Familiar as I am with the species, I wasn’t sure I needed to watch the Netflix documentary, “America’s Sweethearts: The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders,” a peek into the lives of the 2023-2024 squad. The seven-episode series takes us from the rigorous tryouts (and heartbreaking eliminations) to the tush-kicking training and through the whole season, including a Thanksgiving spectacular featuring Dolly Parton.
My seasoned guess is that one’s experience of the documentary varies by age. While these young women seem like children to me now, I can assure you I wouldn’t have been a sympathetic witness at 22, my age when the DCC first swished onto the Cowboys’ field 50 years ago. I wouldn’t have deigned to watch a football game, much less tolerate a bunch of scantily clad cheerleaders — an anachronistic insult to the freshly liberated generation of young women to which I belonged.
But I ended up binge-watching this countercultural hybrid of “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” (because you can’t quite believe your eyes), “Barbie” and “Legally Blonde,” with a family-style side of Tammy Faye Bakker’s “PTL Club.” Everyone is so nice, except of course my favorite characters: the women who run the show.
These are two tough broads, which I’m allowed to call them since we’re talking about adult cheerleaders. Director Kelli Finglass and choreographer Judy Trammell are both former cheerleaders and mature beauties who push their girls to perfection. They have passion, humor, enormous curlers, grace under pressure, uncompromising dedication to excellence, and blunt, if sometimes cruel, things to say to girls who don’t kick high enough, aren’t peppy enough or have their mascara wrong.
The documentary makes clear that most of the cheerleaders are dancers, and all are superb athletes. Ten were new recruits, the rest veterans, who have to re-audition each season. Two were daughters of former Dallas cheerleaders. Only a few weren’t from the South. One who hailed from California had a steep learning curve when it came to applying makeup. (I’m pretty sure the Southern girls had been wearing it since they were toddlers.)
There’s no pretending otherwise: Their job is to arouse the crowd, using their bodies for maximum sexual effect while wearing the iconic short shorts, white boots and midriff blouses. But you get the feeling they’re play-acting the way little girls might prance in front of a mirror, pretending to be Taylor Swift. They’re shocked when a photographer touches one of them “inappropriately,” as though there were another way. The squad has a strict “no-touch” policy. Male fans who pose for photos with them are handed a footfall to hold between their paws.
In addition to performing at games, the cheerleaders visit nursing homes and children’s hospitals and, not the least of their responsibilities, just try to “give people hope and happiness.” They’re a multimillion-dollar business for the football franchise, but their pay, according to one former cheerleader, is comparable to a full-time worker’s at Chick-fil-A.
Some online commenters upset by the pay inequity have urged the cheerleaders to unionize. Others have been infuriated by the plain exploitation of women in tiny togs for the entertainment of the grandstands of America’s most macho sport. But the cheerleaders say it’s a privilege to wear the uniform. Some credit God’s grace for their being in Dallas.
I was struck by the wide-eyed innocence of the featured cheerleaders, most of whom were in their early 20s. A standout is Reece, who is engaged to Will, her college sweetheart and not her match in any obvious way. He admits to having no big-dream plans, other than “to pursue this woman,” and lands a job at a pressure-washing business.
The couple is shown cooking “deer burgers,” made from Reece’s kill in Blount County, Ala. (It was her second deer but her first buck.) As they discuss their upcoming wedding, Will asks whether they have a registry at Home Depot. “Yes, is it practical?” she asks, as he eyes a sturdy shovel on a laptop screen.
We are to realize that these women, though superheroes for a while, are grounded in basic American values. They might not be what most young women aspire to be — or what many parents would want their daughters to be — but choice works all ways. Life as a cheerleader is short. Leaving the squad is understandably a challenging transition. Veronica, who followed in her mother’s bootsteps, is a fourth-year veteran who decides to retire.
“I feel like I’m being stripped naked and it scares the s— out of me,” she says.
As the closing soundtrack plays, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” the camera zooms in for a close-up of a cheerleader’s face as she removes her makeup. In the next frame, another gal peels away her false eyelashes. Clean-faced and unadorned, they begin to look more like Walker Evans portraits. We get it. So goes the bloom from the rose.
But God’s grace is infinite. As Reece says, “I know that in every season, the Lord always produces fruit.” I’m almost certain executive producer and director Greg Whiteley would agree. I’m betting on a Season 2, but praying for serious salaries for the cast — some of the best athletes in the world.
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