January 4, 2022 • 43 mins
It’s not just about being the right weight. It’s about having the right hair, the right skin, the right boobs, the right legs. Only a very particular kind of beautiful woman gets to wear that uniform. For episode transcripts and bonus content related to the show, visit texasmonthly.com.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Texas monthly.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
To be a Cowboys cheerleader means living by a strict
set of rules. You heard all about that in the
last episode. But to the women on the squad, there's
one rule that looms larger than any other. Don't gain weight.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Walking into Valley Ranch. There's double doors and you would
open it up, and right there when you open up
the door into the locker room would be a white
piece of paper with the Dashkoways Cheerleaders logo and would
have six to eight different names.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
You can talk to a cheerleader from almost any era
and she'll have a story about the waitlist.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
There's a piece of paper and had your names or
all the names listed in what they needed to work on.
So you saw that as soon as you arrived at
ed rehearsal, and mine happened to be hipsynth.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
The list could get very specific. Sometimes it had a
cheerleader's current weight and then a target.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
It would say our name amber one eight slash one sixteen.
I would say buttocks and thighs like that's what my
issue was.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
The weight list could make or break a cheerleader because
what happens if you don't make weight and.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
You cut and you don't perform, And that's the whole
thing is that's why we're all here, so you can
perform at the game. So they would do anything.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
It wasn't just about being the right weight. It was
about having the right hair, having the right skin, having
the right boobs, the right legs. It was about all
the things you need to be the very particular kind
of beautiful woman allowed to wear that uniform. Today, we'll
meet women from different eras talking about one of the
(01:58):
most difficult challenges, which is a cheerleader faces the fight
with her own body. Sometimes that battle was in private
and other times it was very public.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Our weight is one hundred and fifty pounds.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
I've never seen that heavy of a cheerleader.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
I don't think our uniform fits your body. Today we
had a little bit of fine butt running together, so
we're calling it a stut. If you got any jiggle,
any wiggles, you know, there's no wiggle room when you're
in that uniform.
Speaker 5 (02:32):
This shouldn't be because the struggle to look a certain way,
the pressures so many of us feel every day, it
reaches a whole new level when you're representing America's sweethearts.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
I just Love sign from Texas Monthly. I'm Sarah Hapla
and this is America's Girl, Episode six, The Perfect Look.
(03:16):
I want to start today's story by taking you back
about forty years to this scene you heard in episode two.
A rookie cheerleader named Billy Mitchell is at home lying
in bed when she opens her eyes and sees a
strange man standing over.
Speaker 6 (03:31):
Her and that police said that I threw him off
because I jumped up thinking something was wrong.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
She chases him out of the house. She's not hurt,
but she's shaken, of course, and not just for herself.
Her two year old daughter was alone in another room
while this stranger was creeping around.
Speaker 6 (03:49):
I was more worried about somebody taking Amber, the fact
that they could have taken Amber out of there, and
I have never known if they wouldn't have walked back there.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Billy, who also got a set of butcher knives and
the mail from anger, quits the squad after a year
and moves her family to a new home, but her
daughter Amber grows up with her own dreams of being
in that spotlight.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
I grew up and I looked back at pictures and
I had the little white satin jacket with a little,
you know, blonde girl on it. And I think it
was something I always wanted to do, but I didn't
think it was possible.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
But by the time she was seventeen, she decided to
go for it. When Amber told her mom, you can
imagine Billy didn't love the idea at.
Speaker 6 (04:31):
First, because when Amber wanted to try out, I was like,
oh no, I mean I had that kind of that
feeling that you know as a mother of God.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
But Amber insisted, and Billy had loved cheerleading. Nothing had
ever matched the exhilaration of being on that field, so
eventually she came around. You might assume that because her
mom was a Cowboys cheerleader, it was easy for Amber
to make the cut. She had her mom's jeans, and
she'd been an All American cheerleader in high school. But
(05:00):
she knew how fierce the competition could be, and she
took tryouts very seriously. She gave herself a strict routine.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
I got at five am every morning and worked out
before school. And this, you know, this is my senior
year in high school. And I mean eight girled chicken,
rice and broccoli with missus dash for like three meals
a day.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Amber was a few weeks shy of graduating high school
when she tried out.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
I remember driving to Texas Stadium and the sun was rising.
It was just beautiful, and I had a good feeling
about it. I just thought, you know, I'm going to
do this, and I pull up and all of a sudden,
that nausea just overtakes you, and you know, you see
all of these girls that had been there since, you know,
when it was dark lining up.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
She remembers about eight hundred cheerleaders being there, eight hundred
women in full makeup, in leotards with big nineties hair
and legs for miles, each of them looking more perfect
than the last. You could hear what this room would
have sounded like in a local TV report in the
following year.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
My name is Carrie Reeves and I'm twenty years old.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Hi, I'm Toney Love.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
And I'm twenty minutes soon.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
So I called it a cattle call.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
But we go up there for forty five seconds to
maybe a minute and a half. They just will kind
of swipe you off when they're done. And we had
jazz shoes on. I'm not very comfortable in jazz shoes.
And that floor is pretty slippery. And I had seen
before two or three girls you high kicks and fall
and they just got up and ran off. And I
(06:36):
got up there to you know, show them up, I guess,
and did the same thing and fell, I mean foot
came right up from underneath me. And I just got
up and started like busting a move like it was
part of the plan, and mortified. I remember Judy looking
at me like kind of wanting me to keep going.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Judy Trammell was a cheerleader's head choreographer in the time.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
And later on she told me, she's like, you know what,
not one girl that the stay, You're the only one.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
I was like, well, here I am.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
You're not getting rid of me.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
So in nineteen ninety five, Amber Gosden became the first
daughter of a Cowboys cheerleader to make the squad. Four
other mother daughter pairs have done it since, and when
Amber made it, she thought the hardest part was done,
but another challenge was right around the corner.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
I think we had done squad photo in July. Sowhide
probably made the team, but I just I wanted to
actually cheer a game, and I was constantly on the
wait list.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Just to be in training camp Amber mister senior prom
and then her high school graduation. She wasn't about to
let herself get cut.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
We would all be out there practicing in the dance
studio and they would call your names, and I got
called in almost every single time, and I mean I
just wanted to throw up every time I walked in there,
thinking it was gonna get cut.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
The woman waiting for her in that office was Kelly Finnglass,
the Cheerleader's director, and her message for Amber was a
lot like what her mom, Billy heard in the seventies
from the Cheerleader's former director, Susanne Mitchell. Here's Billy, Yes.
Speaker 6 (08:08):
And I mean they were all me about my wife
all the time. Because I was a dymnast. I was muscle,
a solid muscle, and I have big legs, big thighs,
but they were solid.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
So Billy knew what her daughter was up against.
Speaker 6 (08:21):
And I was like, they're saying your big Kelly was
on her crisis, said you cannot let that go to
your head. Do not pay attention, just work at it,
but do not let it have an eating disorder or
something like that. Because you look beautiful and I think
she knew she did, but still you just got to
really Yeah, they have a certain look.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
So Amber kept working at it, and it was a
great time to be a cheerleader. The Cowboys were on
a hell of a run in the early nineties. They
won three Super Bowls and four years now put the
cheerleaders in the spotlight. Two at the time, Kelly Finnglass
was a cheerleader's director. Kelly grew up in East Axis
in a town called Lynndale. She was a drum major
(09:03):
in high school before joining the cheerleaders in the mid eighties.
Kelly it helps steer the squad out of the rocky
years after the Jerry Jones takeover. One of her first
big moves was to fire a choreographer, Shannon Baker Worthman,
and replacer was Shannon's assistant, Judy Trammel. And just a
few years later, Kelly was training the cheerleaders to perform
(09:23):
on the biggest stage in football, Super Bowl thirty in Arizona.
