January 18, 2022 • 53 mins
The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders have navigated scandals and cultural shifts in the last few years. What is their future in this new world? For episode transcripts and bonus content related to the show, visit texasmonthly.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Texas Monthly.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
About a year ago, I came across a TikTok video
with a cheerleader that totally electrified me. These amazing high kicks,
this tremendous flare with a kind of spirit that just
radiates through the screen.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Hello, my name is Noah. I am from Odessa, Texas.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Noah Guzman is twenty one now, and he grew up
in West Texas, in a city whose obsession with high
school football was famously documented in Buzz Bissinger's book Friday
Night Lights. In two thousand and six, a TV show
based on that book came out and redefined how people
saw football in Texas. Noah was six. He didn't really
(00:51):
dig that show.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
People talk about it that are like outside of Odessa,
so whenever they come here, they're like, oh, Friday Night Lights,
and we're like yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
But that same year, a different show debuted that did
capture Noah's imagination, making the team the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders
reality show. It premiered in September two thousand and six
on CMT Country Music Television. Sixteen seasons later, it's still
going strong.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
And I was scrolling through the channels one day and
I just so happened to like stumble like across it,
and I remember, like whoa like seeing them, and I
was taken back, like I've never seen on TV what
I do. Whenever I saw it, I was just I
want to be one so bad.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
These women on TV were dancing the same way he
liked to dance in his own living room, and six
year old Noah was hooked. He started digging dance classes.
The studio was half an hour away, his dad would
drop him off. He got really good. He was a
leader on his college dance squad, and all the while
(01:55):
he had his eyes on a dream being a Dallas
Cowboys cheerleader. And in twenty twenty, as TikTok was gaining
its hold on the American attention span, Noah started posting
videos of himself doing the Cowboys cheerleaders routines.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Hey, what's up you guys? It is me And if
you do not already know, I have a small startup
YouTube channel.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
High caps, sexy hips and yard lining the long strides
the cheerleaders take as they enter the field. Noah had
the silver pom poms, a winning smile, and strong technique.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I didn't expect it to blow up. Honestly, I just
told my cousin Tammy. I was like, can you just
record me? And she was like okay.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
I was like, okay, I'm just gonna do the yard
lines and you're just gonna record and I'll put the
music on top of it. So then she posted it
to TikTok and just did a couple of hashtags. Closed
my phone. We were driving, and then I opened my
phone and there was like forty plus notifications on it
and I was like whoa, like what is this? And
then open it again like maybe not even like five
minutes later, and it just went from three thousand to
(02:57):
like twenty five thousand, and I was like, I got
says guys like Timmy, go check my TikTok. I don't
know if I'm like seeing things.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Within a week, that video had more than a million views.
You can find lots of other tributes to the Cowboys
cheerleaders on TikTok. Most of them are light and playful,
and Noah's videos are playful too, but they're also dead serious.
He's a real dancer. Last fall I visited him in Odessa.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
Oh Hello.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
We met up at the All Night Gym where he
practices his dances after work. It was around nine at night.
Inside people were running on treadmills and lifting weights. We
walked to a dim studio in the back and I
took a seat watching a couple dudes do crunches with
medicine balls. And Noah started stretching in front of a
(03:50):
long mirror and turned on his music. He practiced for
a while. He started doing a lyrical dance, spinning in
his Arabesque arms and graceful motion. I was in awe
of the bravery it takes just to claim that space.
It's no easy thing to bring dance into a macho world,
and it struck me that this is such an important
(04:12):
part of what the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders were about, bringing
the art and grace of dance into the gladiator arena
of football. Eleven cheerleading squads in the NFL have men today.
Noah says a couple of teams have even invited him
to try out, but there's really only one squad he
(04:33):
wants to dance for. The Cowboys cheerleaders have always adapted
to the era. They projected care free fun in the
free wheeling seventies, family values in the flag in Reagan's
eighties and they became sultry, ultra thin swimsuit models and
the nineties and the odds, but they've also built their
brand on tradition and a very exclusive idea of who
(04:57):
can wear that uniform. In our final episode, we'll look
at how a new era of social media and streaming
television has changed the cheerleader's brand. Thanks to reality TV,
the cheerleaders are as visible as ever, But there's another
reality about cheerleading that's hit in the last few years,
(05:17):
one you won't see on that show. It's come up
in lawsuits and whistleblower accounts over fair pay, discrimination and
body shaming. Sensational media coverage has knocked NFL cheerleading down
from its pedestal. The rules of the game are changing
fast and in this new world, what is the future
(05:39):
of the dcc I From Texas Monthly, I'm Sarah Happier.
This is America's Girls, Episode eight, Making the Dream. The
(06:12):
Cowboys are the most powerful and lucrative sports team in
the world, a six point nine billion dollar franchise. It's
an incredible figure, especially given the team's performance over the
past twenty five years. They've only made it to the
playoffs a handful of times this century. What really elevates
the team is Jerry Jones genius for marketing in corporate sponsorship.
Speaker 5 (06:36):
When I'm a Cowboys stadium, are sitting at home and
I hear.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Papa John's pizza up for Jerry Jones, Joad lights me.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
Up like a Roman candle.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Walk into the colossal AT and T Stadium aka Jerry World,
and it feels like every square inch is slapped with
a logo right below the huge American flag hanging in
the rafters, or signs for Miller Lite.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
And Pete Cowboys five Star combum for ten.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Kelly Finnglass, who took over as Cheerleader's director not long
after Jerry bought the team, followed his lead. Today, the
Cheerleaders have partnerships that have helped make them a reliable
profit center. They have deals with Victoria's Secret Planet Tan
and Lukeesy Boots. Every last detail has a sponsor, down
(07:25):
to their fake eyelashes and panty hose. But the most
influential partnership might be with the creators of the reality
show making the team. The man who pitched this idea
to the Cowboys was the writer and producer Eugene Pack,
whose many credits include the Miss USA pageant. This was
(07:45):
in the early odds when reality TV was exploding, particularly
competition shows and cheerleader auditions. The cutthroat contest, the months
long training camp with makeovers, high stakes performances, harsh critiques,
and tearful eliminations. This was Taylor made for viewers who
(08:06):
loved to play judge jury at home. On CMT. At
least for a while, it was in the Friday night
time slot right before the show My Big Redneck Wedding.
This was red state programming, and in America that was
splintering into two distinct sides. For a long time, the
show stayed under the radar in prestige pop culture criticism,
(08:28):
even at websites catering to reality junkies, but it had
a way of casting a spell on people who found it.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Oh, yeah, the reality show.
Speaker 6 (08:38):
I used to watch that when I was stoned in
college with my friend Susie.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
This is Gia Tolentino, the New Yorker writer you heard
in the last episode remembering this.
Speaker 6 (08:49):
Wow, I really haven't thought about that in so long.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
That's so funny. I'm glad you've seen it.
Speaker 6 (08:57):
Yeah, I mean, you know, the memories are vague, but yeah,
I remember like it was the kind of thing where
we thought we might be watching it like in a
sort of snarky we will laugh at these people a way,
and then we were like, I would fucking die for
these women.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
In twenty tens, Slate ran a review that called Making
the Team quote the most sexist TV show you don't
know about. They called out the body fat evaluations, the
brutal criticism, the obsession with appearance, and the review wasn't wrong,
but it was incomplete. What I think Geo was reacting
(09:37):
to what I know I felt when I first watched
the show is that Making the Team has a joy
that can be hard to find in a genre known
for cat fights and manufacture drama. The show introduces you
to some incredibly talented women and it sweeps you up
in their hopes and dreams. One of those women is
(09:58):
Mattie Massingill.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
I used to watch the show when I was really little,
probably the first few seasons of the show, because it
was actually funny. I was. Someone asked me how many
seasons I've been on, and I said, well, now seven,
and that's almost half the series. That's just crazy to think.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Matti grew up in Utah, in a town that was
so country. Kids drove tractors to high school.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
So growing up, my mom actually owned a dance studio
and I pretty much lived there. It was my favorite
place to be on the whole planet. My favorite sentence
was I'm so sorry, I can't I have dance.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
One day, she was watching a Cowboys game with her dad.
The screen cut to a cheerleader, and she thinks he
was half joking. He suggested she go to Dallas and
try out.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
And I said, yeah, right, dad. They would never take me.
First of all, I'm eighteen. I haven't even graduated from
high school. Second of all, I don't have the low
like I just there's no way. And my mom went
and booked my flight and bought my ticket to auditions.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
So she went and the experience was painful. Everyone was
so gorgeous. The cameras were up in her face. She
panicked and forgot her dance moves.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
But I came into it thinking like, oh, I've got
to have long, pretty hair, and I've got to have
all these things. And I was right. I didn't have
the look. The first year. I was still eighteen years old,
trying to figure out who I am.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Before that audition, Mattie had plucked her eyebrows pretty aggressively
and straightened her naturally bouncy brown curls, which she had
died black and still much like Vivian who you heard
from In episode six, Mattie got some nasty criticism from
the judges, some about her dancing, but also her appearance.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
I thought that people were going to eat me alive.
After the first season I went home. I had like
a breakdown for like a month and a half. My
mom was so worried about me. She was like, I
just don't know if she's going to get back up
from this.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
The show had been on for nearly a decade by then,
and thanks to the tough training and to a cable
show that blasted the cheerleader's elite status across the country
and into foreign markets, the dance had reached a whole
new level. The number of people auditioning dip dramatically, maybe
because candidates feared the scrutiny of an at home audience,
(12:33):
but the ones who did show up were often top
notch dancers. In the seventies, Texi Waterman's routines were reduced
to Monday Night Football's honey shots. But now reality TV
could really showcase their flying jump splitz and their perfect pirouettes.
This show, not the Cowboys Sideline, has become the spotlight
(12:56):
for the best of their dance performances.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
The talent has gotten so much better.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
This is Page Skinner, the Dallas journalist you met in
the last episode.
Speaker 5 (13:07):
Even you watch those women in the seventies, eighties, and nineties,
and I'm not trying to discredit their talent, because I
think they were amazing, but they would never make the
team out. I mean, in what world does a Radio
City rocket want to be an NFL cheerleader? But we
saw that this last season with a war A Rose.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Laura Rose was a rock at who danced for the
twenty twenty season. You can see all about it on
our Instagram. Dancer's social media accounts have made it easy
for all of us to get to know the cheerleaders
individually or even just talk about them. I see this
on hardcore fan pages, where women talk about those cheerleaders
the way high school freshmen talk about cool seniors. One
(13:53):
of the fan favorites I was excited to talk to
was Janelle Davidson.
