Don’t gain weight. It was one of the most staunchly enforced rules on the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, a place of rules aplenty. Back in the seventies, the cheerleaders were told to lose ten pounds, thanks to constant cameras. But by the nineties, the “perfect look” also included a new vogue for ultra-thinness, big breasts, and straight hair, a particular challenge for the black women on the squad. “Body shaming” and racial consciousness weren’t buzzwords back then. The lawsuits that would eventually shift the culture of pro cheer hadn’t made headlines.
In the sixth episode of America’s Girls, we meet two cheerleaders from the nineties, a decade that brought Super Bowl wins and hedonistic scandal for the Dallas Cowboys, but those two women were mostly trying to stay on the squad. They describe “the weight list” posted on the locker room door and the mighty struggles so many endured to avoid getting benched for a game: Dietary supplements, ephedrine, plastic jogging suits. You don’t have to be a cheerleader to remember these quick fixes. The nineties took the eighties’ home-exercise craze to a new level.
The story of getting “the perfect look” as a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader isn’t just about genetics or any makeup protocol, but also about race and class. The Truth Behind the Poms podcast host Mhkeeba Pate explains the challenges women of color face in pro cheer, where conventional beauty standards and expensive dance classes can be a roadblock in a career that doesn’t pay much while simultaneously being quite elite.
But the advent of the cheerleaders’ CMT reality show Making the Team, beginning in 2006, made these often private struggles quite public. One training camp candidate remembers the traumatic appearances on the show that changed how she saw cheerleading, and her own body.
Here are some of the stories that helped us understand the culture, and the women navigating it. —Sarah Hepola