favorites on these trips. They've
made eighty three tours in forty two countries. I'm pretty
(20:01):
sure only Bob Hope did more. And those tours could
be a real education.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
When you auditioned to be a Dallas Comme a cheerleader,
you think you're going to be on the sidelines of
eleven home games, and you're twenty three years old, and
you land at the Beirut Airplort and as you're getting
off of your commercial airplane there's a jumbo jet on
fire at the end of the runway.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
And at times they did face real danger on these trips.
There was one harrowing ride through the route when Dana
and Suzanne were in a jeep being driven by a soldier.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
What they'd done is they put a jeep in between
each of us with marines in it, because we now
had to go down the Israeli Highway, which is just
a gravel road. And there was a curfew and we
had broken the curfew and we got shot at on
the way back to the boat, and Suzanne actually got hit.
And the crazy thing is my next door neighbor of
(20:56):
sixteen years was the marine driving the jeep and he
saved her life. He slammed her head down just as
that bullet hit, or she would not have she wouldn't
have lived past nineteen eighty three. And she had headaches
till the day she died from that because the bullet
scraped her forehead. Anyway, that was that night. But then
fast forward to six months later, a kamikaze truck driver
(21:17):
drove a truck with a bomb into the barracks the
men were sleeping in and killed two hundred and nineteen
Marines in their sleep. And they were the men that
we'd met six months earlier.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
It was an experience that stuck with Dana the rest
of her life. It changed the way she saw cheerleading
and the world around her. Back at home, the cheerleaders
found themselves in the middle of a cultural battle too.
The women's movement that had grown through the seventies started
to take aim at the cheerleaders.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
The only time we really felt that feminist vibe of
women saying you shouldn't do that. You're setting us back
a decade by doing that. Well, is from my experience,
was when we went to Fresno State University.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
It was nineteen eighty two and the cheerleaders were there
to dance in a halftime show and raise money for
the school's athletic department.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
But that's where we showed up, and they had signs
that said hearts and Minds, not bumps and grinds, and
they told us there were signs that Saidallas cowichulders go home.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
The protest was led by a physical education professor from
Fresno State named Rita Flake. She started a petition and
wrote a complaint to the university. Her letter called the
cheerleaders demeaning to women since their quote primary function is
apparently to provide sexually suggestive entertainment for male sports fans.
Suzanne Mitchell fired back in an interview with a reporter.
(22:45):
She pointed out that one of the suggestive songs the
cheerleaders would be performing was the Neil Diamond song America,
and she said, quote, the first thing I'd like to
ask rita flake is what has she ever done for
her country? We helicopter into the DMZ. By the time
the cheerleaders got to Fresno State, the tension had been
(23:07):
building all week. A crowd of protesters met their bus.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
And it was so nasty that evening that the faculty
at the university had to form a human fence on
either side of us so that we could get out
of the bus and get onto the field without them
throwing rocks at us. What do you think is going
on there?
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Like?
Speaker 8 (23:26):
Why?
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Evidently there was a real strong movement in the female
athletic department against anything that objectified women, and they felt
like we were doing something to make that worse. There
was no changing their mind that we weren't being manipulated
or objectified and that we were doing what we wanted
to do. But we really were doing what we wanted
to do. No one forced me to be a Dallas
(23:48):
Cowich cheerleader.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Certainly the cheerleaders were objectified by some fans, but they
saw themselves as more than that, performers, goodwill ambassadors, glamorous celestes,
and plenty of other people did too. The word exploitation
gets thrown around a lot with the cheerleaders, But who
decides that they're being exploited if they say that they're not.
(24:12):
Nineteen eighty two was also a year when the NFL
players went on strike and eight weeks of the season
were canceled. When the Dallas Morning News asked why the
cheerleaders weren't on strike, a five year veteran named Terry
Richardson said, this is the way it should be. We're
in this for love. The eighties were an era of
big oil and mink coats and conspicuous consumption in Dallas,
(24:36):
and the cheerleaders were an emblem of that glamour. But
that year wasn't so glamorous for the cheerleaders. Shannon Baker Worthman,
whose fan mail you heard in episode two, remembers how
hard that season was morale wise.