Speaker 7 (13:57):
I'm Janelle and I was a part of the Dallas
Cowboys cheerleaders in twenty and thirteen to two thousand and nineteen.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
The team has a global reach. Cheerleaders have come from Mexico, Canada,
and Japan, and Janelle came from Australia. She'd seen the
show there and got inspired to try out. She showed
up in Arlington with just a suitcase and stayed to
cheer for five seasons.
Speaker 7 (14:26):
So being a complete foreigner, I had no idea what
I was in for.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
And she did experience some tough feedback. Janelle is very tall.
The judges called her gangly. She was one of the
few cheerleaders knocked for actually being too skinny. But seeing
Janelle on that enormous JumboTron during auditions really changed the
judge's minds, and Janelle saw the criticism as positive or
at least a necessary part of the process.
Speaker 7 (14:56):
In my personal experience, they won a lot of times
that things were said, you know, kind of behind your back,
like you always knew you're getting feedback. You know, they
want you to succeed. They want us to improve and
be the best that we can be, so you know,
it's the environment for it. You just you want to
be better. It's the only way to get better.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Along with being from another country, Janelle represents another cultural
shift too. Last year, after retiring, she married her girlfriend, Katie,
who actually worked for the Cowboys. That's how they met.
For several years, Katie was the appearance and special events
manager for the Cowboys cheerleaders. She worked closely with Kelly Finnglass,
(15:34):
that is until she left to marry Janelle and moved
to Australia. They had a big wedding planned but had
to scale it way down for the pandemic.
Speaker 7 (15:43):
We just, you know, we kept it really simple and
sort of stripped back all the glitz and I think
I think the day was more beautiful and perfect than
I could than I could have planned. Really, it was
so special and it felt right.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Way back in two thousand, the Robert Altman movie Doctor
T and the Women had a character who was a
Dallas Cowboys cheerleader played by Kate Hudson, and the big
plot twist at the end is that she falls in
love with a woman. But in twenty twenty, a similar
plot twist appeared to be just another happy occasion and.
Speaker 7 (16:18):
Sharing that you know, with everyone on social media as well.
Just receiving that love, you know, it's really lovely. It's
nice to feel the kindness and to hopefully be able to,
you know, inspire someone if they're not if they're not
feeling brave enough yet.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
And this intense support from fans was also what Maddie
felt when her first audition aired months after she was cut.
She was back home in Utah, questioning her future.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
I thought that they were going to be like, she's
such a baby, she looks awful. I can't believe that
she even made it that far. I had all the
worst thoughts about what what everyone else was going to
have to say about it, and it was the exact opposite.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Fans rallied around her, and so Mattie decided to go
back and audition again on her own.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
Terms, realizing that I had everything in me to make
the team. I just had to make my outsides look
like what my insides look like. I had a self
confidence the second time that I just if they want me,
they want me, and if they don't, I have somewhere
else that I need to be and that's okay.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
This time, Mattie wowed the judges they started calling her
the comeback Kid. She changed her look, tossing the hair
straightener and embracing her natural curls. She spent five years
on the team, making it through tryouts each season, and
she reached the highest honor on the squad, the point
of the triangle, the most prominent spot in the cheerly's
(18:00):
dance formation on the field. Her spiraling brown hair was
a bit of a different look on a team known
for bottled blondes, and fans ate it up. She was
the underdog who'd become.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
Queen, and so it truly has made me who I
am today. I've gotten to connect to so many people
that have said I went for my dreams after watching
you come Back. I got a promotion because I worked
extra hard, or I tried out for my high school
cheer team, or There's been so many things that people
(18:33):
have come in and said.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
The message of making the team is the cheerleading is
a lifelong dream. The becoming a Cowboys cheerleader changes your
life forever, and for Maddie and Janelle, that dream was real,
but the reality of pro cheerleading in those years from
about twenty fourteen on was changing a lot. Often in
(18:55):
ways you won't see on the show. This was maybe
a bit too much much reality. That's after this, Remember
that from the start, the cheerleaders weren't paid very much.
Von siel Baker told me it was enough to fill
up her gas tank and buy a slurpee fifteen bucks
(19:17):
a game. And you know, I actually got a copy
of a cheerleader's contract from twenty ten, almost forty years later,
and it includes the pay rate then one hundred and
fifty bucks a game, plus fees for appearances up to
five hundred dollars, which is pretty close to what I
heard the seventies cheerleaders got. When I talked to friends
(19:39):
about this, they'd often asked me, another question, is that
even legal? To be honest, I didn't know. So I
called a friend of mine who's an employment attorney in Austin.
Speaker 5 (19:52):
Your Collins being transferred.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Hey, hey, dogs, go on good. We're going to chat
about this, right poor record something.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
That's Aaron dla Garza. He and I went to college together,
and he explained to me that under federal law, the
Cowboys have to pay employees like the cheerleaders minimum wage.
People sometimes ask me whether the cheerleaders are independent contractors,
because if they are, the Cowboys aren't obligated to pay
the minimum wage. But this contract makes it clear that
(20:24):
at least in twenty ten, they were employees. It lists
a whole range of work the cheerleaders were required to do,
and it seems to me, based on all the rule
books that I've seen from the seventies, eighties, and nineties,
that the Cowboys have long made requirements that are more
in line with rules for employees. It may sound like
(20:46):
a wonky distinction, but it's been an important one in
cases about strip clubs and how they pay their dancers.
Speaker 8 (20:54):
You know, you basically are saying you're going to get
a hundred forty bucks plus, you know, for games plus engagement,
and you can just work the math out there, and
there's no way they're even covering them in wage on that.
Speaker 9 (21:08):
My question to you actually is, so I find it
surprising that the Cowboys, who are a very powerful organization
that has been quite litigious in their time, and I
would imagine have very powerful lawyers. Why do you think
that they would have a contract that would potentially run
a foul of what the fair labor standards?
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Ack says, I mean, that's a really good question. I
was wondering the same thing because, you know, looking at
this twenty ten contract and I'm probably unaware of the
history here, but yeah, it is weird and when looks
it strikes me as something that is the result of tradition,
(21:51):
you know, like that's how they've always been paid, because
I don't really get the basis for that. Now, listen,
if you're a football player or you're getting paid, you
know this huge flat fee, there's no concern here, but
the amounts are being paid a small enough that you
start to get into a concern of whether or not you
actually hit them in waves.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Actually, when choreographer Judy Trammel was asked about this in
the nineties, she said something pretty similar to what Aaron
had suspected. This is just how it's always been done.
Speaker 10 (22:20):
Obviously, being a cheerleader is a full time commitment, but
these women aren't in it for the money.
Speaker 11 (22:25):
That's just been traditioned to keep with the fifteen dollars.
And you get a better quality of girls who aren't
doing it for the money but for the love of
dance or just because the Cowboys are their favorite team
and they've been growing up and wanting to do this.
Speaker 8 (22:36):
It's part of the.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Beings, and so it started to sync in all the
women you've heard in this show who wore that uniform,
every single one of them. Given the amount of hours
she was working, was it possible that her contract had
been illegal? Of course, this is another big question I
wanted to put to the Cowboys, but they declined all
(22:58):
my interview requests for the show. But in June twenty eighteen,
one Cowboys cheerleader did something that they couldn't ignore. She's
taking on America's team.
Speaker 6 (23:08):
A former cheerleader files a federal lawsuit against the Dallas Cowboys,
saying cheerleaders.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Are paid for all the hours they work.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Sim Erica Wilkins was a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader from twenty
fourteen to twenty seventeen. She sued the Cowboys in federal court,
and her complaint said that in her time with a team,
she wasn't always paid minimum wage or sufficient overtime. Her
pay varied a lot from year to year. According to
her suit, she never made more than seventeen thousand dollars
(23:38):
a season. She said this was at a time when
the man who played the Cowboys mascot Rowdy made about
sixty five thousand a year. Wilkins years on the squad
came a little later than the contract I saw. By then,
according to her suit, the cheerleaders were also getting paid
for rehearsals eight dollars an hour, plus those flat fees
(24:01):
for games and appearances. But Wilkins claimed with all the
hours she put in for the Cowboys, her pay was
still less than minimum wage, which was seven twenty five
an hour. Aaron explained that the amount of money we're
talking about in a case like this for just one
cheerleader isn't a lot. But wilkins suit was a collective
(24:23):
action on behalf of herself and other cheerleaders who might
join her case. Multiply a few thousand dollars by say,
fifty former cheerleaders, and that's enough to make a football
team take notice.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
So it's a if you're an employer, one of the
scarier claims you can see is a collective action claim
with any kind of validity to it, And this, on
its face probably has validity. I mean, I mean, if
I take her allegations, what she's basically saying is, look,
I get a bunch of work off the clock that
they didn't pay me for, that they told me to do,
(24:57):
and they knew what I was doing.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
The statute of limitations on filing a suit like this
is at most three years, and in fifty years, I
could only find this one cheerleader's lawsuit against the Cowboys.
The lawsuit was closed less than a month after it
was filed. Wilkins and the Cowboys negotiated a settlement. No
other cheerleaders joined the suit, and if Erica was trying
(25:23):
to stir up solidarity within the squad to fight for change,
she actually caused a very different reaction. Here's page again.
Speaker 5 (25:31):
The Cowboys had no comments, which is not surprising, and
then several former cheerleaders spoke out against it, including Cassie trammel,
Melissa Ryecroft, and Brandy Redman, and they all posted on
Instagram saying how disappointed they were. Brandy said she would
have been a cheerleader for free.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Cassie Trammell is choreographer Judy Tramill's daughter, Melissa Ryecroft, was
on The Bachelor and One Dancing with the Stars. Brandy
Redman is on the Real Housewives of Dallas, so it
seems clear that some cheerleaders, at least some very high
profile ones, saw the lawsuit as a kind of betrayal.
Speaker 5 (26:10):
The lawsuit was settled in September twenty nineteen, and it
was reported that the pay increase went from eight dollars
an hour to twelve, and on game day it went
from two hundred dollars a game to four hundred.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
It was not even close to what the players made,
but it was a start.