Amber was headed there too. She spoke to a reporter
from Entertainment Tonight in nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Yeah, so my mother was a cheerleader in nineteen seventy
nine and eighty for the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, and at
that point I was two years old.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
That's Amber, she's living by carriage.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Three year Yes, I think so. It kind of helps
you having a mom being a cheerleader because she supports
me and she knows that I'm going through sometimes with
all the energy, like of energy and being tired. So
it's great. I mean, it's great to happen.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
The players at this time had a reputation for wild
parties and reckless behavior. But the cheerleaders I talked to,
so they didn't have time for club hopping. They had
jobs or school and late night rehearsals and of course
the pressure of keeping a certain physique. It wasn't just
about having the stamina for three hours of performance. Their
body had to fit that uniform just right. I spoke
(10:20):
about this with another woman.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
My name is Leslie Shaw Hatchard, and I'm a former
Dallas Cowboy cheerleader. I cheered back in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
The first thing Leslie heard at auditions was that she
needed to lose weight. She lost five pounds and came
back the next year and made the team. She remembers
being intimidated by director Kelly Finnglass.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
I was scared out of my wits of her and
what she was going to say and what she thought
of me. Was she knew yes, that was her very
first year. Jerry had just bought the team, and then
she came in.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
This was the start of a new era, the third
epoch of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Over the next decades,
Kelly and the choreographer Judy Trammell would put their stamp
on the organization, but many of the traditions stayed in place.
Like the previous leadership. They were masters of image management.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
They take each girl and they begin to sort of
strip away what you came in with and make you
over into what they want you to be.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Leslie was nineteen when she joined the cheerleaders. At four
foot eleven, she was the shortest girl on the squad,
and she says at that point she didn't have a
strong sense of who she was. She absorbed what she
was told.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
It didn't matter how I felt about it, because my
thoughts and feelings weren't included. If they told me they
needed me to lose weight, that meant I needed to
be skinnier.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Period.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
End of story.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Leslie says the biggest change they wanted was her hair.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
They told me that they wanted my hair on my shoulders,
and I said, yes, ma'am, and I went and got
hair extensions on my shoulders, and thus began the addiction
to hair extensions, the lifelong addiction.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Thirty years later, that change is stuck. Leslie's husband is
still never seen her without hair extensions. So you had
never used hair extensions, No.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Never even thought about it. I was just in awe
that that could happen and they could do that, And
of course they thought I was pretty, so then I
thought it was pretty.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
I mean this dynamic that you described, I like it
because they like it. It's very specific to the DCC, but
it's also completely true in life.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
Oh yes, and I think everybody has those battles. Mine
just happens to be. I was a professional cheerleader.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Some transformations were a bit more under the radar. Did
you see much plastic surgery?
Speaker 4 (12:55):
Yes? After Christmas, girls came back looking very different, and
I was naive at the time.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
I didn't know.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
I'm like, wow, her nose looks so different, Wow, her
breast screw. I wouldn't say it was encouraged by the organization,
but again, you want to be that picture perfect idea
of a woman.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
There were these other times when the feedback cheerleaders got
surprised Leslie, like the very first time she tried on
the uniform in front of the coaches.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
I put on the shorts and they fit, but I
have that kind of bottom where it has it kind
of hangs down at the bottom, and mine hung out
of my shorts, and I thought, oh, this is the
day I'm going home. This is why I get cut.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
When you think about how many months and years women
trained to get their body in shape, it's kind of
crazy that something like how your butt fits in a
pair of booty shorts could seal your fate. But it can,
and Leslie knew it.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
And we had to go out and stand in front
of Kelly and Judy and I was so so nervous,
and then we were facing them and then they said
turn around, and I turned around and I'm just ready
for it. And then Kelly said, everybody, look at Peanut.
They called me Peanut at the time, look at peanut shorts.
(14:23):
And I was like, oh, not only am I gonna
get cut, I'm gonna get humiliated. And she said, this
is the way your shorts are supposed to fit. So
I had to wear those shorts the whole season. My
boy Grandma had to come watch me perform with my
bottom hanging out of my shorts.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
It's such a funny story because it's like one of
these things that like, you couldn't have ever controlled. You
didn't even know what was happening.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
I didn't know it was That's just the way my
body was made. And I don't even know how you
fixed that.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Well, you couldn't. The compliments and the critiques could be
hype specific, She says. One of her teammates got a
note to work on her knees, but for most cheerleaders,
the orders were some version of that familiar line.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
And I'm being real honest with y'all. You've got to
lose some weight in your stomach, okay, And it's down
of the wire now.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
And I know that's the choreographer Judy Trammel talking to
a group of cheerleaders during the two thousand and two
season of the HBO documentary series Hard Knocks.
Speaker 7 (15:27):
And I know that sometimes y'all don't think you need to,
but you need to. Okay.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
You have gained look at your even in your face.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
It was a rule that was enforced right away.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
When you first make cheerleader, you get a thick handbook
and inside of it it did have different ways to
lose weight, but they were all very quick. It's kind
of fad diet ways of losing weight, nothing healthy.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Since then, the cheerleaders have added a trainer and a nutritionist,
but back in the nineties, it was up to them
to figure out how to hit that target.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Dancers would you get done with practice and go running
at night just to get that cardio in so they
could make weight.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
I find myself torn between thinking this is actually really
impressive and a sign of physical excellence that I could
never accomplish, and thinking it's dangerous and scary.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
Yes, very dangerous, very scary. But sometimes you get tunnel
vision getting in that uniform, getting to perform and what
that means, And that means you're beautiful, That means you're perfect.
You know, you're that picture perfect woman. You just want
the goal.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Amber also went to some pretty great lengths to make weight.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
You know, I put on this big you know, the
trash bag workout pants and the trash bag workout tops,
and I would run probably three four miles.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
The trash bag workout suit. Maybe you saw Kim Kardashian
wearing something like this and only seventeen. It's pretty much
what it sounds like, a baggy black suit, the lastic
of the wrist, stomach and ankles, and it does help
your body lose water, which cheaps the scale.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
It's August and I would run probably three four miles
with a couple other girls before practice and go and
dance for four or five hours after that. It was
it was excruciating.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
I gotta tell you that suit does not sound healthy.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
No, And there was like ten of us that had
them with me. You just did we would?
Speaker 7 (17:34):
You would?
Speaker 3 (17:34):
I'm sure people thought we were maniacs. You know, We're
going down MacArthur and there's probably like a three mile
stretch and we were just running and it is sweltering,
and I looked good and they didn't bother me. But
I mean I could barely dance. I was having a
very hard time with energy level, just not being able
to eat. I didn't, you know, I didn't know what
(17:56):
to do. I was just trying to get rid of muscle.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Member says she also tried things besides running water pills,
weight loss supplements.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
I think metabolife were some kind of you get out
of like a kiosk at a mall. I mean it's
like it had a Fedrin in it. I mean, oh yeah,
like you basically feel in your heart pound out of
your throat. I know I probably did a lot of that.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Metabol Life was a popular product in the nineties that
contained a Fedra, but the FDA banned of Federa in
two thousand and four after reports of heart attacks, strokes,
and even deaths. Of course, it had been marketed as
safe and effective. None of this was new. The metabolife
and Fenfen of the nineties had been the decks, a
trim of the eighties had been the vitaslim of the seventies.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
I'm sure other girls did other things, probably xlax, and
I'm sure that there were some eating disorders on there.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
And cheerleader's weight had been monitored closely since Suzanne Mitchell
took over the squad. Back then, cheerleaders were told the
camera adds tens and Suzanne had been a stickler about
the scale. She was known for circling jelly rolls on
pictures or grabbing a woman's rear end and saying lose weight.
I read a nineteen ninety one memoir written by three
(19:14):
sisters who are all former Cowboys cheerleaders, Stephanie Suzette and
Sherry Schultz, and they describe constant pressure to stay thin.
They have a great line they say that Suzanne quote
looked at fat like a Baptist preacher looks at sex.
It was evil. That legacy lived on in the nineties.
(19:35):
You could even say it got more intense. The expectations
for the women got bigger, an so did the boobs
more after this, the nineties brought a new vogue for
ultra thinness. Models like Kate Moss became all the rage.
(19:58):
At the same time, Pam A. Anderson was becoming famous
for those bouncy swimsuit runs across the beach in Baywatch.
You mentioned the boobs. I have to say, in looking
through squad photos over the decades, the nineties are really
the boobyars.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Oh yes, I think so, I too.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
The nineties cheerleaders reflected both these trends, the thinness, the
eye popping cleavage. At the same time they perpetuated the
look themselves.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Those were kind of the girls I had on my Wall.
The women that I had posters of a sports illustrated
but they all had big breast and were very thin.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
The nineties were a decade of thigh Masters, supermodels and
fat free everything.
Speaker 8 (20:45):
Great legs, thank you? How do you get them?
Speaker 7 (20:49):
I used to do aerobics till I dropped.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
Then I found thyme Masters.