Speaker 9 (24:50):
We didn't go on strike. We were busting our butts.
I remember, we weren't a Texas studio anymore. We were
in this podunk studio. We had to still work every
night because you didn't know when they were gonna go
off strike.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Shannon to become the cheerleader's new choreographer. Texi had retired
and she'd chosen Shannon to replace her. Does that mean
you don't get paid for the games as a cheerleader?
Speaker 9 (25:16):
Oh, you don't get paid if you and.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
You don't get paid for rehearsal. Now, so, the players
going on strike basically meant the cheerleaders going on strike too.
Speaker 9 (25:25):
Right.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
For all the transgressive spirit they brought to the NFL,
the cheerleaders were rooted in something very traditional, the idea
of women being supporting players, not the breadwinners. As cheerleaders,
their literal job was to encourage the men on the field.
But the eighties were a decade when women were pushing
into the workplace and starting to demand equal respect and
(25:49):
equal pay. You can see this in classic eighties movies
like Nine to Five and Working Girl. Dana Presley Kilmer
made that move too. She went on to become a
seat at a multimillion dollar company, but before that, she
got a job in the Cowboys front office. After four
seasons cheering on the sidelines, she was an assistant director
(26:10):
for the cheerleaders, and that meant that, like Suzanne, she
also pitched in as an assistant to Tex Shram, the
Cowboys general manager.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Mister Shram was such an amazing man and he was
a visionary and a genius, but he scared people. He
was very tall, he was bald, he wore cowboy boots,
and he had this big booming voice.
Speaker 10 (26:32):
He'd say, Dana, I mean, he had this big booming voice.
So Suzanne was his executive assistant, but he had someone
else that would answer the phone, go greet people, bring
him coffee, make him cocktails.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
And Dana says, the women in that job didn't last long.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
And in between I had to do that job, and
that was hilarious because at ten o'clock in the morning,
mister Shram would yell, Dana, bring me a bloody bull
and I said, I walked to the stands off, what
is that? She said, It's a bloody mary with a
beef bully on cube in it. So that sounds horrible.
She said, well, learn to make it. That's what mister
Sham drinks, and he drank them all day.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
I kept thinking about how the cheerleaders couldn't even be
seen in uniform around booze will the boss drank all
day long. I never got the sense that bothered Dana.
But for me, hearing stories like this, I can't help
seeing another double standard. But what I would call a
double standard. Dana might just call the rules and she
(27:32):
considered that a small price to pay to be a cheerleader.
Here's Debbie Hanson again.
Speaker 8 (27:37):
What I can tell you is every year we made
more rules because they were necessary, because the times changed
and the situations that the girls were put into changed.
I mean, we're always changing the rules to protect the girls,
I think, and the image and the times that were changing.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
So as the culture moved in one direction loosening up
the rules for women, the cheerleaders went the exact opposite way.
That's after this. I have a copy of the rule
book from the nineties. It's a hefty three ring binder
with hundreds of pages, and you can see how the
(28:19):
rules continue to pile up over the years. It's full
of specific things like when do you use which fork
and reminders to answer yes ma'am when corrected, and not
to talk about your boyfriend in front of fans, And
there are warnings about how to dress off the field.
It says, quote, it is dangerous even to be out
(28:40):
in your car in a skimpy manner. If you had
car trouble, you were asking for trouble in the past
ten years or so. High profile. Sexual assault cases have
really shifted the way a lot of people think about
the rules women follow in college, at work, wherever. A
rallying for women and men fed up with blatant abusive
(29:03):
power and sexual harassment.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Victim blaming, and the excuse that some are giving that
boys will be boys needs to stop one.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Ad because the group took out a full page ad
in the school newspaper.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
It congratulates the class of twenty sixteen and ask the
community to stand up against rape culture.