Speaker 5 (26:25):
Oh she doubled the pay at least for game day
for sure, and I believe from all of my research
that Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders are the HIGHUS paid NFL cheerleading team.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
I asked Aaron, my lawyer friend, about the fact that
so many cheerleaders I spoke to said they would have
done it for free. He said, it's nice and it
might be the reason that so few lawsuits have been filed.
But whether an employee would do something for free, it
doesn't change an employer's obligation to pay them for their work.
(26:59):
And this epiphany that the status quo and professional cheerleading
might violate long held labor law was happening all across
the league.
Speaker 5 (27:08):
Oh Erica Wilkins is not the first NFL cheerleader to
sue her team. She won't be the last. The Raideruretes
has sued her team. The Jills have sued Texans formerly Redskins, Dolphins,
and Saints. So yeah, this has been a reckoning that's
(27:29):
been happening for several years, and Erica's lawsuit was kind
of in the middle of it.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
We mentioned the Jills lawsuit in episode six about the
jiggle tests the Buffalo cheerleaders had to take, but it
was also a complaint about low pei so is A
suit from former Radaurets filed the same year in twenty fourteen.
After that came fair paysuits from cheerleaders for the Bengals,
(27:58):
Jets and years too many of them. Like Wilkins suit
ended with settlements. The media that had once held up
the cheerleaders as untouchable status symbols started to show them
as exploited workers, disgruntled employees, or naive girls who didn't
know what they were signing up for. Quote a Ponzi
(28:20):
scheme in hot pants, read one line in Deadspin. A
headline and the ring are asked, so why does the
NFL have cheerleaders? Again, the public criticism and lawsuits meant
to make pro cheer more fair sometimes had unintended consequences
for the cheerleaders themselves.
Speaker 5 (28:39):
And I think their biggest concern is that the second
you raise a concern or you complain, they'll just get
rid of us. And we've seen that with the Buffalo Jills.
After the Buffalo Jills filed their lawsuit, they were disbanded
the next day and they haven't come back.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Many of the cheerleading squads folded after lawsuits or scandals
around low pay and sexual harassment, only to come back
after a rebranding that made them more family friendly. The
New Orleans Saints, the Minnesota Vikings, the Seattle Seahawks. They
replaced their sexy sideline spectacle with less provocative squads that
(29:19):
were often co ed. The Baltimore Ravens added male stuntman
who could lift female cheerleaders up in the air and
into gravity to find formations, and in twenty eighteen, the
La Rams were the first team in the NFL to
add male dancers, two guys who kicked and hip thrust
and swiveled right alongside the women. And you'd think that
(29:42):
would be great news for Noah. The TikTok star from
Odessa who dreamed of being a Cowboys cheerleader, but actually
he didn't want to do stunting, and he wasn't so
sure about moving to another state. He wanted to dance
in the place that had always been his home. Noah
has taken audition prep courses with a few cheerleaders and
(30:04):
gotten lots of praise on social media, including from former DCCs.
Speaker 4 (30:09):
It's so funny how many people will tag me in
his TikTok.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Though Mattie mass and Gil is a big fam.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
I'll be like, oh my gosh, Mattie, look at this kid,
And I'm like.
Speaker 10 (30:17):
I know.
Speaker 9 (30:17):
I adore Noah.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
I love him.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Can I tell him that I talked to you please
do and that you went into a TikTok video?
Speaker 4 (30:25):
Yes? Absolutely good.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
His love for the Cowboys cheerleaders routines is infectious, and
watching all his TikTok videos it made me want to
dance too. I'm going to tell you a secret that
I've managed to keep until this episode. I love dancing,
but it scares the hell out of me. When I
was a little girl, I danced in my bedroom, I
(30:51):
danced in the living room, I danced for strangers, and
then I grew up to be a teenager who stood
on the perimeter of every school dance, verified to be
doing it wrong, to look stupid or not look hot,
or not look cool, or whatever it was that I
needed to be. But when I started watching Making the Team,
(31:12):
I found myself practicing high kicks in my bedroom, and
so I thought it was time to take a dance lesson,
and Noah was kind enough to give me one.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
So lucky today, Yes, it's very like that's hot and humid.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
I met him in Arlington. He was in town to
teach a dance class. We drove out to at and
T Stadium, the Mothership. We stood in a grassy field
across from the stadium parking lot. The two of us
dwarfed by that big colosseum that the author Joe Nick
Potowski very accurately described as looking like a chrome Transformer Bulldog.
(31:51):
I'd brought the silver and blue pom poms I bought
at a Cowboy store inside the stadium. Noah's thirteen year
old cousin, Tammy, held the mic. He and I took
our positions, and I want the record to show that
Tammy is running sound right now. Okay, she's doing an
awesome job. Okay, Oh my gosh, I'm nervous. How do
we start?
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Okay, so usually we start out in a bubble. So
that's just your foot is right here?
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Is this what my interview subjects felt when I put
a microphone in their faces. Three four, worried I was
gonna look ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Eight one two three kick four yep, just like that. Yeah,
so you want to have a high like any baby.
One it's okay, it's okay. So you want to learn
a yards line?
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Yes, okay, So I'm a forty seven year old woman
shaking palm. Palms is a yard lined across the field.
But Noah was very encouraging, and he kept it simple.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
So you're gonna start out with your left. They go
five six.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
And you know what dancing really is fun?
Speaker 3 (32:52):
And three up four around five six, around seven eight coo, yep, yeah,
you look like a natural.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
That's just kind thank you.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
So faster.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
We live in a culture that doesn't dance much. I
noticed this when I traveled around South America in my twenties,
how much other countries embraced that kind of jubilant movement,
but here in America it seen as something that girls do,
a very specific kind of girl. At that, the idea
that dance is for everyone, the way laughter and song
(33:31):
are for everyone hasn't really caught on. The idea that
dancing was for girls never really bothered Noah, but I
think it did confuse his family. When I drove out
to Odessa, he told me this story.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
So I had a recital. They knew I was taking
dance classes in school, but I don't think they knew
like this certain extent that it was. But I was
taking it seriously, so whenever they came to see it,
they were like, oh, wow, like he actually actually does dance,
so what did they think. My dad didn't really like
(34:06):
think anything of it. He's kind of more of a
laid back type of person. He's just like, okay, like
good for you, good for you. My mom kind of
was like, I'm on the fence about it. Also, she
just didn't really like approve of it. She she just
wanted me not to dance.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
So how's that now?
Speaker 3 (34:29):
Now it's kind of just my that's my choice. So
I kind of just don't really care about what anybody
thinks about my dancing. So that's kind of how I
navigate that, and that's kind of why I never chose
to tell anybody or anybody in my family, because I knew,
like some people would like it, some people wouldn't. So
that's what I knew from a very young age, growing
(34:51):
up like to be more independent in myself when it
came to my dancing.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
I thought about Noah a lot while I was putting
podcast together, even though I didn't know him very well.
He'd become an inspiration to me all my life. I've
worried so much what other people said about me, whether
other people approved, But I would think back to him
quietly doing those arabesques in the gym in front of
(35:19):
those manly guys, and I would see the courage of
someone whose ambitions did not line up with convention, and
he pursued them anyway. Noah has tried out twice for
the Cowboys cheerleaders, but he's never gotten past the first round.
After our dance lesson, I asked him how he felt
(35:40):
about that.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
I'm not really that like upset about it. I kind
of known from the beginning that if I ever tried out,
because when I was little, I would always say, like,
I want to try out but I know if I
try out, like I'm probably not gonna make it. So
I've kind of always gotten into the mentality of not
expecting to make it, Like I've kind of learned to
not expect what I want. So that's kind of where
(36:04):
I submit the video and I kind of just say
it's okay. If it happens, it happens, and if it
does happen, then I'm probably gonna be super excited. But
other than that, I don't really I don't get sad.
And whenever I found the email, I was just like, oh, okay,
well there's next year.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
I asked him what he thought when he looked up
at that enormous stadium. Can you imagine yourself always?
Speaker 3 (36:28):
Always? I can always imagine myself, And I think that's
what I like to do, is I like to picture
myself in it and in the uniform if I ever
do get one. But I like to picture myself on
the sidelines sometimes, like I picture myself doing a kickline
and my boot is about to like kick my face, yeah,
(36:49):
just looking up into the nosebleeds and smiling and dancing
and people just like wow, like that's a boy on
the team.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
So this dream Noah has as part of a bigger question,
what is the future of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. To
begin to answer that, I want you to meet a
member of one of the very first DCC squads.
Speaker 10 (37:15):
Yes, my name is Lee Jackson and I graduated from
the Dallas School District.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Lee was a teenager when Dee Brock was just starting
the squad with high schoolers. For a few years in
the mid sixties, the cheerleaders were co ed.
Speaker 10 (37:30):
So in nineteen sixty five fall season and sixty six
fall season, I was a member of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders.
I didn't remember this. My mother just told me last
week because I plumbed their memories. They have better memory
than I do. She said.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
Oh.
Speaker 10 (37:47):
The hardest thing was they said you had to have
white pants. I couldn't find white pants anywhere. I bought
you a pair of Painters pants. No way, Painters work
pants were my cowboy uniform. Except they gave us this
little round patch which we could stick on our high
school jackets. And it might have counted for something in
(38:09):
the hallway at school. But Playgirl magazine did not call
us for a photo shoot for payment.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Lee remembers getting two tickets to the Cowboys game.
Speaker 10 (38:19):
So it was just fun, wholesome American fund that you
got to go out with fourteen others and jump around
and be a part of the excitement of a football game.
No adverse consequences, but no social cachet either.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Lee went on to become a politician, a pretty influential one.
He was a state representative and then Dallas County judge
from nineteen eighty seven to two thousand and two. He
was a top executive for Dallas County when it opened
the sixth Floor Museum commemorating the Kennedy assassination. That museum
was a major turning point in the city's street. We
(39:01):
were finally admitting publicly what had happened here. But I
wanted to talk to Lee because long before the Dallas
Cowboys cheerleaders burst onto the field and hot pants and
go go boots, cheerleading had actually been a young man's hobby.
The whole enterprise started at the ivy leagues, where men
became yell leaders on sidelines, and they were often very
(39:23):
prestigious on campus. It wasn't until cheerleading became dominated by
young women during World War Two that it lost its
stature and became seen as a frivolous hobby for Lee.