Speaker 5 (20:53):
Start Jenny Craig now and you can lose twenty pounds
for twenty dollars one.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
This was only a few years after Oprah went on
a liquid and walked on stage hauling a wagon a
fat to show how much she'd lost. The obsession with
thinness fueled an industry of quick fixes to speed the slow, hard,
stubborn battle of weight loss. The Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders had
hopped on that bandwagon back in the eighties with a
(21:18):
workout album called In Training with the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
Like so many folks selling these products, they were presenting
an ideal of beauty and selling the hope that it
could be attained by the average person. And home fitness
kept exploding through the nineties with Step Aerobics and Buns
of Steel and Billy Blank's Tibo. In nineteen ninety six,
(21:41):
the Cowboys Cheerleaders gave us a Country Western workout VHS.
Speaker 7 (21:46):
Hi, We're the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Our Country Western workout features some of our favorite songs
from Dallas County lines. The exercises and dance steps are
easy and fun to do.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
What Amber and Leslie's weight stories remind me of most
or my own teen years Not because I was a cheerleader.
In fact, I was so embarrassed by my own body
I refused to try out for cheerleader. The auditions took
place in front of the entire school. No way, and
drill team was off the table for someone like me
who was always fighting scale. You know, what it is
(22:19):
taking me back to is actually high school drill team.
I wasn't on the squad, but I had friends that were,
and that constant, rigorous supervision over your weight. Right, I
wonder how you feel about that culture or how it
shaped you in your understanding of your body.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
So i've you know, looking back, I definitely think I
had emotionally eating issues growing up, so it was just
one of those things that brought me extreme comfort. I
don't think cheerleaders who might have had an eating disorder,
I don't think cheerleading gave that to them, so I
hope I can make that clear. I think whatever baggage
(23:02):
we all had, we brought in there with us.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
I had my own suspicion that cheerleading ramped up the
insecurities and frantic dieting set in place by the culture.
But in the moment as we talked, I was reluctant
to argue with Amber's perspective. I could feel her trying
to balance something she cherished with the problems that introduced.
How do we love a thing that can also bring
(23:26):
us such pain?
Speaker 3 (23:28):
I mean, there were some girls that just naturally had everything,
you know, that just came in there, that never had
to watch their calories, and they can go and gorge
on Mexican food and Margarita's and never gain a pound.
And I just wasn't. I mean, was I envious of that? Absolutely?
I still am. But I really really struggled with just
(23:51):
not liking myself and feeling very insecure, almost to a
point where like, I love every single one of these women,
but you would love to be just some kind of.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Special I was relating to everything she was saying. I
don't know many women who don't look back on their
teen years and wish they'd been a little gentler with
themselves about their appearance.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
I had all the support, and I'm so thankful for that,
but I wish I would have appreciated everything and enjoyed
every single moment. But I was always just so scared
and insecure and just constantly struggling to try to be
(24:37):
what they wanted me to be.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
In a way, this felt like so many conversations I've
had with friends over the years. But Amber has the
rare perspective of a woman whose body was central to
her value as a performer. A lot of women have
dreams about what it would mean to make that team,
how it might finally put their insecurities to rest. Leslie
(25:01):
Hatcher joined the squad with the idea that it would
give her validation, but she kept feeling out of place.
What was the look on the squad at the time?
Speaker 4 (25:11):
Wow, the team was mostly Caucasian. You had about four
black girls, maybe one Asian girl. It was the nineties.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Leslie was one of those four black women on the team.
You mentioned to me sometime one time, there's kind of
a placement for the black cheerleaders.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
Oh, yes, Well, in the stadium. The cheerleaders are divided
into four sections, and so if you've got four black girls,
there's gonna be a black girl in each section, never
two and one. Because they only had four, which I
kind of appreciate. I mean, I only have four, at
(25:55):
least spread them out.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
And for a black woman to be a Cowboys cheerleader,
the bar was especially high.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
I call the triple threat. You have to be skinny,
you gotta look good, and you gotta be a great dancer.
But for some reason, it seemed like if there was
a beautiful Caucasian girl had a great body, but she
couldn't dance, that was okay, we'll push your through. It's
all good. She looks good. And that's frustrating. And I
(26:24):
dislike talking about race, but it is a part. I mean,
it's a part of it, and we have to talk
about it.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
This is something I also talked about with Mackiba Pate,
who hosts a podcast about professional cheerleading called The Truth
behind the Palms. She's a former lawyer who cheered for
the Seattle Seahawks for five seasons and left in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 8 (26:47):
I auditioned four times and there was only one black
cheerleader on the Seahawks at the time. So just breaking
this barrier of that there can only be a small
handful or one at a time was probably the biggest
challenge that I experienced, Like it just seemed like there
was an unspoken quota or number or that you couldn't
(27:08):
move past.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Back in the seventies, the Cowboys Cheerleaders had a reputation
for being relatively diverse. A lot of the black women
were leaders on the squad, but over the next decades
the number of black women had dwindled to just a handful,
as low as two or three in the mid eighties,
and again from nineteen ninety nine to two thousand and one.
And then in fall twenty twenty, the Cowboys Cheerleaders debut
(27:33):
a squad with more women of color than any year
since nineteen seventy one. This was after a summer of
Black Lives Matter protests and a lot of teams were
rushing to respond to calls for racial justice. The team
also started a partnership with the salon that specializes in
black hair.
Speaker 8 (27:50):
I mean, those are the types of strides that would
just that they get me excited in this space, because
that is growth.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Of course, you could argue that the salon partnership is
a superficial response to a more ingrained problem. I talked
with Mikiba about the deeper reasons behind this racial imbalance.
Dance classes are expensive, it's often seen as a white
girl's hobby, and beneath it all, there's a strict idea
about what women should look like. Mikiba says other squads
(28:18):
are broadening their ideas about weight and body bringing in
women with curvier shapes, but she says the cowboys. Aren't
you mentioned that the DCC has kind of like a
signature classic look historically, at least, I wondered if you
could tell me what is that.
Speaker 8 (28:39):
I would say, I mean, if I'm guessing on weight
somewhere between ninety and one hundred and ten twenty pounds max,
it's very very lean. I think they're looking for hourglass
on top of all of that, so good luck with
trying to put that together. So it's like a very
narrow package and body frame. And it's kind of it's
(29:02):
kind of sad because I'm sure, I mean, I see
all the other NFL teams that I monitored as part
of the podcast, and you know, these women have beautiful shapes.
It's just not like the same shape over and over again.
I feel like it's with the Dallas Cowboy Australia. It's
more or less kind of the same shape.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Not many people fit that narrow window, and particularly women
who aren't white.
Speaker 8 (29:27):
You know, the darker your skin is, or you know,
the shapelier your curves are, or different things that people
just aren't used to seeing. They won't promote that. You
won't be on the cover of their calendar or featured
on their social media or you know, it's your beauty
isn't s celebrated.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Even after Leslie's first season on the Cowboys squad went well,
she knew it would be tough to make the team
again and I.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
Was unsure if I should try out because I just
had a feeling like I don't think that Kelly likes me,
and so I tried out anyway, I didn't make it.
So Judy who you know, she's hugging me and she's like,
why don't you set up a meeting with Kelly and
talked to her and I was like, sure, that's a
great idea. Then I can find out exactly what I
need to do. Because I'm already in the headspace if
(30:15):
I need to change something about myself so I can
make the team again. And I went to the office
on like an off day, and I set across from Kelly,
and she looked at me in my eyes and told
me there was nothing bad. She could tell me. She
just had to pick a certain amount of girls that
were just pretty. I just it was like something clicked,
(30:39):
and I just gathered my things and I left and
I thanked her. And I never felt the need to
go back to DCC after that, because what could I
How can I fix that? How can I What do
I do with that information?
Speaker 2 (30:54):
What Leslie decided to do eventually is write a book
about her experience first as a Cowboys cheerleader and that
is a dancer for the Mavericks and other teams around Dallas.
Her books called What I Learned Half Naked. She wanted
young women to know what they were getting into. In
her book, Leslie writes that whenever people would ask her
(31:14):
what it was like to be a cheerleader, she'd always
answer the same way.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
I would automatically say it was fantastic. And in my head,
I'm going why am I lying? Or why can't I
just tell the whole truth instead of, you know, the
half truth. It was a really great experience. Some parts
I didn't like, some parts I loved, But I couldn't.