Speaker 11 (29:19):
On a.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Burke is the creator of a movement that shifted the
world with just two small words, me too. This idea
that was explicitly spelled out in the rule book, if
you dress skimpy or asking for trouble have become fighting words.
I won't pretend to agree with the rules, especially one
(29:40):
like that, because I'm one of those women who flinches
when someone tells me what to do. But when I
talk about the Cheerleader rule Book with my friends from Texas,
a lot of them tell me these were the unofficial
rules of their childhood too. Don't go out without your
hair and makeup done, don't dress provocatively. Image management and
safe kind of bleed together. Being a lady becomes a
(30:04):
way to protect your reputation and yourself. What's different about
the cheerleaders is that it was literally their job to
dress provocatively at work, and then the rest of the
rules were in place to manage that.
Speaker 12 (30:18):
It's so fascinating that the idea that they need protection,
but they're not sex objects, they're proper ladies.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
This is Jessica Luther. She's a journalist who's broken stories
about violence against women in college and pro sports. In
twenty fifteen, in Texas Monthly, she and her co writer
Dan Solomon broke the story about sexual assault by several
members of the Baylor University football team. And I wanted
to ask Jessica about the cheerleader's rules because as intense
(30:48):
as they could be, I also found myself wondering if
some of the rules never walking to your car alone
at night, or even the rule against fraternization didn't offer
these women certain protection.
Speaker 12 (31:02):
It's interesting because the whole idea of like cheerleaders can't
fraternize with players, which is such a fascinating idea of
like why do they need protection? Like who's making them unsafe?
And like how do we think about what that means
that men are dangerous or characterized as dangerous. It's hard
(31:22):
for me because on some level I can see that
I can see that probably the intention was good, that
the idea is to protect these women who are not
like who understands what it's like to be a Dallas
cowboy cheerleader who's never been one before. I'm not going
to pretend like I have any idea what the scrutiny
on you is.
Speaker 13 (31:42):
Like.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
I could feel Jessica struggling with this question, which I
appreciated because I had struggled too. I'd heard those stories
like the ones in episode two about cheerleaders getting creepy
calls or opening their eyes in bed to find a
strange man in their house.
Speaker 12 (31:58):
I know that there are probably very scary men who
like you too much, and so I can see this
sort of we've got to keep them. It's so hard, though,
because like, as soon as I want to verbalize it,
I'm like, oh, that makes me feel gross.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
This is an ongoing debate in feminism in life. Really,
what kind of rules do we need? For so long
the rules were a way to keep women from harm,
but they also kept them in their place.
Speaker 12 (32:23):
I do get the intention there, and I do think,
what can you do about the fact that there are
bad people out there who will fixate and you can't
control all of them. So like there's an idea that
if you control the women, they'll be safer. But as
soon as I say that out loud, I just want
to reject it because I understand that, like women can't
do anything, and there's like very little that you can
(32:45):
do to make yourself quote unquote safer through your actions
if someone has decided that they are going to hurt
you in some way, and so then that just that
just leaves me with these teams and like what they
get out of having that kind of control over these women,
And then I just get real cynical.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
So I wanted to ask Suzanne's assistant, Debbie Hansen, what
she thought about this argument about a younger generation of
women who see the cheerleader's rules is an unfair burden.
Speaker 8 (33:18):
I can't even either what. I can't even wrap my
head around it. I just I just have no comment.
I just know we know the generations are different. The rules,
dear Fred.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Debbie says, the generations are different, and to me, that's
a sign of progress. We grew up with different rules,
and that shapes our ideas about the world and what's possible.
I think the truth is that rules are necessary. We're
just fighting over what kind and who follows them. But
the drama that came next was a lesson and why
(33:52):
the rules were there in the first place, because the
rules were about to change.
Speaker 8 (34:00):
Work on a Saturday, and I walked in. Mister Swan
wasn't there. Suzanne was, and there was a weekend. This
is a weird thing. Nobody was there. And I think
at that time the Dallas Cowboys had one hundred and
twenty employees. But I was the only one who happened
to go to work that day. And I walked in
and there were suits. The suits was all these people
(34:21):
I never seen. They were wearing black suits and tries.