Being part of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, a brand that
has become synonymous with female glamour and sex appeal, wasn't
(39:43):
exactly part of his campaign slogan.
Speaker 10 (39:46):
Maybe three times in my public career, someone knew me
from high school or knew about it, or they told
someone and they would come up to me and say,
this can't be true. But I was told you were
a cowboy driller, and I would just look at him
with a straight face and try to think of something
smart to say. I did have a smart, eloqu retort
(40:10):
that I will not repeat into the microphone.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Can you give us a hint on that.
Speaker 10 (40:18):
If I tell you this, you might use it.
Speaker 5 (40:23):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
And the truth is that what Lee did as a
Cowboys cheerleader and what Noah wants to do they're very
different things. In the decades since Lee chanted for the
Cowboys in his white painter's pants, the cheerleaders have become
such archetypes of femininity to a lot of people. Just
the thought of a man in that kickline is like
(40:47):
a direct attack on how they see the world. But
Lee's place in this history is a reminder that the
squad has been reinvented in risky, adventurous ways all along,
so successfully that it's hard to remember it being any different.
The sport of cheerleading is changing. Competitive cheer is exploding,
(41:07):
thanks in part to the hit Netflix reality series Cheer,
which is filmed not far from Dallas at Navaro College.
The Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders had been transgressive and pioneering, once
they've become something more like a legacy brand. How the
Cowboys Cheerleaders navigate that is a lingering question. Last November,
(41:32):
the cheerleaders celebrated their sixty at the Anniversary with a
big alumni halftime show. The number sixty came as a
bit of a surprise. For a long time, the cheerleaders
dated their inception to nineteen seventy two, when the uniform debuted,
but now they were dating it back to the very
beginning nineteen sixty one. For weeks, I'd been hearing from
(41:55):
various cheerleaders about get togethers, and it frustrated me that
I couldn't get out access to any of these events.
So I bought standing room only tickets to the Sunday game,
even though I knew I wouldn't be able to record
inside the stadium. Cowboys rules, and then I got a tip.
It was Saturday afternoon and I was doing my laundry
(42:17):
when my phone lit up. The tech said the cheerleaders
were holding an all day rehearsal on the Saturday before
the game. They were practicing at my old high school.
I knew it was a long shot, but I drove
over to see what I could find. I tugged on
one locked door after another until I saw it, a
big open door with blue and silver helium balloons floating
(42:41):
in the breeze and a table with a white banner
that read Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. I stepped inside, hoping to
remain inconspicuous. The indoor practice field was new, its floor
covered in artificial turf, and the room filled with the
sound of wishing palm palms and women's voices. Five women
(43:04):
in their fifties practiced their routine in front of me.
Across the room, women sat in clusters, laughing, taking selfies,
deep in conversation. Some couldn't have been older than eighteen,
some couldn't have been younger than sixty. I took a
seat in the corner and tried to look like I belonged.
(43:26):
The halftime show they were rehearsing was designed to showcase
the women from each decade through music. The seventies crew
would be dancing to Freak Out by Chic, the Eighties
crew would be dancing to Beat It by Michael Jackson.
The cheerleaders started to take their formations for a run through,
and as the women around me peeled away, I was
(43:48):
getting anxious I'd be discovered. I have blonde hair and
an unimposing stature, but I am definitely not nor have
I ever been a Dallas Cowboys cheer leader. I looked
over to the speaker system and saw a face I
knew for many hours of television viewing, Kelly Finnglass. She
(44:11):
was sipping a bottle of water and talking with a
couple of women. The auburn hair, the pretty smile, the
air of self possession. Her eagle eyes drifted toward me,
and I don't know if she registered me as an interloper,
but I got that spike of dread many cheerleaders have
probably felt over the years. Kelly is on to me.
(44:35):
I thought for a second about standing up and introducing
myself finally trying to get an interview. I ran through
the questions in my mind imagined reaching out my hand
to her, as I've wanted to do so many times
in the past year. But that dread quickly turned to nausea,
and I decided to go in a different direction. I
bolted for the door. If she wanted her story in here,
(44:59):
she knew how to reach me. But standing outside, I
could still hear the music. If I positioned myself just
beyond the doorway, I could watch them run through the routine,
white haired ladies from the seventies replaced by short haired
ladies from the eighties, replaced by long haired women from
the nineties, one danceable hit after another, and then the finale,
(45:24):
We are Family by Sister Sledge. The Cowboys have always
been a family, at least that's what people I interview
tell me. And at times maybe it was a messed
up family that reminded me more of HBO's succession than
say family ties. But it was a family, nonetheless, and
(45:47):
like any family, I could watch them from the outside,
and I could have my opinions and critiques, but I'd
never understand exactly, not really what it was to be
a part of it. Inside the stadium. The next day,
I was standing in a big crowd on the top
(46:08):
level when the cheerleaders halftime show began. I had hoped
people would just wander off to get a beer or
a hot dog so I could get a better view,
but everyone stayed. I stared up at a video on
that gigantic jumbo tron showing stats from over the years,
eight hundred and fifty four alumni, eighty three USO tours,
(46:32):
three stadiums, and those numbers were only a fraction of
the infinite stories those women had to tell. I started
this project knowing none of them. I felt a weird
mix of pride and frustration watching that screen because there
was so much more I wanted people to hear. This
(46:53):
was one of the greatest tales to ever take place
in the city of Dallas, and I wasn't sure anybody
knew it.
Speaker 5 (47:02):
My name is Dbrouck.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
The story of the amazing woman who started the Cheerleaders.
Speaker 5 (47:08):
Founder of the Dallas Cowboy.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
She had been a model, but also a PhD. She
was a woman of the world when the world could
be very small for women. My name is Bob Silbaker,
the story of the first woman to wear that uniform.
I'm one of the original, a skinny black girl from
South Dallas Cowboy A woman who's still after half a century,
has the longest tenure on the squad at eight years.
(47:31):
My name is Shannon Baker Worthman. The story of the
trained ballet dancer who became a poster girl in the
seventies seventy six to nineteen eight and later the choreographer.
The first cheerleader to be hired into a leadership position
by the Cowboys. One of the key figures in transforming
a glamour and beauty brand into an elite dance squad.
Speaker 3 (47:51):
My name is Dana Kilmer Dana Night, one.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
Who could have had a promising career in entertainment but
went on to be a corporate CEO. The first mother
daughter legacy on the team, Billy Mitchell and her daughter
Amber Gostin.
Speaker 5 (48:04):
Here I am You're not getting rid of me.
Speaker 12 (48:07):
Tammy Barber nineteen seventy seven through nineteen eight. My name
is Debbie Kepley.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
I was a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
My name is Janice Carner and I was a Dallas
Cowboys cheerlead.
Speaker 6 (48:19):
Leslie Shaw Hatchard, a former Dallas Cowboy cheerleader.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Down on the field, I recognized Tammy Barber, who had
once danced in Texas Stadium in those iconic blonde pigtails.
Her hair is now gray and cropped close after cancer
treatments last year. She was out there shaken. All around me,
the crowd was cheering and dancing. They were really into this.
(48:48):
People were ecstatic. It was only ever a game, but
as Jonah Potoski had told me, it was also a lifestyle.
Dallas has changed since the cow Boys arrived. The Cowboys
changed Dallas. Theirs is a story about a handful of
people who built something out of nothing and it changed
(49:10):
the world. I don't know what becomes of this story,
but I know that this team, that this lifestyle, that
these cheerleaders have shaped me in profound ways. They brought
grace and beauty and sex to the NFL. They changed
(49:30):
how we saw women on television. They helped transform a
traumatized city into a glamorous room. And maybe what they
represented was only ever a fantasy, a fantasy for a
man watching from his living room recliner, or a little
boy watching from the bleachers, or a little girl staring
(49:53):
up at a poster she saw at the seven eleven.
But the fantasy was really good, and I'm not sure
I wanted to end. Can the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders survive
in an era that seems to be moving away from
everything they introduced at a time when the future of
(50:14):
professional football itself seems in question? You never know, and
I wouldn't bet against them, But watching Tammy dance out
there on that big green field, I thought about a
prediction she'd made about the cheerleaders.
Speaker 12 (50:32):
So where it's going, who knows. Cowboys will hang in
there as long as they can, though I bet we
were the first and all that will be laughed or
the cockroaches and the DCC. Yeah, the world will end
and we'll still be standing there with those little white shorts.
Speaker 2 (51:01):
America's Girls is a Texas monthly production. I'm your host,
writer and reporter, Sarah Heppola, And though my voice is
the only one you've heard on this team, many talented
people had a hand in this creation. JK. Nichol is
the editor, and though he rarely points this out, the
whole thing was his idea, So I blame him and
(51:22):
I thank him. Brian Standifer is the producer and engineer.
In addition to being one of the nicest guys ever,
the music he wrote for this was so good I
sometimes listened to the podcast twice just to hear it again.
The musician Betty Sue played guitar and sang on the soundtrack,
and hers is the ethereal voice you sometimes heard. Harper
(51:44):
Carlton was our intern, which might not sound like a
big role, but Harper was key tracking down news clips
and putting together vocal tracks. William Brennan and will Bostwick
were our fact checkers, and their careful eyes caught mistakes
that saved me public embarrass Tory Mohne did the marketing,
and her enterprising work placed this story where people could
(52:05):
find it. Emily kim Brow and Victoria Milner did the
America's girl's art that brought visual flare and continuity to
our audio production. Megan krit is the executive producer, and
in addition to giving valuable insight, she gave me the
push I needed to keep going at a very challenging time.
Patrick Michaels is the editor and producer, and on days
(52:28):
when I could barely put two sentences together, Patrick stood
beside me and helped us get where we needed to go.
I couldn't have done this without him. Our theme song
is Enough by the Bralettes, an all female band from Dallas,
and that song is so catchy. Even my mother, who
has not paid attention to pop music since the Beatles
(52:48):
started doing drugs, thinks it's awesome. I want to thank
the cheerleaders who spoke to me on and off the record,
who dared to trust a journalist with a story so
deeply personal. And lastly, I want to thank you humble
podcast listener. I was worried that people would not want
to hear the voices of women who were mostly known
(53:10):
for their looks. But if you've gotten this far, I
guess you proved me wrong. You can find Noah Guzman
on TikTok at Noah dot Jade spelled j A I D. E.