I couldn't bring myself because I was trained to answer
(31:39):
a certain way and to portray that image.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Trying to answer that question honestly, how to describe the
good and the bad when they're all tangled up together.
As part of the reason Mikiba started her podcast too, we.
Speaker 8 (31:54):
Were missing a voice, one that can be very honest
about the good, bad, and the ugly, but also just
represent it in a more balanced light so that if
you're going to talk about all the challenges within the industry,
really helpfully hopefully understanding why we do what we do.
But you know, I always say that if people understand
(32:14):
and respect the work or the art of what we
do is as professional athletes, and I think it becomes
it just lays the groundwork for people to understand why
these issues exist and what solutions, potential solutions there are
to fixing it.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
A lot of what she does on our show is
talk with X cheerleaders about how they understand the time
they spend on the sidelines because that career might only
last a year or two, but the lessons they pick
up can stick with them for a long long time.
Speaker 8 (32:41):
I think the most damaging thing it's not even so
much of like those crazy fad type things or whatever
the latest way of staying within that weight threshold. It's
just the lasting impacts of it. So if you're hearing
messages about your body parts or narrowing in on certain things,
you have that in your head. And I know people
(33:01):
who've struggled with still hearing that when they look in
the mirror when they stopped dancing. And that's to me
what this is probably the saddest part of it is
that it lingers way longer than you know when you're
on the team itself.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
These days, you don't even need to make the team
to be deeply affected by the harsh messages about who
can wear that uniform. I spoke with a woman who
had a fantasy about what it would mean to wear one.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
My name is Vivian or Lena Williams, and I was
a training camp candidate for the Dallas Colway's cheerletters for
two seasons, Season eight and nine.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
You probably picked up on something different about the way
Vivian introduced herself when she mentioned seasons. She wasn't talking
about the NFL. She met TV seasons on the Cheerleader's
reality show Making the Team. It's aired on CMT since
two thousand and six. Vivian was on the show in
twenty thirteen and twenty fourteen, and she didn't actually make
(34:01):
the team. She never got to cheer on the field
at a Cowboys game, but she's probably more famous than
most of the women you've heard here so far thanks
to that show. She was voted fan favorite in her
first season, and her openness about her difficult childhood made
her a standout and a cast of beautiful and talented women.
(34:22):
Vivian's parents split when she was young, and she spent
a lot of time moving around as a kid with
a mother who struggled to make ends meet. She was
always the new kid.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
I was made fun of because I was ugly air
quotes ugly. I was cute turds. I had really kinky,
curly hair and big lips and brown skin, and I
thought what was beautiful was like really thin lips and
(34:54):
blue eyes and fair thin hair, and I was okay
with it. I was okay with who I was. I
was bullied to the point where I was like, all right, well,
my hair's brown, my name's Vivian. I'm ugly.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
But she found her place in dance, first in high
school and then at Tyler Junior College with their drill team,
the Apache Bells. They're a precision dance team that, along
with the Kilgore Rangerettes, have been around since the nineteen forties.
And the routines are not so different from the Cowboys cheerleaders.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
They do high kicks and jump splits, and they cheer
for the football team and it's just such a very
cool Texas tradition to be a part of.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
So it's no wonder the Apache Bells or a pipeline
to the Cowboys cheerleaders. Vivian says she hadn't thought of
trying out until a teammate suggested it, but then she
was hooked.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
But I didn't want to go there until my body
was acceptable by them, because at that time I wasn't
real thin. I was skinny, there wasn't nothing wrong with
my body, but I was just curvier than the cheerleaders.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
She took a year off and she lost twenty five
pounds in time for her first audition. It's a lot
of weight for a woman who's five foot four and
was already fit. All of the work she put into
prepare it wasn't enough. She didn't make the team, and
the problem wasn't her dancing.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
The first time that I got cut, they said that
my thighs were like hams. I believe we're chicken drums
or I don't know.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
This wasn't in a one on one conversation. This wasn't
even on a wait list posted on the locker room wall.
This is still out there on streaming TV. Kelly watches
Vivian posing for a squad photo and she turns to
Judy and says, what bothers me.
Speaker 4 (36:53):
The most is her boots are allow at her knees.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
I mean there's no leg, huge quods like a drumstick.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
I can't watch the episodes because I get nightmares and
they won't stop, and I will just have like perpetual
thoughts of things replaying in my head and I need
to take all of it in like healthy doses.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
On one hand, this is an elite squad where appearance
matters tremendously. The judges know brutal honesty is part of
their job. On the other hand, this is being served
up for entertainment purposes during an era when we've finally
started changing how we talk about women's bodies. The things
those judges said to Vivian, it's what I've feared all
(37:42):
my life. But the fantasy of making that team was fierce,
and Vivian tried out again. The next year. She had
lost more weight and the judges seemed happy. The show
even flashed side by side pictures of her thighs from
one year to the next.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
And that was because I dehydrated it asana for hours,
not drinking water and dropped five pounds so I could
be one seventeen for weighands, which is ridiculous. It didn't
matter to me. It was just a numbers game, and
I was like, they just want me at this weight.
(38:19):
If I could just be this weight, then all my
problems will go away.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
But again she didn't make it. Her radiance dimmed that year.
She seemed a little lost. This time, Vivian wasn't knocked
for her weight. She got criticized for paying too much
attention to her social media. The show makes her look
self absorbed and just generally flaky. The experience was so humiliating,
She says, she blocked some of it out.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
You go through the initial shock of oh my god,
that was so embarrassing, and then you get to a
point of where you're ashamed, and then you don't know
how to deal with the shame, so then you just
try to avoid it.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
She went into a spiral, drinking excessively and lashing out
at people around her. She wrote about this time in
an Instagram post in twenty eighteen. It brought attention back
to her story and the harm that gets hidden in
an industry that's all about flaunting perfection. In recent years,
there's been a new emphasis on body positivity and pop
(39:27):
culture that's made any kind of body shaming unfashionable. Over
the last decade, some NFL cheerleaders have sued their teams
for this kind of demeaning treatment. The director of the
Houston Texans cheerleaders resigned following one lawsuit, and former members
of the Buffalo Jills described jiggle tests where the women
(39:48):
did jumping jacks while team staff critique their bodies. Many
of the teams have done away with regular weigh ins,
including the Cowboys cheerleaders. Watching the last few seasons of
the show. You don't see these moments anymore, but it's
unclear if they're getting healthier about weight or smarter about
what they show to the public today. Vivian says those
(40:12):
awful experiences helped shape the person she's become. Not making
the team helped her understand she was never going to
fit that mold and the pain of holding on to
that fantasy was too great.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
I had to like change so many different parts of
myself in order to try to fit into this uniform
that I never really was meant to fit into.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
But she says she's happier and healthier.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
I had to buy five new pairs of jeans the
other day, and I was excited first time in my
life that I was excited to buy a bigger pair
of jeans. These are the biggest para of dreams I've
ever had in my life. And I was excited because like,
zoom my but looks good. I was like, what, my
body has gone up to fifty pounds heavier than I
(41:05):
was at auditions, And I personally think I look best now,
better in this body than I did before. Everyone has
their own personal opinion of that, but I really don't
care anymore about what other people think about my body,
because it's mine.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
By the time we were wrapping up our conversation, I
felt close enough to Vivian to make a joke about
a topic we both found pretty sad for a long time.
You know, you don't fit that uniform.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
I know, and I'm so glad. Yeah, I'm so.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Glad next time. On America's Girls.
Speaker 7 (42:00):
These women wouldn't train their entire lives just to shake
their ass on the field. It's complicated choreography and complicated
dance training.
Speaker 6 (42:08):
I saw guys with their cell phones enlarging various close
crotch or breastshots of the women.
Speaker 7 (42:18):
Just because some things are wrong doesn't mean the entire
thing has to be shut down.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
I just want, I.
Speaker 6 (42:30):
Just want.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Nineteen ninety six Tryouts. Footage is from KXASTV and housed
the Texas Archive the movie image. 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 Hepplin. Executive producer is Megan Kriich.
(43:00):
Used and edited by Patrick Michaels and edited by JK. Nichol,
produced and engineered by Brian Stanfern, who also wrote the music.
Additional research and audio editing by podcast intern Harper Carlton.