So I called Suzanne at home. I said, Susan, there's
all these people in suits. Who are these people? And
she didn't know. I don't know how they got it.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
It was the day after at.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Valley Ranch, New Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was on the
phone taking charge as he promised he would do among
the items on his agenda.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
This moment, the way people talk about it, it really
might be the most profound turning point in the history
of the Cowboys.
Speaker 8 (34:53):
I was shocked because I just thought everything would ever change,
that'd be there until like today, I'd still be there.
We're head the Dallas Catboys, and Suzanne, We'd all still
be there, you know. That was our life. And Jerry
Jones had a press conference and the players lounge there
at Catboys Center and told all the employees their jobs
(35:16):
were secure and nothing was going to change. Within a week,
he fired almost everybody.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Legendary coach Tom Landry had been fired. Tech Shram resigned
soon after. Then one day in the dance studio downstairs
from their offices, Suzanne took Debbie aside and told her
she was leaving too. Her loyalty had always been to
tech Shram. On the Cowboys. She told a reporter, they
(35:46):
were America's team. Now they're Jerry Jones's team. W wasn't
sure what to do. It was all happening so fast.
Most of the media coverage focused on the changes to
the football team, but the cheerleaders quickly realized that things
would be different for them too. Here's the TV reporter
Dale Hansen again.
Speaker 5 (36:07):
There were so many stories in the early days. You
know that like Jones was bringing his friends and and
sponsors and clients and to watch the cheerleaders practice and.
Speaker 8 (36:20):
Hype having a rehearsal the dance studio and Jerry Jones
would come down with his friends and his cocktails and
it was just so different. It was just clinking the ice,
watching the girls, you know, rehearse, and I'm just like,
(36:40):
this is not like the old days.
Speaker 5 (36:42):
And it wasn't to learn the latest dance staff. It
wasn't to learn what the halftime routine was going to
look like. It was an incredibly sexist thing to do,
and I think a lot of the cheerleaders were upset
about it.
Speaker 8 (36:56):
So then mister Jones called me in his office and
just said that he wanted basically, he wanted to relax
the rules for the girls to be able to date
the players, date the people in the office, appear where
alcohol was served, and he wanted to change the uniform.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Those rules. They could be so stifling to women on
the squad, but had also helped define it. Now the
cheerleaders were being asked to get rid of them.
Speaker 8 (37:25):
I was not going to be pulled down and have
to make these changes that made the girl, so classy
and so admired and looked up to, and just have
him to destroy it and go down with the ship.
I just wasn't going to do it.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
DeBie remembers a meeting in Jerry Jones's office where she
told him, I.
Speaker 8 (37:44):
Said, I can't do this. People worked too hard for
this organization to be the way it is. Why would
you want to change it. He was just very arrogant, chauvinistic,
just very almost laughing at me. You know, She's just
basically told me how he wanted it to be, and
I just said no.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
This meeting is one of many things I wanted to
ask the cowboys about, but they declined to answer any
of my questions. Debbie calls a meeting with the veteran
cheerleaders to explain what's happening with Suzanne gone. With Jerry
in charge, suddenly the future of the cheerleaders wasn't so
certain anymore. The mood was tense. One of the cheerleaders
(38:26):
in the room was Cindy Villarial. She'd just finished her
first year on the squad and she couldn't quite figure
out what was going on.
Speaker 11 (38:34):
And I remember sitting there as they were saying that
they were going to leave, and I thought, wow, we're
going to miss you guys.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
And then they turned to us and said, who's with us?
Speaker 11 (38:49):
You know, are you guys ready to step up and
walk out with us? And as we go around the room,
you know we're leaving. I'm seeing all these upper level
veterans were walking. We're with you, We're with you and
with you.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Cindy was shocked because she loved being a Cowboys cheerleader.