Tape of Judy Trammel in the nineties is from E
Texas Monthly.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
About a year ago, I came across a TikTok video
with a cheerleader that totally electrified me. These amazing high kicks,
this tremendous flare with a kind of spirit that just
radiates through the screen.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Hello, my name is Noah. I am from Odessa, Texas.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Noah Guzman is twenty one now, and he grew up
in West Texas, in a city whose obsession with high
school football was famously documented in Buzz Bissinger's book Friday
Night Lights. In two thousand and six, a TV show
based on that book came out and redefined how people
saw football in Texas. Noah was six. He didn't really
(00:51):
dig that show.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
People talk about it that are like outside of Odessa,
so whenever they come here, they're like, oh, Friday Night Lights,
and we're like yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
But that same year, a different show debuted that did
capture Noah's imagination, making the team the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders
reality show. It premiered in September two thousand and six
on CMT Country Music Television. Sixteen seasons later, it's still
going strong.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
And I was scrolling through the channels one day and
I just so happened to like stumble like across it,
and I remember, like whoa like seeing them, and I
was taken back, like I've never seen on TV what
I do. Whenever I saw it, I was just I
want to be one so bad.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
These women on TV were dancing the same way he
liked to dance in his own living room, and six
year old Noah was hooked. He started digging dance classes.
The studio was half an hour away, his dad would
drop him off. He got really good. He was a
leader on his college dance squad, and all the while
(01:55):
he had his eyes on a dream being a Dallas
Cowboys cheerleader. And in twenty twenty, as TikTok was gaining
its hold on the American attention span, Noah started posting
videos of himself doing the Cowboys cheerleaders routines.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Hey, what's up you guys? It is me And if
you do not already know, I have a small startup
YouTube channel.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
High caps, sexy hips and yard lining the long strides
the cheerleaders take as they enter the field. Noah had
the silver pom poms, a winning smile, and strong technique.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I didn't expect it to blow up. Honestly, I just
told my cousin Tammy. I was like, can you just
record me? And she was like okay.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
I was like, okay, I'm just gonna do the yard
lines and you're just gonna record and I'll put the
music on top of it. So then she posted it
to TikTok and just did a couple of hashtags. Closed
my phone. We were driving, and then I opened my
phone and there was like forty plus notifications on it
and I was like whoa, like what is this? And
then open it again like maybe not even like five
minutes later, and it just went from three thousand to
(02:57):
like twenty five thousand, and I was like, I got
says guys like Timmy, go check my TikTok. I don't
know if I'm like seeing things.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Within a week, that video had more than a million views.
You can find lots of other tributes to the Cowboys
cheerleaders on TikTok. Most of them are light and playful,
and Noah's videos are playful too, but they're also dead serious.
He's a real dancer. Last fall I visited him in Odessa.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
Oh Hello.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
We met up at the All Night Gym where he
practices his dances after work. It was around nine at night.
Inside people were running on treadmills and lifting weights. We
walked to a dim studio in the back and I
took a seat watching a couple dudes do crunches with
medicine balls. And Noah started stretching in front of a
(03:50):
long mirror and turned on his music. He practiced for
a while. He started doing a lyrical dance, spinning in
his Arabesque arms and graceful motion. I was in awe
of the bravery it takes just to claim that space.
It's no easy thing to bring dance into a macho world,
and it struck me that this is such an important
(04:12):
part of what the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders were about, bringing
the art and grace of dance into the gladiator arena
of football. Eleven cheerleading squads in the NFL have men today.
Noah says a couple of teams have even invited him
to try out, but there's really only one squad he
(04:33):
wants to dance for. The Cowboys cheerleaders have always adapted
to the era. They projected care free fun in the
free wheeling seventies, family values in the flag in Reagan's
eighties and they became sultry, ultra thin swimsuit models and
the nineties and the odds, but they've also built their
brand on tradition and a very exclusive idea of who
(04:57):
can wear that uniform. In our final episode, we'll look
at how a new era of social media and streaming
television has changed the cheerleader's brand. Thanks to reality TV,
the cheerleaders are as visible as ever, But there's another
reality about cheerleading that's hit in the last few years,
(05:17):
one you won't see on that show. It's come up
in lawsuits and whistleblower accounts over fair pay, discrimination and
body shaming. Sensational media coverage has knocked NFL cheerleading down
from its pedestal. The rules of the game are changing
fast and in this new world, what is the future
(05:39):
of the dcc I From Texas Monthly, I'm Sarah Happier.
This is America's Girls, Episode eight, Making the Dream. The
(06:12):
Cowboys are the most powerful and lucrative sports team in
the world, a six point nine billion dollar franchise. It's
an incredible figure, especially given the team's performance over the
past twenty five years. They've only made it to the
playoffs a handful of times this century. What really elevates
the team is Jerry Jones genius for marketing in corporate sponsorship.
Speaker 5 (06:36):
When I'm a Cowboys stadium, are sitting at home and
I hear.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Papa John's pizza up for Jerry Jones, Joad lights me.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
Up like a Roman candle.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Walk into the colossal AT and T Stadium aka Jerry World,
and it feels like every square inch is slapped with
a logo right below the huge American flag hanging in
the rafters, or signs for Miller Lite.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
And Pete Cowboys five Star combum for ten.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Kelly Finnglass, who took over as Cheerleader's director not long
after Jerry bought the team, followed his lead. Today, the
Cheerleaders have partnerships that have helped make them a reliable
profit center. They have deals with Victoria's Secret Planet Tan
and Lukeesy Boots. Every last detail has a sponsor, down
(07:25):
to their fake eyelashes and panty hose. But the most
influential partnership might be with the creators of the reality
show making the team. The man who pitched this idea
to the Cowboys was the writer and producer Eugene Pack,
whose many credits include the Miss USA pageant. This was
(07:45):
in the early odds when reality TV was exploding, particularly
competition shows and cheerleader auditions. The cutthroat contest, the months
long training camp with makeovers, high stakes performances, harsh critiques,
and tearful eliminations. This was Taylor made for viewers who
(08:06):
loved to play judge jury at home. On CMT. At
least for a while, it was in the Friday night
time slot right before the show My Big Redneck Wedding.
This was red state programming, and in America that was
splintering into two distinct sides. For a long time, the
show stayed under the radar in prestige pop culture criticism,
(08:28):
even at websites catering to reality junkies, but it had
a way of casting a spell on people who found it.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Oh, yeah, the reality show.
Speaker 6 (08:38):
I used to watch that when I was stoned in
college with my friend Susie.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
This is Gia Tolentino, the New Yorker writer you heard
in the last episode remembering this.
Speaker 6 (08:49):
Wow, I really haven't thought about that in so long.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
That's so funny. I'm glad you've seen it.
Speaker 6 (08:57):
Yeah, I mean, you know, the memories are vague, but yeah,
I remember like it was the kind of thing where
we thought we might be watching it like in a
sort of snarky we will laugh at these people a way,
and then we were like, I would fucking die for
these women.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
In twenty tens, Slate ran a review that called Making
the Team quote the most sexist TV show you don't
know about. They called out the body fat evaluations, the
brutal criticism, the obsession with appearance, and the review wasn't wrong,
but it was incomplete. What I think Geo was reacting
(09:37):
to what I know I felt when I first watched
the show is that Making the Team has a joy
that can be hard to find in a genre known
for cat fights and manufacture drama. The show introduces you
to some incredibly talented women and it sweeps you up
in their hopes and dreams. One of those women is
(09:58):
Mattie Massingill.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
I used to watch the show when I was really little,
probably the first few seasons of the show, because it
was actually funny. I was. Someone asked me how many
seasons I've been on, and I said, well, now seven,
and that's almost half the series. That's just crazy to think.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Matti grew up in Utah, in a town that was
so country. Kids drove tractors to high school.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
So growing up, my mom actually owned a dance studio
and I pretty much lived there. It was my favorite
place to be on the whole planet. My favorite sentence
was I'm so sorry, I can't I have dance.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
One day, she was watching a Cowboys game with her dad.
The screen cut to a cheerleader, and she thinks he
was half joking. He suggested she go to Dallas and
try out.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
And I said, yeah, right, dad. They would never take me.
First of all, I'm eighteen. I haven't even graduated from
high school. Second of all, I don't have the low
like I just there's no way. And my mom went
and booked my flight and bought my ticket to auditions.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
So she went and the experience was painful. Everyone was
so gorgeous. The cameras were up in her face. She
panicked and forgot her dance moves.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
But I came into it thinking like, oh, I've got
to have long, pretty hair, and I've got to have
all these things. And I was right. I didn't have
the look. The first year. I was still eighteen years old,
trying to figure out who I am.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Before that audition, Mattie had plucked her eyebrows pretty aggressively
and straightened her naturally bouncy brown curls, which she had
died black and still much like Vivian who you heard
from In episode six, Mattie got some nasty criticism from
the judges, some about her dancing, but also her appearance.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
I thought that people were going to eat me alive.
After the first season I went home. I had like
a breakdown for like a month and a half. My
mom was so worried about me. She was like, I
just don't know if she's going to get back up
from this.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
The show had been on for nearly a decade by then,
and thanks to the tough training and to a cable
show that blasted the cheerleader's elite status across the country
and into foreign markets, the dance had reached a whole
new level. The number of people auditioning dip dramatically, maybe
because candidates feared the scrutiny of an at home audience,
(12:33):
but the ones who did show up were often top
notch dancers. In the seventies, Texi Waterman's routines were reduced
to Monday Night Football's honey shots. But now reality TV
could really showcase their flying jump splitz and their perfect pirouettes.
This show, not the Cowboys Sideline, has become the spotlight
(12:56):
for the best of their dance performances.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
The talent has gotten so much better.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
This is Page Skinner, the Dallas journalist you met in
the last episode.
Speaker 5 (13:07):
Even you watch those women in the seventies, eighties, and nineties,
and I'm not trying to discredit their talent, because I
think they were amazing, but they would never make the
team out. I mean, in what world does a Radio
City rocket want to be an NFL cheerleader? But we
saw that this last season with a war A Rose.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Laura Rose was a rock at who danced for the
twenty twenty season. You can see all about it on
our Instagram. Dancer's social media accounts have made it easy
for all of us to get to know the cheerleaders
individually or even just talk about them. I see this
on hardcore fan pages, where women talk about those cheerleaders
the way high school freshmen talk about cool seniors. One
(13:53):
of the fan favorites I was excited to talk to
was Janelle Davidson.