America's Girl's art is by Emily Kimbrow and Victoria Milner,
and marketing by Tori Moe. Our theme song is Enough
(43:20):
by the bra Lets. If you like the show, please
subscribe and visit our page at Apple Podcasts and rate
the show there. See you next week.
Texas monthly.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
To be a Cowboys cheerleader means living by a strict
set of rules. You heard all about that in the
last episode. But to the women on the squad, there's
one rule that looms larger than any other. Don't gain weight.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Walking into Valley Ranch. There's double doors and you would
open it up, and right there when you open up
the door into the locker room would be a white
piece of paper with the Dashkoways Cheerleaders logo and would
have six to eight different names.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
You can talk to a cheerleader from almost any era
and she'll have a story about the waitlist.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
There's a piece of paper and had your names or
all the names listed in what they needed to work on.
So you saw that as soon as you arrived at
ed rehearsal, and mine happened to be hipsynth.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
The list could get very specific. Sometimes it had a
cheerleader's current weight and then a target.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
It would say our name amber one eight slash one sixteen.
I would say buttocks and thighs like that's what my
issue was.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
The weight list could make or break a cheerleader because
what happens if you don't make weight and.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
You cut and you don't perform, And that's the whole
thing is that's why we're all here, so you can
perform at the game. So they would do anything.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
It wasn't just about being the right weight. It was
about having the right hair, having the right skin, having
the right boobs, the right legs. It was about all
the things you need to be the very particular kind
of beautiful woman allowed to wear that uniform. Today, we'll
meet women from different eras talking about one of the
(01:58):
most difficult challenges, which is a cheerleader faces the fight
with her own body. Sometimes that battle was in private
and other times it was very public.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Our weight is one hundred and fifty pounds.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
I've never seen that heavy of a cheerleader.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
I don't think our uniform fits your body. Today we
had a little bit of fine butt running together, so
we're calling it a stut. If you got any jiggle,
any wiggles, you know, there's no wiggle room when you're
in that uniform.
Speaker 5 (02:32):
This shouldn't be because the struggle to look a certain way,
the pressures so many of us feel every day, it
reaches a whole new level when you're representing America's sweethearts.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
I just Love sign from Texas Monthly. I'm Sarah Hapla
and this is America's Girl, Episode six, The Perfect Look.
(03:16):
I want to start today's story by taking you back
about forty years to this scene you heard in episode two.
A rookie cheerleader named Billy Mitchell is at home lying
in bed when she opens her eyes and sees a
strange man standing over.
Speaker 6 (03:31):
Her and that police said that I threw him off
because I jumped up thinking something was wrong.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
She chases him out of the house. She's not hurt,
but she's shaken, of course, and not just for herself.
Her two year old daughter was alone in another room
while this stranger was creeping around.
Speaker 6 (03:49):
I was more worried about somebody taking Amber, the fact
that they could have taken Amber out of there, and
I have never known if they wouldn't have walked back there.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Billy, who also got a set of butcher knives and
the mail from anger, quits the squad after a year
and moves her family to a new home, but her
daughter Amber grows up with her own dreams of being
in that spotlight.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
I grew up and I looked back at pictures and
I had the little white satin jacket with a little,
you know, blonde girl on it. And I think it
was something I always wanted to do, but I didn't
think it was possible.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
But by the time she was seventeen, she decided to
go for it. When Amber told her mom, you can
imagine Billy didn't love the idea at.
Speaker 6 (04:31):
First, because when Amber wanted to try out, I was like,
oh no, I mean I had that kind of that
feeling that you know as a mother of God.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
But Amber insisted, and Billy had loved cheerleading. Nothing had
ever matched the exhilaration of being on that field, so
eventually she came around. You might assume that because her
mom was a Cowboys cheerleader, it was easy for Amber
to make the cut. She had her mom's jeans, and
she'd been an All American cheerleader in high school. But
(05:00):
she knew how fierce the competition could be, and she
took tryouts very seriously. She gave herself a strict routine.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
I got at five am every morning and worked out
before school. And this, you know, this is my senior
year in high school. And I mean eight girled chicken,
rice and broccoli with missus dash for like three meals
a day.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Amber was a few weeks shy of graduating high school
when she tried out.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
I remember driving to Texas Stadium and the sun was rising.
It was just beautiful, and I had a good feeling
about it. I just thought, you know, I'm going to
do this, and I pull up and all of a sudden,
that nausea just overtakes you, and you know, you see
all of these girls that had been there since, you know,
when it was dark lining up.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
She remembers about eight hundred cheerleaders being there, eight hundred
women in full makeup, in leotards with big nineties hair
and legs for miles, each of them looking more perfect
than the last. You could hear what this room would
have sounded like in a local TV report in the
following year.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
My name is Carrie Reeves and I'm twenty years old.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Hi, I'm Toney Love.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
And I'm twenty minutes soon.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
So I called it a cattle call.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
But we go up there for forty five seconds to
maybe a minute and a half. They just will kind
of swipe you off when they're done. And we had
jazz shoes on. I'm not very comfortable in jazz shoes.
And that floor is pretty slippery. And I had seen
before two or three girls you high kicks and fall
and they just got up and ran off. And I
(06:36):
got up there to you know, show them up, I guess,
and did the same thing and fell, I mean foot
came right up from underneath me. And I just got
up and started like busting a move like it was
part of the plan, and mortified. I remember Judy looking
at me like kind of wanting me to keep going.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Judy Trammell was a cheerleader's head choreographer in the time.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
And later on she told me, she's like, you know what,
not one girl that the stay, You're the only one.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
I was like, well, here I am.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
You're not getting rid of me.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
So in nineteen ninety five, Amber Gosden became the first
daughter of a Cowboys cheerleader to make the squad. Four
other mother daughter pairs have done it since, and when
Amber made it, she thought the hardest part was done,
but another challenge was right around the corner.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
I think we had done squad photo in July. Sowhide
probably made the team, but I just I wanted to
actually cheer a game, and I was constantly on the
wait list.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Just to be in training camp Amber mister senior prom
and then her high school graduation. She wasn't about to
let herself get cut.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
We would all be out there practicing in the dance
studio and they would call your names, and I got
called in almost every single time, and I mean I
just wanted to throw up every time I walked in there,
thinking it was gonna get cut.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
The woman waiting for her in that office was Kelly Finnglass,
the Cheerleader's director, and her message for Amber was a
lot like what her mom, Billy heard in the seventies
from the Cheerleader's former director, Susanne Mitchell. Here's Billy, Yes.
Speaker 6 (08:08):
And I mean they were all me about my wife
all the time. Because I was a dymnast. I was muscle,
a solid muscle, and I have big legs, big thighs,
but they were solid.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
So Billy knew what her daughter was up against.
Speaker 6 (08:21):
And I was like, they're saying your big Kelly was
on her crisis, said you cannot let that go to
your head. Do not pay attention, just work at it,
but do not let it have an eating disorder or
something like that. Because you look beautiful and I think
she knew she did, but still you just got to
really Yeah, they have a certain look.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
So Amber kept working at it, and it was a
great time to be a cheerleader. The Cowboys were on
a hell of a run in the early nineties. They
won three Super Bowls and four years now put the
cheerleaders in the spotlight. Two at the time, Kelly Finnglass
was a cheerleader's director. Kelly grew up in East Axis
in a town called Lynndale. She was a drum major
(09:03):
in high school before joining the cheerleaders in the mid eighties.
Kelly it helps steer the squad out of the rocky
years after the Jerry Jones takeover. One of her first
big moves was to fire a choreographer, Shannon Baker Worthman,
and replacer was Shannon's assistant, Judy Trammel. And just a
few years later, Kelly was training the cheerleaders to perform
(09:23):
on the biggest stage in football, Super Bowl thirty in Arizona.