She'd gotten to pose for the cheerleader's calendar and even
made the show group, which was their elite squad within
the squad who did the USO tours all in her
first season. Was she going to quit just because the
new boss wanted to make some changes?
Speaker 11 (39:23):
We were told, you know, that he wanted to change
the uniform and that he wanted to you know, there
were things that we wouldn't be able to control, such as,
you know, we might have to pose with beer ads,
and you know, all these protections that they wouldn't be
able to give us, you know, and keeping the brand
above reproach. I guess, but I had never heard it
(39:43):
from him. I didn't know whether that's true. I just
you know, you're listening and they're telling you this and again.
It was all a shocker. I'll never forget thinking I
don't want to leave.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
I don't want to quit.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
But she did. She agreed to quit the squad along
with thirteen other cheerleaders. Here's Debbie again.
Speaker 8 (40:06):
So I went home after the rehearsal, prepared a resignation letter.
This is the strange part. In the morning, I went
to work, got out of my car, and I was
met with the onslaught of television cameras. Somebody had linked
it to the media that I was resigning.
Speaker 14 (40:28):
For fourteen seasons, America's team has been cheered on by
the all American girls, pretty but decent, always wearing the
traditional uniform. The rules always said no fraternizing with the players,
no appearances near alcohol. But with a new season under
new management on the horizon, cheerleading director Debbie Bond, who
has resigned, says change is in the wind.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
I have received pressure from within the front office to
add to the cheerleaders uniform during the summer months, biking
pants and haltertok.
Speaker 14 (41:00):
Bond says she found that proposed uniform unacceptable. She says
she found unacceptable too. Team owner Jerry Jones's attitude towards alcohol.
Speaker 4 (41:09):
He smiled and he said, well, Debbie, alcohol is here
to stay.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Jones said, it was all a misunderstanding.
Speaker 13 (41:18):
It has been suggested to me that there was talk
about changing the uniform and possibly in a way to
make the uniform a little more whatever.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
You want to call it.
Speaker 13 (41:28):
That's just not the case. My intent is absolutely to
have our cheerleaders have and hold their head as high
and be as important for moms and dads and their
children in the future that there ever has been.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Jerry went on to call the cheerleaders the pick of
the litter, which was unfortunate, but he did persuade them
to rejoin the squad. The media interviews, cheerleaders agreed this
was all a misunderstanding that got blown out of proportion.
The cheerleader's new director after Debbie left, a former cheerleader
named Leslie Haines, told reporters that it was Jerry's commitment
(42:03):
to the no fraternization rule that helped convince her. Jerry
brought in his daughter, Charlotte to help smooth things over
with the cheerleaders. She was a Stanford graduate who'd been
working in Washington politics at the time she went on
to become the president of the squad, the uniform stayed
the same, the rule book was still in place, at
(42:24):
least in theory. But in this new era, the atmosphere
had changed.
Speaker 5 (42:29):
And I think a lot of that was simply Jones
trying to open up all his Christmas presents. At one time.
I mean, he was so incredibly excited about owning the
Dallas Cowboys, I mean, which was good for the team,
I think in many ways because it brought a passion
back to the organization. And I think he just wanted
to show off the team. He wanted to show off
all the toys that he now owns, and part of
(42:53):
that was the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.
Speaker 11 (42:56):
I did not know anything about Jerry Jens at all.
I had never heard the name before.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Here's Cindy again, you know.
Speaker 11 (43:04):
So I was really open to the fact that, well,
just because they say it could be this way doesn't
mean that it will be this way. You know, I
didn't really know. I was open. I don't like to
judge people, so you know, I wanted to find find
out what it would be like. I really loved being
a cheerleader, and so you know, I was set on
(43:27):
my second year.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Cindy had loved dancing on the sidelines, being in the spotlight.
She loved the goodwill visits to kids in hospitals. She'd
really embraced the spirit of the squad, but it didn't
last long.
Speaker 11 (43:42):
It was in late November when I had an appearance
request and it was on Jerry Jones' airplane.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Normally, cheerleaders might get an appearance request to visit a
hospital or a new business. This was something else.