Speaker 7 (13:57):
I'm Janelle and I was a part of the Dallas
Cowboys cheerleaders in twenty and thirteen to two thousand and nineteen.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
The team has a global reach. Cheerleaders have come from Mexico, Canada,
and Japan, and Janelle came from Australia. She'd seen the
show there and got inspired to try out. She showed
up in Arlington with just a suitcase and stayed to
cheer for five seasons.
Speaker 7 (14:26):
So being a complete foreigner, I had no idea what
I was in for.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
And she did experience some tough feedback. Janelle is very tall.
The judges called her gangly. She was one of the
few cheerleaders knocked for actually being too skinny. But seeing
Janelle on that enormous JumboTron during auditions really changed the
judge's minds, and Janelle saw the criticism as positive or
at least a necessary part of the process.
Speaker 7 (14:56):
In my personal experience, they won a lot of times
that things were said, you know, kind of behind your back,
like you always knew you're getting feedback. You know, they
want you to succeed. They want us to improve and
be the best that we can be, so you know,
it's the environment for it. You just you want to
be better. It's the only way to get better.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Along with being from another country, Janelle represents another cultural
shift too. Last year, after retiring, she married her girlfriend, Katie,
who actually worked for the Cowboys. That's how they met.
For several years, Katie was the appearance and special events
manager for the Cowboys cheerleaders. She worked closely with Kelly Finnglass,
(15:34):
that is until she left to marry Janelle and moved
to Australia. They had a big wedding planned but had
to scale it way down for the pandemic.
Speaker 7 (15:43):
We just, you know, we kept it really simple and
sort of stripped back all the glitz and I think
I think the day was more beautiful and perfect than
I could than I could have planned. Really, it was
so special and it felt right.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Way back in two thousand, the Robert Altman movie Doctor
T and the Women had a character who was a
Dallas Cowboys cheerleader played by Kate Hudson, and the big
plot twist at the end is that she falls in
love with a woman. But in twenty twenty, a similar
plot twist appeared to be just another happy occasion and.
Speaker 7 (16:18):
Sharing that you know, with everyone on social media as well.
Just receiving that love, you know, it's really lovely. It's
nice to feel the kindness and to hopefully be able to,
you know, inspire someone if they're not if they're not
feeling brave enough yet.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
And this intense support from fans was also what Maddie
felt when her first audition aired months after she was cut.
She was back home in Utah, questioning her future.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
I thought that they were going to be like, she's
such a baby, she looks awful. I can't believe that
she even made it that far. I had all the
worst thoughts about what what everyone else was going to
have to say about it, and it was the exact opposite.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Fans rallied around her, and so Mattie decided to go
back and audition again on her own.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
Terms, realizing that I had everything in me to make
the team. I just had to make my outsides look
like what my insides look like. I had a self
confidence the second time that I just if they want me,
they want me, and if they don't, I have somewhere
else that I need to be and that's okay.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
This time, Mattie wowed the judges they started calling her
the comeback Kid. She changed her look, tossing the hair
straightener and embracing her natural curls. She spent five years
on the team, making it through tryouts each season, and
she reached the highest honor on the squad, the point
of the triangle, the most prominent spot in the cheerly's
(18:00):
dance formation on the field. Her spiraling brown hair was
a bit of a different look on a team known
for bottled blondes, and fans ate it up. She was
the underdog who'd become.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
Queen, and so it truly has made me who I
am today. I've gotten to connect to so many people
that have said I went for my dreams after watching
you come Back. I got a promotion because I worked
extra hard, or I tried out for my high school
cheer team, or There's been so many things that people
(18:33):
have come in and said.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
The message of making the team is the cheerleading is
a lifelong dream. The becoming a Cowboys cheerleader changes your
life forever, and for Maddie and Janelle, that dream was real,
but the reality of pro cheerleading in those years from
about twenty fourteen on was changing a lot. Often in
(18:55):
ways you won't see on the show. This was maybe
a bit too much much reality. That's after this, Remember
that from the start, the cheerleaders weren't paid very much.
Von siel Baker told me it was enough to fill
up her gas tank and buy a slurpee fifteen bucks
(19:17):
a game. And you know, I actually got a copy
of a cheerleader's contract from twenty ten, almost forty years later,
and it includes the pay rate then one hundred and
fifty bucks a game, plus fees for appearances up to
five hundred dollars, which is pretty close to what I
heard the seventies cheerleaders got. When I talked to friends
(19:39):
about this, they'd often asked me, another question, is that
even legal? To be honest, I didn't know. So I
called a friend of mine who's an employment attorney in Austin.
Speaker 5 (19:52):
Your Collins being transferred.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Hey, hey, dogs, go on good. We're going to chat
about this, right poor record something.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
That's Aaron dla Garza. He and I went to college together,
and he explained to me that under federal law, the
Cowboys have to pay employees like the cheerleaders minimum wage.
People sometimes ask me whether the cheerleaders are independent contractors,
because if they are, the Cowboys aren't obligated to pay
the minimum wage. But this contract makes it clear that
(20:24):
at least in twenty ten, they were employees. It lists
a whole range of work the cheerleaders were required to do,
and it seems to me, based on all the rule
books that I've seen from the seventies, eighties, and nineties,
that the Cowboys have long made requirements that are more
in line with rules for employees. It may sound like
(20:46):
a wonky distinction, but it's been an important one in
cases about strip clubs and how they pay their dancers.
Speaker 8 (20:54):
You know, you basically are saying you're going to get
a hundred forty bucks plus, you know, for games plus engagement,
and you can just work the math out there, and
there's no way they're even covering them in wage on that.
Speaker 9 (21:08):
My question to you actually is, so I find it
surprising that the Cowboys, who are a very powerful organization
that has been quite litigious in their time, and I
would imagine have very powerful lawyers. Why do you think
that they would have a contract that would potentially run
a foul of what the fair labor standards?
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Ack says, I mean, that's a really good question. I
was wondering the same thing because, you know, looking at
this twenty ten contract and I'm probably unaware of the
history here, but yeah, it is weird and when looks
it strikes me as something that is the result of tradition,
(21:51):
you know, like that's how they've always been paid, because
I don't really get the basis for that. Now, listen,
if you're a football player or you're getting paid, you
know this huge flat fee, there's no concern here, but
the amounts are being paid a small enough that you
start to get into a concern of whether or not you
actually hit them in waves.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Actually, when choreographer Judy Trammel was asked about this in
the nineties, she said something pretty similar to what Aaron
had suspected. This is just how it's always been done.
Speaker 10 (22:20):
Obviously, being a cheerleader is a full time commitment, but
these women aren't in it for the money.
Speaker 11 (22:25):
That's just been traditioned to keep with the fifteen dollars.
And you get a better quality of girls who aren't
doing it for the money but for the love of
dance or just because the Cowboys are their favorite team
and they've been growing up and wanting to do this.
Speaker 8 (22:36):
It's part of the.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Beings, and so it started to sync in all the
women you've heard in this show who wore that uniform,
every single one of them. Given the amount of hours
she was working, was it possible that her contract had
been illegal? Of course, this is another big question I
wanted to put to the Cowboys, but they declined all
(22:58):
my interview requests for the show. But in June twenty eighteen,
one Cowboys cheerleader did something that they couldn't ignore. She's
taking on America's team.
Speaker 6 (23:08):
A former cheerleader files a federal lawsuit against the Dallas Cowboys,
saying cheerleaders.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Are paid for all the hours they work.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Sim Erica Wilkins was a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader from twenty
fourteen to twenty seventeen. She sued the Cowboys in federal court,
and her complaint said that in her time with a team,
she wasn't always paid minimum wage or sufficient overtime. Her
pay varied a lot from year to year. According to
her suit, she never made more than seventeen thousand dollars
(23:38):
a season. She said this was at a time when
the man who played the Cowboys mascot Rowdy made about
sixty five thousand a year. Wilkins years on the squad
came a little later than the contract I saw. By then,
according to her suit, the cheerleaders were also getting paid
for rehearsals eight dollars an hour, plus those flat fees
(24:01):
for games and appearances. But Wilkins claimed with all the
hours she put in for the Cowboys, her pay was
still less than minimum wage, which was seven twenty five
an hour. Aaron explained that the amount of money we're
talking about in a case like this for just one
cheerleader isn't a lot. But wilkins suit was a collective
(24:23):
action on behalf of herself and other cheerleaders who might
join her case. Multiply a few thousand dollars by say,
fifty former cheerleaders, and that's enough to make a football
team take notice.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
So it's a if you're an employer, one of the
scarier claims you can see is a collective action claim
with any kind of validity to it, And this, on
its face probably has validity. I mean, I mean, if
I take her allegations, what she's basically saying is, look,
I get a bunch of work off the clock that
they didn't pay me for, that they told me to do,
(24:57):
and they knew what I was doing.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
The statute of limitations on filing a suit like this
is at most three years, and in fifty years, I
could only find this one cheerleader's lawsuit against the Cowboys.
The lawsuit was closed less than a month after it
was filed. Wilkins and the Cowboys negotiated a settlement. No
other cheerleaders joined the suit, and if Erica was trying
(25:23):
to stir up solidarity within the squad to fight for change,
she actually caused a very different reaction. Here's page again.
Speaker 5 (25:31):
The Cowboys had no comments, which is not surprising, and
then several former cheerleaders spoke out against it, including Cassie trammel,
Melissa Ryecroft, and Brandy Redman, and they all posted on
Instagram saying how disappointed they were. Brandy said she would
have been a cheerleader for free.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Cassie Trammell is choreographer Judy Tramill's daughter, Melissa Ryecroft, was
on The Bachelor and One Dancing with the Stars. Brandy
Redman is on the Real Housewives of Dallas, so it
seems clear that some cheerleaders, at least some very high
profile ones, saw the lawsuit as a kind of betrayal.
Speaker 5 (26:10):
The lawsuit was settled in September twenty nineteen, and it
was reported that the pay increase went from eight dollars
an hour to twelve, and on game day it went
from two hundred dollars a game to four hundred.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
It was not even close to what the players made,
but it was a start.