Amber was headed there too. She spoke to a reporter
from Entertainment Tonight in nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Yeah, so my mother was a cheerleader in nineteen seventy
nine and eighty for the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, and at
that point I was two years old.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
That's Amber, she's living by carriage.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Three year Yes, I think so. It kind of helps
you having a mom being a cheerleader because she supports
me and she knows that I'm going through sometimes with
all the energy, like of energy and being tired. So
it's great. I mean, it's great to happen.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
The players at this time had a reputation for wild
parties and reckless behavior. But the cheerleaders I talked to,
so they didn't have time for club hopping. They had
jobs or school and late night rehearsals and of course
the pressure of keeping a certain physique. It wasn't just
about having the stamina for three hours of performance. Their
body had to fit that uniform just right. I spoke
(10:20):
about this with another woman.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
My name is Leslie Shaw Hatchard, and I'm a former
Dallas Cowboy cheerleader. I cheered back in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
The first thing Leslie heard at auditions was that she
needed to lose weight. She lost five pounds and came
back the next year and made the team. She remembers
being intimidated by director Kelly Finnglass.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
I was scared out of my wits of her and
what she was going to say and what she thought
of me. Was she knew yes, that was her very
first year. Jerry had just bought the team, and then
she came in.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
This was the start of a new era, the third
epoch of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Over the next decades,
Kelly and the choreographer Judy Trammell would put their stamp
on the organization, but many of the traditions stayed in place.
Like the previous leadership. They were masters of image management.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
They take each girl and they begin to sort of
strip away what you came in with and make you
over into what they want you to be.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Leslie was nineteen when she joined the cheerleaders. At four
foot eleven, she was the shortest girl on the squad,
and she says at that point she didn't have a
strong sense of who she was. She absorbed what she
was told.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
It didn't matter how I felt about it, because my
thoughts and feelings weren't included. If they told me they
needed me to lose weight, that meant I needed to
be skinnier.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Period.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
End of story.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Leslie says the biggest change they wanted was her hair.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
They told me that they wanted my hair on my shoulders,
and I said, yes, ma'am, and I went and got
hair extensions on my shoulders, and thus began the addiction
to hair extensions, the lifelong addiction.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Thirty years later, that change is stuck. Leslie's husband is
still never seen her without hair extensions. So you had
never used hair extensions, No.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Never even thought about it. I was just in awe
that that could happen and they could do that, And
of course they thought I was pretty, so then I
thought it was pretty.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
I mean this dynamic that you described, I like it
because they like it. It's very specific to the DCC, but
it's also completely true in life.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
Oh yes, and I think everybody has those battles. Mine
just happens to be. I was a professional cheerleader.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Some transformations were a bit more under the radar. Did
you see much plastic surgery?
Speaker 4 (12:55):
Yes? After Christmas, girls came back looking very different, and
I was naive at the time.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
I didn't know.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
I'm like, wow, her nose looks so different, Wow, her
breast screw. I wouldn't say it was encouraged by the organization,
but again, you want to be that picture perfect idea
of a woman.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
There were these other times when the feedback cheerleaders got
surprised Leslie, like the very first time she tried on
the uniform in front of the coaches.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
I put on the shorts and they fit, but I
have that kind of bottom where it has it kind
of hangs down at the bottom, and mine hung out
of my shorts, and I thought, oh, this is the
day I'm going home. This is why I get cut.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
When you think about how many months and years women
trained to get their body in shape, it's kind of
crazy that something like how your butt fits in a
pair of booty shorts could seal your fate. But it can,
and Leslie knew it.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
And we had to go out and stand in front
of Kelly and Judy and I was so so nervous,
and then we were facing them and then they said
turn around, and I turned around and I'm just ready
for it. And then Kelly said, everybody, look at Peanut.
They called me Peanut at the time, look at peanut shorts.
(14:23):
And I was like, oh, not only am I gonna
get cut, I'm gonna get humiliated. And she said, this
is the way your shorts are supposed to fit. So
I had to wear those shorts the whole season. My
boy Grandma had to come watch me perform with my
bottom hanging out of my shorts.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
It's such a funny story because it's like one of
these things that like, you couldn't have ever controlled. You
didn't even know what was happening.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
I didn't know it was That's just the way my
body was made. And I don't even know how you
fixed that.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Well, you couldn't. The compliments and the critiques could be
hype specific, She says. One of her teammates got a
note to work on her knees, but for most cheerleaders,
the orders were some version of that familiar line.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
And I'm being real honest with y'all. You've got to
lose some weight in your stomach, okay, And it's down
of the wire now.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
And I know that's the choreographer Judy Trammel talking to
a group of cheerleaders during the two thousand and two
season of the HBO documentary series Hard Knocks.
Speaker 7 (15:27):
And I know that sometimes y'all don't think you need to,
but you need to. Okay.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
You have gained look at your even in your face.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
It was a rule that was enforced right away.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
When you first make cheerleader, you get a thick handbook
and inside of it it did have different ways to
lose weight, but they were all very quick. It's kind
of fad diet ways of losing weight, nothing healthy.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Since then, the cheerleaders have added a trainer and a nutritionist,
but back in the nineties, it was up to them
to figure out how to hit that target.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Dancers would you get done with practice and go running
at night just to get that cardio in so they
could make weight.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
I find myself torn between thinking this is actually really
impressive and a sign of physical excellence that I could
never accomplish, and thinking it's dangerous and scary.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
Yes, very dangerous, very scary. But sometimes you get tunnel
vision getting in that uniform, getting to perform and what
that means, And that means you're beautiful, That means you're perfect.
You know, you're that picture perfect woman. You just want
the goal.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Amber also went to some pretty great lengths to make weight.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
You know, I put on this big you know, the
trash bag workout pants and the trash bag workout tops,
and I would run probably three four miles.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
The trash bag workout suit. Maybe you saw Kim Kardashian
wearing something like this and only seventeen. It's pretty much
what it sounds like, a baggy black suit, the lastic
of the wrist, stomach and ankles, and it does help
your body lose water, which cheaps the scale.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
It's August and I would run probably three four miles
with a couple other girls before practice and go and
dance for four or five hours after that. It was
it was excruciating.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
I gotta tell you that suit does not sound healthy.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
No, And there was like ten of us that had
them with me. You just did we would?
Speaker 7 (17:34):
You would?
Speaker 3 (17:34):
I'm sure people thought we were maniacs. You know, We're
going down MacArthur and there's probably like a three mile
stretch and we were just running and it is sweltering,
and I looked good and they didn't bother me. But
I mean I could barely dance. I was having a
very hard time with energy level, just not being able
to eat. I didn't, you know, I didn't know what
(17:56):
to do. I was just trying to get rid of muscle.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Member says she also tried things besides running water pills,
weight loss supplements.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
I think metabolife were some kind of you get out
of like a kiosk at a mall. I mean it's
like it had a Fedrin in it. I mean, oh yeah,
like you basically feel in your heart pound out of
your throat. I know I probably did a lot of that.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Metabol Life was a popular product in the nineties that
contained a Fedra, but the FDA banned of Federa in
two thousand and four after reports of heart attacks, strokes,
and even deaths. Of course, it had been marketed as
safe and effective. None of this was new. The metabolife
and Fenfen of the nineties had been the decks, a
trim of the eighties had been the vitaslim of the seventies.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
I'm sure other girls did other things, probably xlax, and
I'm sure that there were some eating disorders on there.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
And cheerleader's weight had been monitored closely since Suzanne Mitchell
took over the squad. Back then, cheerleaders were told the
camera adds tens and Suzanne had been a stickler about
the scale. She was known for circling jelly rolls on
pictures or grabbing a woman's rear end and saying lose weight.
I read a nineteen ninety one memoir written by three
(19:14):
sisters who are all former Cowboys cheerleaders, Stephanie Suzette and
Sherry Schultz, and they describe constant pressure to stay thin.
They have a great line they say that Suzanne quote
looked at fat like a Baptist preacher looks at sex.
It was evil. That legacy lived on in the nineties.
(19:35):
You could even say it got more intense. The expectations
for the women got bigger, an so did the boobs
more after this, the nineties brought a new vogue for
ultra thinness. Models like Kate Moss became all the rage.
(19:58):
At the same time, Pam A. Anderson was becoming famous
for those bouncy swimsuit runs across the beach in Baywatch.
You mentioned the boobs. I have to say, in looking
through squad photos over the decades, the nineties are really
the boobyars.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Oh yes, I think so, I too.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
The nineties cheerleaders reflected both these trends, the thinness, the
eye popping cleavage. At the same time they perpetuated the
look themselves.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Those were kind of the girls I had on my Wall.
The women that I had posters of a sports illustrated
but they all had big breast and were very thin.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
The nineties were a decade of thigh Masters, supermodels and
fat free everything.
Speaker 8 (20:45):
Great legs, thank you? How do you get them?
Speaker 7 (20:49):
I used to do aerobics till I dropped.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
Then I found thyme Masters.