Speaker 11 (44:00):
I saw the description that I had to be in
my uniform on this private jet with all of his
business men, and my thought was, why am I doing?
Why would I go on this This isn't a football game.
These people are not sick. They don't need a morale boost.
I'm eye candy on this plane, and this is not
(44:24):
what I signed up for. And I remember thinking, this
is exactly what they told us. In that locker room.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Cindy was told she'd been handpicked by Jerry, a detail
that made her even more uncomfortable, and she didn't know
what to do. She says. She called Debbie for advice
and I.
Speaker 11 (44:44):
Said to her, I said, I love being a cheerleader.
I wanted to give it a chance. You know, this
is like my dream, you know. And so she said, well,
if you feel that way, Cindy, you need to make
some decisions. I don't know what would have happened on
the plane, but I do feel like it was not appropriate.
(45:09):
It just felt outside of what our normal ambassadorship, you know.
And I think what he was doing was he was showboating.
Look at all the girls. I just bought this team.
I own these girls, and he didn't own me.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
And so she quit.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
So I went.
Speaker 11 (45:31):
And I packed up my uniform and I packed up
all of my show group outfits, and I walked across
the street and I went to meet with Leslie.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
She means Leslie Haynes, who had just taken over the
squad after Debbie quit. I reached out to Leslie to
ask about this, but didn't hear back.
Speaker 11 (45:53):
And I said, I'm turning in my resignation effective immediately.
And she said, can I ask you why? And I said,
I don't want to be on that appearance. And I
told you I didn't feel comfortable about it, and you
said I had to do it, and she said, Cindy,
(46:18):
she goes, I have to have you on that appearance,
she goes, can't you just stick around?
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Did a part of you ever think about just doing it?
Speaker 9 (46:25):
No?
Speaker 11 (46:27):
Because my first thought was why am I being asked
to be on an airplane with Jerry's businessman. I thought
it was raunchy, So what happens? I remember walking across
the street back to my apartment and I was in tears.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
I was really hurting.
Speaker 11 (46:53):
And I didn't feel like it was something I could
share with others. People did ask why'd you leave the team?
And why did you do this? And I was embarrassed.
Girls on the team surprisingly never called me. It was like,
all of a sudden, I was an outcast. I was
just no longer part of the team. So you know,
(47:14):
they didn't call me or anything.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
We want the world to be fair, but the rules
often come down to who's in charge. Cindy's story was
a sign that the culture of the cowboys was changing
and not playing along could come with consequences. Next time.
On America's Girls.
Speaker 6 (47:40):
Right there when you open up the door into the
locker room would be a white piece of paper with
the Dascowis Shilders logo had your names or all the
names listed in what they needed to work on Amber
one twenty eight Slash one sixteen. I would say buttocks
and thighs, like, that's what my issue was.
Speaker 3 (48:01):
I a.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
Son, a son.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
So you can read more about the early days of
the Cowboys cheerleaders in Kandy Evans's book, A Decade of Drinks,
and you can read more from Jessica Luther in her
latest book, co written with Kavatha Davidson, Loving Sports When
They Don't Love You back dilemmas of the Modern Faith News.
Footage of the beginning of the Jerry Jones era was
(48:32):
from w FAA and from the UNT Digital Library and
KXAS TV. For a transcript of this episode, visit Texas
Monthly dot com slash America's Girls. America's Girls is a
Texas Monthly production. I'm your host, writer and reporter Sarah Hepolo.
Executive producer is Megan Kriich, Produced and edited by Patrick
(48:54):
Michaels and edited by JK. Nichol, Produced and engineered by
Brian Standford, who who wrote the music. Additional research and
audio editing by podcast intern Harper Carleton. America's Girl's art
is by Emily Kimbro and Victoria Milner, and marketing by
Tory Moe. Our theme song is Enough by The bra Lets.
If you like the show, please subscribe and visit our
(49:17):
page at Apple Podcasts and rate the show there. See
you next week.
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