Speaker 5 (26:25):
Oh she doubled the pay at least for game day
for sure, and I believe from all of my research
that Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders are the HIGHUS paid NFL cheerleading team.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
I asked Aaron, my lawyer friend, about the fact that
so many cheerleaders I spoke to said they would have
done it for free. He said, it's nice and it
might be the reason that so few lawsuits have been filed.
But whether an employee would do something for free, it
doesn't change an employer's obligation to pay them for their work.
(26:59):
And this epiphany that the status quo and professional cheerleading
might violate long held labor law was happening all across
the league.
Speaker 5 (27:08):
Oh Erica Wilkins is not the first NFL cheerleader to
sue her team. She won't be the last. The Raideruretes
has sued her team. The Jills have sued Texans formerly Redskins, Dolphins,
and Saints. So yeah, this has been a reckoning that's
(27:29):
been happening for several years, and Erica's lawsuit was kind
of in the middle of it.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
We mentioned the Jills lawsuit in episode six about the
jiggle tests the Buffalo cheerleaders had to take, but it
was also a complaint about low pei so is A
suit from former Radaurets filed the same year in twenty fourteen.
After that came fair paysuits from cheerleaders for the Bengals,
(27:58):
Jets and years too many of them. Like Wilkins suit
ended with settlements. The media that had once held up
the cheerleaders as untouchable status symbols started to show them
as exploited workers, disgruntled employees, or naive girls who didn't
know what they were signing up for. Quote a Ponzi
(28:20):
scheme in hot pants, read one line in Deadspin. A
headline and the ring are asked, so why does the
NFL have cheerleaders? Again, the public criticism and lawsuits meant
to make pro cheer more fair sometimes had unintended consequences
for the cheerleaders themselves.
Speaker 5 (28:39):
And I think their biggest concern is that the second
you raise a concern or you complain, they'll just get
rid of us. And we've seen that with the Buffalo Jills.
After the Buffalo Jills filed their lawsuit, they were disbanded
the next day and they haven't come back.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Many of the cheerleading squads folded after lawsuits or scandals
around low pay and sexual harassment, only to come back
after a rebranding that made them more family friendly. The
New Orleans Saints, the Minnesota Vikings, the Seattle Seahawks. They
replaced their sexy sideline spectacle with less provocative squads that
(29:19):
were often co ed. The Baltimore Ravens added male stuntman
who could lift female cheerleaders up in the air and
into gravity to find formations, and in twenty eighteen, the
La Rams were the first team in the NFL to
add male dancers, two guys who kicked and hip thrust
and swiveled right alongside the women. And you'd think that
(29:42):
would be great news for Noah. The TikTok star from
Odessa who dreamed of being a Cowboys cheerleader, but actually
he didn't want to do stunting, and he wasn't so
sure about moving to another state. He wanted to dance
in the place that had always been his home. Noah
has taken audition prep courses with a few cheerleaders and
(30:04):
gotten lots of praise on social media, including from former DCCs.
Speaker 4 (30:09):
It's so funny how many people will tag me in
his TikTok.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Though Mattie mass and Gil is a big fam.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
I'll be like, oh my gosh, Mattie, look at this kid,
And I'm like.
Speaker 10 (30:17):
I know.
Speaker 9 (30:17):
I adore Noah.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
I love him.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Can I tell him that I talked to you please
do and that you went into a TikTok video?
Speaker 4 (30:25):
Yes? Absolutely good.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
His love for the Cowboys cheerleaders routines is infectious, and
watching all his TikTok videos it made me want to
dance too. I'm going to tell you a secret that
I've managed to keep until this episode. I love dancing,
but it scares the hell out of me. When I
was a little girl, I danced in my bedroom, I
(30:51):
danced in the living room, I danced for strangers, and
then I grew up to be a teenager who stood
on the perimeter of every school dance, verified to be
doing it wrong, to look stupid or not look hot,
or not look cool, or whatever it was that I
needed to be. But when I started watching Making the Team,
(31:12):
I found myself practicing high kicks in my bedroom, and
so I thought it was time to take a dance lesson,
and Noah was kind enough to give me one.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
So lucky today, Yes, it's very like that's hot and humid.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
I met him in Arlington. He was in town to
teach a dance class. We drove out to at and
T Stadium, the Mothership. We stood in a grassy field
across from the stadium parking lot. The two of us
dwarfed by that big colosseum that the author Joe Nick
Potowski very accurately described as looking like a chrome Transformer Bulldog.
(31:51):
I'd brought the silver and blue pom poms I bought
at a Cowboy store inside the stadium. Noah's thirteen year
old cousin, Tammy, held the mic. He and I took
our positions, and I want the record to show that
Tammy is running sound right now. Okay, she's doing an
awesome job. Okay, Oh my gosh, I'm nervous. How do
we start?
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Okay, so usually we start out in a bubble. So
that's just your foot is right here?
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Is this what my interview subjects felt when I put
a microphone in their faces. Three four, worried I was
gonna look ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Eight one two three kick four yep, just like that. Yeah,
so you want to have a high like any baby.
One it's okay, it's okay. So you want to learn
a yards line?
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Yes, okay, So I'm a forty seven year old woman
shaking palm. Palms is a yard lined across the field.
But Noah was very encouraging, and he kept it simple.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
So you're gonna start out with your left. They go
five six.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
And you know what dancing really is fun?
Speaker 3 (32:52):
And three up four around five six, around seven eight coo, yep, yeah,
you look like a natural.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
That's just kind thank you.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
So faster.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
We live in a culture that doesn't dance much. I
noticed this when I traveled around South America in my twenties,
how much other countries embraced that kind of jubilant movement,
but here in America it seen as something that girls do,
a very specific kind of girl. At that, the idea
that dance is for everyone, the way laughter and song
(33:31):
are for everyone hasn't really caught on. The idea that
dancing was for girls never really bothered Noah, but I
think it did confuse his family. When I drove out
to Odessa, he told me this story.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
So I had a recital. They knew I was taking
dance classes in school, but I don't think they knew
like this certain extent that it was. But I was
taking it seriously, so whenever they came to see it,
they were like, oh, wow, like he actually actually does dance,
so what did they think. My dad didn't really like
(34:06):
think anything of it. He's kind of more of a
laid back type of person. He's just like, okay, like
good for you, good for you. My mom kind of
was like, I'm on the fence about it. Also, she
just didn't really like approve of it. She she just
wanted me not to dance.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
So how's that now?
Speaker 3 (34:29):
Now it's kind of just my that's my choice. So
I kind of just don't really care about what anybody
thinks about my dancing. So that's kind of how I
navigate that, and that's kind of why I never chose
to tell anybody or anybody in my family, because I knew,
like some people would like it, some people wouldn't. So
that's what I knew from a very young age, growing
(34:51):
up like to be more independent in myself when it
came to my dancing.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
I thought about Noah a lot while I was putting
podcast together, even though I didn't know him very well.
He'd become an inspiration to me all my life. I've
worried so much what other people said about me, whether
other people approved, But I would think back to him
quietly doing those arabesques in the gym in front of
(35:19):
those manly guys, and I would see the courage of
someone whose ambitions did not line up with convention, and
he pursued them anyway. Noah has tried out twice for
the Cowboys cheerleaders, but he's never gotten past the first round.
After our dance lesson, I asked him how he felt
(35:40):
about that.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
I'm not really that like upset about it. I kind
of known from the beginning that if I ever tried out,
because when I was little, I would always say, like,
I want to try out but I know if I
try out, like I'm probably not gonna make it. So
I've kind of always gotten into the mentality of not
expecting to make it, Like I've kind of learned to
not expect what I want. So that's kind of where
(36:04):
I submit the video and I kind of just say
it's okay. If it happens, it happens, and if it
does happen, then I'm probably gonna be super excited. But
other than that, I don't really I don't get sad.
And whenever I found the email, I was just like, oh, okay,
well there's next year.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
I asked him what he thought when he looked up
at that enormous stadium. Can you imagine yourself always?
Speaker 3 (36:28):
Always? I can always imagine myself, And I think that's
what I like to do, is I like to picture
myself in it and in the uniform if I ever
do get one. But I like to picture myself on
the sidelines sometimes, like I picture myself doing a kickline
and my boot is about to like kick my face, yeah,
(36:49):
just looking up into the nosebleeds and smiling and dancing
and people just like wow, like that's a boy on
the team.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
So this dream Noah has as part of a bigger question,
what is the future of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. To
begin to answer that, I want you to meet a
member of one of the very first DCC squads.
Speaker 10 (37:15):
Yes, my name is Lee Jackson and I graduated from
the Dallas School District.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Lee was a teenager when Dee Brock was just starting
the squad with high schoolers. For a few years in
the mid sixties, the cheerleaders were co ed.
Speaker 10 (37:30):
So in nineteen sixty five fall season and sixty six
fall season, I was a member of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders.
I didn't remember this. My mother just told me last
week because I plumbed their memories. They have better memory
than I do. She said.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
Oh.
Speaker 10 (37:47):
The hardest thing was they said you had to have
white pants. I couldn't find white pants anywhere. I bought
you a pair of Painters pants. No way, Painters work
pants were my cowboy uniform. Except they gave us this
little round patch which we could stick on our high
school jackets. And it might have counted for something in
(38:09):
the hallway at school. But Playgirl magazine did not call
us for a photo shoot for payment.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Lee remembers getting two tickets to the Cowboys game.
Speaker 10 (38:19):
So it was just fun, wholesome American fund that you
got to go out with fourteen others and jump around
and be a part of the excitement of a football game.
No adverse consequences, but no social cachet either.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Lee went on to become a politician, a pretty influential one.
He was a state representative and then Dallas County judge
from nineteen eighty seven to two thousand and two. He
was a top executive for Dallas County when it opened
the sixth Floor Museum commemorating the Kennedy assassination. That museum
was a major turning point in the city's street. We
(39:01):
were finally admitting publicly what had happened here. But I
wanted to talk to Lee because long before the Dallas
Cowboys cheerleaders burst onto the field and hot pants and
go go boots, cheerleading had actually been a young man's hobby.
The whole enterprise started at the ivy leagues, where men
became yell leaders on sidelines, and they were often very
(39:23):
prestigious on campus. It wasn't until cheerleading became dominated by
young women during World War Two that it lost its
stature and became seen as a frivolous hobby for Lee.