Speaker 5 (20:53):
Start Jenny Craig now and you can lose twenty pounds
for twenty dollars one.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
This was only a few years after Oprah went on
a liquid and walked on stage hauling a wagon a
fat to show how much she'd lost. The obsession with
thinness fueled an industry of quick fixes to speed the slow, hard,
stubborn battle of weight loss. The Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders had
hopped on that bandwagon back in the eighties with a
(21:18):
workout album called In Training with the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
Like so many folks selling these products, they were presenting
an ideal of beauty and selling the hope that it
could be attained by the average person. And home fitness
kept exploding through the nineties with Step Aerobics and Buns
of Steel and Billy Blank's Tibo. In nineteen ninety six,
(21:41):
the Cowboys Cheerleaders gave us a Country Western workout VHS.
Speaker 7 (21:46):
Hi, We're the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Our Country Western workout features some of our favorite songs
from Dallas County lines. The exercises and dance steps are
easy and fun to do.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
What Amber and Leslie's weight stories remind me of most
or my own teen years Not because I was a cheerleader.
In fact, I was so embarrassed by my own body
I refused to try out for cheerleader. The auditions took
place in front of the entire school. No way, and
drill team was off the table for someone like me
who was always fighting scale. You know, what it is
(22:19):
taking me back to is actually high school drill team.
I wasn't on the squad, but I had friends that were,
and that constant, rigorous supervision over your weight. Right, I
wonder how you feel about that culture or how it
shaped you in your understanding of your body.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
So i've you know, looking back, I definitely think I
had emotionally eating issues growing up, so it was just
one of those things that brought me extreme comfort. I
don't think cheerleaders who might have had an eating disorder,
I don't think cheerleading gave that to them, so I
hope I can make that clear. I think whatever baggage
(23:02):
we all had, we brought in there with us.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
I had my own suspicion that cheerleading ramped up the
insecurities and frantic dieting set in place by the culture.
But in the moment as we talked, I was reluctant
to argue with Amber's perspective. I could feel her trying
to balance something she cherished with the problems that introduced.
How do we love a thing that can also bring
(23:26):
us such pain?
Speaker 3 (23:28):
I mean, there were some girls that just naturally had everything,
you know, that just came in there, that never had
to watch their calories, and they can go and gorge
on Mexican food and Margarita's and never gain a pound.
And I just wasn't. I mean, was I envious of that? Absolutely?
I still am. But I really really struggled with just
(23:51):
not liking myself and feeling very insecure, almost to a
point where like, I love every single one of these women,
but you would love to be just some kind of.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Special I was relating to everything she was saying. I
don't know many women who don't look back on their
teen years and wish they'd been a little gentler with
themselves about their appearance.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
I had all the support, and I'm so thankful for that,
but I wish I would have appreciated everything and enjoyed
every single moment. But I was always just so scared
and insecure and just constantly struggling to try to be
(24:37):
what they wanted me to be.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
In a way, this felt like so many conversations I've
had with friends over the years. But Amber has the
rare perspective of a woman whose body was central to
her value as a performer. A lot of women have
dreams about what it would mean to make that team,
how it might finally put their insecurities to rest. Leslie
(25:01):
Hatcher joined the squad with the idea that it would
give her validation, but she kept feeling out of place.
What was the look on the squad at the time?
Speaker 4 (25:11):
Wow, the team was mostly Caucasian. You had about four
black girls, maybe one Asian girl. It was the nineties.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Leslie was one of those four black women on the team.
You mentioned to me sometime one time, there's kind of
a placement for the black cheerleaders.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
Oh, yes, Well, in the stadium. The cheerleaders are divided
into four sections, and so if you've got four black girls,
there's gonna be a black girl in each section, never
two and one. Because they only had four, which I
kind of appreciate. I mean, I only have four, at
(25:55):
least spread them out.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
And for a black woman to be a Cowboys cheerleader,
the bar was especially high.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
I call the triple threat. You have to be skinny,
you gotta look good, and you gotta be a great dancer.
But for some reason, it seemed like if there was
a beautiful Caucasian girl had a great body, but she
couldn't dance, that was okay, we'll push your through. It's
all good. She looks good. And that's frustrating. And I
(26:24):
dislike talking about race, but it is a part. I mean,
it's a part of it, and we have to talk
about it.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
This is something I also talked about with Mackiba Pate,
who hosts a podcast about professional cheerleading called The Truth
behind the Palms. She's a former lawyer who cheered for
the Seattle Seahawks for five seasons and left in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 8 (26:47):
I auditioned four times and there was only one black
cheerleader on the Seahawks at the time. So just breaking
this barrier of that there can only be a small
handful or one at a time was probably the biggest
challenge that I experienced, Like it just seemed like there
was an unspoken quota or number or that you couldn't
(27:08):
move past.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Back in the seventies, the Cowboys Cheerleaders had a reputation
for being relatively diverse. A lot of the black women
were leaders on the squad, but over the next decades
the number of black women had dwindled to just a handful,
as low as two or three in the mid eighties,
and again from nineteen ninety nine to two thousand and one.
And then in fall twenty twenty, the Cowboys Cheerleaders debut
(27:33):
a squad with more women of color than any year
since nineteen seventy one. This was after a summer of
Black Lives Matter protests and a lot of teams were
rushing to respond to calls for racial justice. The team
also started a partnership with the salon that specializes in
black hair.
Speaker 8 (27:50):
I mean, those are the types of strides that would
just that they get me excited in this space, because
that is growth.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Of course, you could argue that the salon partnership is
a superficial response to a more ingrained problem. I talked
with Mikiba about the deeper reasons behind this racial imbalance.
Dance classes are expensive, it's often seen as a white
girl's hobby, and beneath it all, there's a strict idea
about what women should look like. Mikiba says other squads
(28:18):
are broadening their ideas about weight and body bringing in
women with curvier shapes, but she says the cowboys. Aren't
you mentioned that the DCC has kind of like a
signature classic look historically, at least, I wondered if you
could tell me what is that.
Speaker 8 (28:39):
I would say, I mean, if I'm guessing on weight
somewhere between ninety and one hundred and ten twenty pounds max,
it's very very lean. I think they're looking for hourglass
on top of all of that, so good luck with
trying to put that together. So it's like a very
narrow package and body frame. And it's kind of it's
(29:02):
kind of sad because I'm sure, I mean, I see
all the other NFL teams that I monitored as part
of the podcast, and you know, these women have beautiful shapes.
It's just not like the same shape over and over again.
I feel like it's with the Dallas Cowboy Australia. It's
more or less kind of the same shape.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Not many people fit that narrow window, and particularly women
who aren't white.
Speaker 8 (29:27):
You know, the darker your skin is, or you know,
the shapelier your curves are, or different things that people
just aren't used to seeing. They won't promote that. You
won't be on the cover of their calendar or featured
on their social media or you know, it's your beauty
isn't s celebrated.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Even after Leslie's first season on the Cowboys squad went well,
she knew it would be tough to make the team
again and I.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
Was unsure if I should try out because I just
had a feeling like I don't think that Kelly likes me,
and so I tried out anyway, I didn't make it.
So Judy who you know, she's hugging me and she's like,
why don't you set up a meeting with Kelly and
talked to her and I was like, sure, that's a
great idea. Then I can find out exactly what I
need to do. Because I'm already in the headspace if
(30:15):
I need to change something about myself so I can
make the team again. And I went to the office
on like an off day, and I set across from Kelly,
and she looked at me in my eyes and told
me there was nothing bad. She could tell me. She
just had to pick a certain amount of girls that
were just pretty. I just it was like something clicked,
(30:39):
and I just gathered my things and I left and
I thanked her. And I never felt the need to
go back to DCC after that, because what could I
How can I fix that? How can I What do
I do with that information?
Speaker 2 (30:54):
What Leslie decided to do eventually is write a book
about her experience first as a Cowboys cheerleader and that
is a dancer for the Mavericks and other teams around Dallas.
Her books called What I Learned Half Naked. She wanted
young women to know what they were getting into. In
her book, Leslie writes that whenever people would ask her
(31:14):
what it was like to be a cheerleader, she'd always
answer the same way.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
I would automatically say it was fantastic. And in my head,
I'm going why am I lying? Or why can't I
just tell the whole truth instead of, you know, the
half truth. It was a really great experience. Some parts
I didn't like, some parts I loved, But I couldn't.