Being part of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, a brand that
has become synonymous with female glamour and sex appeal, wasn't
(39:43):
exactly part of his campaign slogan.
Speaker 10 (39:46):
Maybe three times in my public career, someone knew me
from high school or knew about it, or they told
someone and they would come up to me and say,
this can't be true. But I was told you were
a cowboy driller, and I would just look at him
with a straight face and try to think of something
smart to say. I did have a smart, eloqu retort
(40:10):
that I will not repeat into the microphone.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Can you give us a hint on that.
Speaker 10 (40:18):
If I tell you this, you might use it.
Speaker 5 (40:23):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
And the truth is that what Lee did as a
Cowboys cheerleader and what Noah wants to do they're very
different things. In the decades since Lee chanted for the
Cowboys in his white painter's pants, the cheerleaders have become
such archetypes of femininity to a lot of people. Just
the thought of a man in that kickline is like
(40:47):
a direct attack on how they see the world. But
Lee's place in this history is a reminder that the
squad has been reinvented in risky, adventurous ways all along,
so successfully that it's hard to remember it being any different.
The sport of cheerleading is changing. Competitive cheer is exploding,
(41:07):
thanks in part to the hit Netflix reality series Cheer,
which is filmed not far from Dallas at Navaro College.
The Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders had been transgressive and pioneering, once
they've become something more like a legacy brand. How the
Cowboys Cheerleaders navigate that is a lingering question. Last November,
(41:32):
the cheerleaders celebrated their sixty at the Anniversary with a
big alumni halftime show. The number sixty came as a
bit of a surprise. For a long time, the cheerleaders
dated their inception to nineteen seventy two, when the uniform debuted,
but now they were dating it back to the very
beginning nineteen sixty one. For weeks, I'd been hearing from
(41:55):
various cheerleaders about get togethers, and it frustrated me that
I couldn't get out access to any of these events.
So I bought standing room only tickets to the Sunday game,
even though I knew I wouldn't be able to record
inside the stadium. Cowboys rules, and then I got a tip.
It was Saturday afternoon and I was doing my laundry
(42:17):
when my phone lit up. The tech said the cheerleaders
were holding an all day rehearsal on the Saturday before
the game. They were practicing at my old high school.
I knew it was a long shot, but I drove
over to see what I could find. I tugged on
one locked door after another until I saw it, a
big open door with blue and silver helium balloons floating
(42:41):
in the breeze and a table with a white banner
that read Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. I stepped inside, hoping to
remain inconspicuous. The indoor practice field was new, its floor
covered in artificial turf, and the room filled with the
sound of wishing palm palms and women's voices. Five women
(43:04):
in their fifties practiced their routine in front of me.
Across the room, women sat in clusters, laughing, taking selfies,
deep in conversation. Some couldn't have been older than eighteen,
some couldn't have been younger than sixty. I took a
seat in the corner and tried to look like I belonged.
(43:26):
The halftime show they were rehearsing was designed to showcase
the women from each decade through music. The seventies crew
would be dancing to Freak Out by Chic, the Eighties
crew would be dancing to Beat It by Michael Jackson.
The cheerleaders started to take their formations for a run through,
and as the women around me peeled away, I was
(43:48):
getting anxious I'd be discovered. I have blonde hair and
an unimposing stature, but I am definitely not nor have
I ever been a Dallas Cowboys cheer leader. I looked
over to the speaker system and saw a face I
knew for many hours of television viewing, Kelly Finnglass. She
(44:11):
was sipping a bottle of water and talking with a
couple of women. The auburn hair, the pretty smile, the
air of self possession. Her eagle eyes drifted toward me,
and I don't know if she registered me as an interloper,
but I got that spike of dread many cheerleaders have
probably felt over the years. Kelly is on to me.
(44:35):
I thought for a second about standing up and introducing
myself finally trying to get an interview. I ran through
the questions in my mind imagined reaching out my hand
to her, as I've wanted to do so many times
in the past year. But that dread quickly turned to nausea,
and I decided to go in a different direction. I
bolted for the door. If she wanted her story in here,
(44:59):
she knew how to reach me. But standing outside, I
could still hear the music. If I positioned myself just
beyond the doorway, I could watch them run through the routine,
white haired ladies from the seventies replaced by short haired
ladies from the eighties, replaced by long haired women from
the nineties, one danceable hit after another, and then the finale,
(45:24):
We are Family by Sister Sledge. The Cowboys have always
been a family, at least that's what people I interview
tell me. And at times maybe it was a messed
up family that reminded me more of HBO's succession than
say family ties. But it was a family, nonetheless, and
(45:47):
like any family, I could watch them from the outside,
and I could have my opinions and critiques, but I'd
never understand exactly, not really what it was to be
a part of it. Inside the stadium. The next day,
I was standing in a big crowd on the top
(46:08):
level when the cheerleaders halftime show began. I had hoped
people would just wander off to get a beer or
a hot dog so I could get a better view,
but everyone stayed. I stared up at a video on
that gigantic jumbo tron showing stats from over the years,
eight hundred and fifty four alumni, eighty three USO tours,
(46:32):
three stadiums, and those numbers were only a fraction of
the infinite stories those women had to tell. I started
this project knowing none of them. I felt a weird
mix of pride and frustration watching that screen because there
was so much more I wanted people to hear. This
(46:53):
was one of the greatest tales to ever take place
in the city of Dallas, and I wasn't sure anybody
knew it.
Speaker 5 (47:02):
My name is Dbrouck.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
The story of the amazing woman who started the Cheerleaders.
Speaker 5 (47:08):
Founder of the Dallas Cowboy.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
She had been a model, but also a PhD. She
was a woman of the world when the world could
be very small for women. My name is Bob Silbaker,
the story of the first woman to wear that uniform.
I'm one of the original, a skinny black girl from
South Dallas Cowboy A woman who's still after half a century,
has the longest tenure on the squad at eight years.
(47:31):
My name is Shannon Baker Worthman. The story of the
trained ballet dancer who became a poster girl in the
seventies seventy six to nineteen eight and later the choreographer.
The first cheerleader to be hired into a leadership position
by the Cowboys. One of the key figures in transforming
a glamour and beauty brand into an elite dance squad.
Speaker 3 (47:51):
My name is Dana Kilmer Dana Night, one.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
Who could have had a promising career in entertainment but
went on to be a corporate CEO. The first mother
daughter legacy on the team, Billy Mitchell and her daughter
Amber Gostin.
Speaker 5 (48:04):
Here I am You're not getting rid of me.
Speaker 12 (48:07):
Tammy Barber nineteen seventy seven through nineteen eight. My name
is Debbie Kepley.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
I was a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
My name is Janice Carner and I was a Dallas
Cowboys cheerlead.
Speaker 6 (48:19):
Leslie Shaw Hatchard, a former Dallas Cowboy cheerleader.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Down on the field, I recognized Tammy Barber, who had
once danced in Texas Stadium in those iconic blonde pigtails.
Her hair is now gray and cropped close after cancer
treatments last year. She was out there shaken. All around me,
the crowd was cheering and dancing. They were really into this.
(48:48):
People were ecstatic. It was only ever a game, but
as Jonah Potoski had told me, it was also a lifestyle.
Dallas has changed since the cow Boys arrived. The Cowboys
changed Dallas. Theirs is a story about a handful of
people who built something out of nothing and it changed
(49:10):
the world. I don't know what becomes of this story,
but I know that this team, that this lifestyle, that
these cheerleaders have shaped me in profound ways. They brought
grace and beauty and sex to the NFL. They changed
(49:30):
how we saw women on television. They helped transform a
traumatized city into a glamorous room. And maybe what they
represented was only ever a fantasy, a fantasy for a
man watching from his living room recliner, or a little
boy watching from the bleachers, or a little girl staring
(49:53):
up at a poster she saw at the seven eleven.
But the fantasy was really good, and I'm not sure
I wanted to end. Can the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders survive
in an era that seems to be moving away from
everything they introduced at a time when the future of
(50:14):
professional football itself seems in question? You never know, and
I wouldn't bet against them, But watching Tammy dance out
there on that big green field, I thought about a
prediction she'd made about the cheerleaders.
Speaker 12 (50:32):
So where it's going, who knows. Cowboys will hang in
there as long as they can, though I bet we
were the first and all that will be laughed or
the cockroaches and the DCC. Yeah, the world will end
and we'll still be standing there with those little white shorts.
Speaker 2 (51:01):
America's Girls is a Texas monthly production. I'm your host,
writer and reporter, Sarah Heppola, And though my voice is
the only one you've heard on this team, many talented
people had a hand in this creation. JK. Nichol is
the editor, and though he rarely points this out, the
whole thing was his idea, So I blame him and
(51:22):
I thank him. Brian Standifer is the producer and engineer.
In addition to being one of the nicest guys ever,
the music he wrote for this was so good I
sometimes listened to the podcast twice just to hear it again.
The musician Betty Sue played guitar and sang on the soundtrack,
and hers is the ethereal voice you sometimes heard. Harper
(51:44):
Carlton was our intern, which might not sound like a
big role, but Harper was key tracking down news clips
and putting together vocal tracks. William Brennan and will Bostwick
were our fact checkers, and their careful eyes caught mistakes
that saved me public embarrass Tory Mohne did the marketing,
and her enterprising work placed this story where people could
(52:05):
find it. Emily kim Brow and Victoria Milner did the
America's girl's art that brought visual flare and continuity to
our audio production. Megan krit is the executive producer, and
in addition to giving valuable insight, she gave me the
push I needed to keep going at a very challenging time.
Patrick Michaels is the editor and producer, and on days
(52:28):
when I could barely put two sentences together, Patrick stood
beside me and helped us get where we needed to go.
I couldn't have done this without him. Our theme song
is Enough by the Bralettes, an all female band from Dallas,
and that song is so catchy. Even my mother, who
has not paid attention to pop music since the Beatles
(52:48):
started doing drugs, thinks it's awesome. I want to thank
the cheerleaders who spoke to me on and off the record,
who dared to trust a journalist with a story so
deeply personal. And lastly, I want to thank you humble
podcast listener. I was worried that people would not want
to hear the voices of women who were mostly known
(53:10):
for their looks. But if you've gotten this far, I
guess you proved me wrong. You can find Noah Guzman
on TikTok at Noah dot Jade spelled j A I D. E.
Tape of Judy Trammel in the nineties is from E
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