I couldn't bring myself because I was trained to answer
(31:39):
a certain way and to portray that image.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Trying to answer that question honestly, how to describe the
good and the bad when they're all tangled up together.
As part of the reason Mikiba started her podcast too, we.
Speaker 8 (31:54):
Were missing a voice, one that can be very honest
about the good, bad, and the ugly, but also just
represent it in a more balanced light so that if
you're going to talk about all the challenges within the industry,
really helpfully hopefully understanding why we do what we do.
But you know, I always say that if people understand
(32:14):
and respect the work or the art of what we
do is as professional athletes, and I think it becomes
it just lays the groundwork for people to understand why
these issues exist and what solutions, potential solutions there are
to fixing it.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
A lot of what she does on our show is
talk with X cheerleaders about how they understand the time
they spend on the sidelines because that career might only
last a year or two, but the lessons they pick
up can stick with them for a long long time.
Speaker 8 (32:41):
I think the most damaging thing it's not even so
much of like those crazy fad type things or whatever
the latest way of staying within that weight threshold. It's
just the lasting impacts of it. So if you're hearing
messages about your body parts or narrowing in on certain things,
you have that in your head. And I know people
(33:01):
who've struggled with still hearing that when they look in
the mirror when they stopped dancing. And that's to me
what this is probably the saddest part of it is
that it lingers way longer than you know when you're
on the team itself.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
These days, you don't even need to make the team
to be deeply affected by the harsh messages about who
can wear that uniform. I spoke with a woman who
had a fantasy about what it would mean to wear one.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
My name is Vivian or Lena Williams, and I was
a training camp candidate for the Dallas Colway's cheerletters for
two seasons, Season eight and nine.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
You probably picked up on something different about the way
Vivian introduced herself when she mentioned seasons. She wasn't talking
about the NFL. She met TV seasons on the Cheerleader's
reality show Making the Team. It's aired on CMT since
two thousand and six. Vivian was on the show in
twenty thirteen and twenty fourteen, and she didn't actually make
(34:01):
the team. She never got to cheer on the field
at a Cowboys game, but she's probably more famous than
most of the women you've heard here so far thanks
to that show. She was voted fan favorite in her
first season, and her openness about her difficult childhood made
her a standout and a cast of beautiful and talented women.
(34:22):
Vivian's parents split when she was young, and she spent
a lot of time moving around as a kid with
a mother who struggled to make ends meet. She was
always the new kid.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
I was made fun of because I was ugly air
quotes ugly. I was cute turds. I had really kinky,
curly hair and big lips and brown skin, and I
thought what was beautiful was like really thin lips and
(34:54):
blue eyes and fair thin hair, and I was okay
with it. I was okay with who I was. I
was bullied to the point where I was like, all right, well,
my hair's brown, my name's Vivian. I'm ugly.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
But she found her place in dance, first in high
school and then at Tyler Junior College with their drill team,
the Apache Bells. They're a precision dance team that, along
with the Kilgore Rangerettes, have been around since the nineteen forties.
And the routines are not so different from the Cowboys cheerleaders.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
They do high kicks and jump splits, and they cheer
for the football team and it's just such a very
cool Texas tradition to be a part of.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
So it's no wonder the Apache Bells or a pipeline
to the Cowboys cheerleaders. Vivian says she hadn't thought of
trying out until a teammate suggested it, but then she
was hooked.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
But I didn't want to go there until my body
was acceptable by them, because at that time I wasn't
real thin. I was skinny, there wasn't nothing wrong with
my body, but I was just curvier than the cheerleaders.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
She took a year off and she lost twenty five
pounds in time for her first audition. It's a lot
of weight for a woman who's five foot four and
was already fit. All of the work she put into
prepare it wasn't enough. She didn't make the team, and
the problem wasn't her dancing.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
The first time that I got cut, they said that
my thighs were like hams. I believe we're chicken drums
or I don't know.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
This wasn't in a one on one conversation. This wasn't
even on a wait list posted on the locker room wall.
This is still out there on streaming TV. Kelly watches
Vivian posing for a squad photo and she turns to
Judy and says, what bothers me.
Speaker 4 (36:53):
The most is her boots are allow at her knees.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
I mean there's no leg, huge quods like a drumstick.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
I can't watch the episodes because I get nightmares and
they won't stop, and I will just have like perpetual
thoughts of things replaying in my head and I need
to take all of it in like healthy doses.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
On one hand, this is an elite squad where appearance
matters tremendously. The judges know brutal honesty is part of
their job. On the other hand, this is being served
up for entertainment purposes during an era when we've finally
started changing how we talk about women's bodies. The things
those judges said to Vivian, it's what I've feared all
(37:42):
my life. But the fantasy of making that team was fierce,
and Vivian tried out again. The next year. She had
lost more weight and the judges seemed happy. The show
even flashed side by side pictures of her thighs from
one year to the next.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
And that was because I dehydrated it asana for hours,
not drinking water and dropped five pounds so I could
be one seventeen for weighands, which is ridiculous. It didn't
matter to me. It was just a numbers game, and
I was like, they just want me at this weight.
(38:19):
If I could just be this weight, then all my
problems will go away.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
But again she didn't make it. Her radiance dimmed that year.
She seemed a little lost. This time, Vivian wasn't knocked
for her weight. She got criticized for paying too much
attention to her social media. The show makes her look
self absorbed and just generally flaky. The experience was so humiliating,
She says, she blocked some of it out.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
You go through the initial shock of oh my god,
that was so embarrassing, and then you get to a
point of where you're ashamed, and then you don't know
how to deal with the shame, so then you just
try to avoid it.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
She went into a spiral, drinking excessively and lashing out
at people around her. She wrote about this time in
an Instagram post in twenty eighteen. It brought attention back
to her story and the harm that gets hidden in
an industry that's all about flaunting perfection. In recent years,
there's been a new emphasis on body positivity and pop
(39:27):
culture that's made any kind of body shaming unfashionable. Over
the last decade, some NFL cheerleaders have sued their teams
for this kind of demeaning treatment. The director of the
Houston Texans cheerleaders resigned following one lawsuit, and former members
of the Buffalo Jills described jiggle tests where the women
(39:48):
did jumping jacks while team staff critique their bodies. Many
of the teams have done away with regular weigh ins,
including the Cowboys cheerleaders. Watching the last few seasons of
the show. You don't see these moments anymore, but it's
unclear if they're getting healthier about weight or smarter about
what they show to the public today. Vivian says those
(40:12):
awful experiences helped shape the person she's become. Not making
the team helped her understand she was never going to
fit that mold and the pain of holding on to
that fantasy was too great.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
I had to like change so many different parts of
myself in order to try to fit into this uniform
that I never really was meant to fit into.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
But she says she's happier and healthier.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
I had to buy five new pairs of jeans the
other day, and I was excited first time in my
life that I was excited to buy a bigger pair
of jeans. These are the biggest para of dreams I've
ever had in my life. And I was excited because like,
zoom my but looks good. I was like, what, my
body has gone up to fifty pounds heavier than I
(41:05):
was at auditions, And I personally think I look best now,
better in this body than I did before. Everyone has
their own personal opinion of that, but I really don't
care anymore about what other people think about my body,
because it's mine.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
By the time we were wrapping up our conversation, I
felt close enough to Vivian to make a joke about
a topic we both found pretty sad for a long time.
You know, you don't fit that uniform.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
I know, and I'm so glad. Yeah, I'm so.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Glad next time. On America's Girls.
Speaker 7 (42:00):
These women wouldn't train their entire lives just to shake
their ass on the field. It's complicated choreography and complicated
dance training.
Speaker 6 (42:08):
I saw guys with their cell phones enlarging various close
crotch or breastshots of the women.
Speaker 7 (42:18):
Just because some things are wrong doesn't mean the entire
thing has to be shut down.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
I just want, I.
Speaker 6 (42:30):
Just want.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Nineteen ninety six Tryouts. Footage is from KXASTV and housed
the Texas Archive the movie image. 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 Hepplin. Executive producer is Megan Kriich.
(43:00):
Used and edited by Patrick Michaels and edited by JK. Nichol,
produced and engineered by Brian Stanfern, who also wrote the music.
Additional research and audio editing by podcast intern Harper Carlton.
America's Girl's art is by Emily Kimbrow and Victoria Milner,
and marketing by Tori Moe. Our theme song is Enough
(43:20):
by the bra Lets. If you like the show, please
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