'America's Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders' Is a Labor Story
Give paychecks, not platitudes.
Netflix cut a bad trailer for America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. They made it look like another piece of marketing in the Dallas Cowboys empire, and an easy partnership between two entertainment giants, Netflix and the NFL. Thankfully, Greg Whiteley, who previously directed the docuseries Cheer and Last Chance U, isn’t interested in a surface-level look at what it takes to become a cheerleader for the Cowboys. Instead, he manages the balance of appreciating all the hard work that goes into cheerleading while keeping an eye on the larger economic forces at work.
The seven-episode series follows young women in 2023 trying out for the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders and then following those who make the cut. Hundreds of women audition, but only thirty-six make the team. There are no long-term contracts. Even veterans have to try out again, so their employment by the Cowboys is always year-to-year. And what are the financial rewards for this precarious position? One former cheerleader puts the number at “around what a substitute teacher makes,” and a report in 2022 by NBC Boston says the salary is around $75,000 a year if you count every game, appearance, and practice.
For many of the cheerleaders, the DCC does not provide their primary source of income. Rather, it’s their second job on top of their 9-to-5. So after working all day, they come to rehearse into the late night hours, working for a team that generated $1.05 billion in 2022. According to the documentary, the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders (DCC) alone generates over $1 million a year for the Cowboys organization.
Watching America’s Sweethearts, it’s stunning and infuriating to see the management—specifically Director Kelli Finglass, Choreographer Judy Trammell, and Executive VP and Chief Brand Officer Charlotte Jones Anderson—fall into the abyss of arguing that DCC is prestigious, demanding, and only accepts the best of the best, while also underpaying the cheerleaders relative to their proclaimed importance to the organization and keeping them in a state of constant anxiety with regards to their employment status.
How does management attempt to bridge this gap? With pretty words. They use phrases like “trust the process” and “sisterhood.” These intangible feelings exist to paper over the tangible financial shortcomings of working for a wealthy organization that wants to extract as much value as possible from its cheerleaders without giving them any financial or career security. The management may claim that it’s only so demanding of its cheerleaders because they care so much about the organization, but you can be demanding and offer strong financial compensation. Whiteley knows this and makes it clear in the first episode where he examines how little the cheerleaders are paid while noting the high salaries for the NFL players.
In the case of sky-high player salaries, one could argue that this is simple supply and demand. An NFL roster has only 53 players, and the league minimum (from the collective bargaining agreement with the players’ union) for 2024 is $795,000. This is justified by the fact that there are only so many players who can play right tackle or any other position. But again—by the arguments of the DCC management, the same is true of the cheerleaders. There are few women who can handle the physical demands and the required look of a Cowboys cheerleader. If the job is highly skilled (and the documentary makes a convincing case that it is), then it’s worth more than what one could make for a job that’s less competitive in its hiring practices.
Money does not cheapen the prestige or pride of being a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader any more than someone in the organization would claim that the millions paid to the players somehow cheapens their role on the team. No one expects Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones to live out of a one-bedroom apartment because he’s running the team for a love of the game rather than any financial incentive. I’m sure Jones does love the team, but he also loves making money from the team, so why not extend this to the cheerleaders? Why burden them with year-to-year employment when such terms don’t apply to most others, whether players or staffers, in the Cowboys organization? If DCC only wants the best of the best, then has there been any serious consideration of replacing Finglass, Trammell, or Jones (who also happens to be Jerry Jones’ daughter)? Of course not; management is sacrosanct, but the cheerleaders have to compete every year.
The fundamental unfairness at work emerges in the season finale with the show’s most compelling figure, cheerleader Victoria Kalina. Kalina is open about how she’s struggled with her mental health and body image, and how she pushed herself to excel at DCC. Kalina has known Finglass and Tramell since she was a child because Kalina’s mother, Tina Kalina was, like Finglass and Trammell, a Cowboys cheerleader. Victoria pushes herself to her limit to please these authority figures, and yet Finglass and Trammell express no paternal affection for her.
Perhaps it’s just that they don’t want to show favoritism—but in their final meeting of the season, Kalina asks point blank if they think she has a shot in her fifth and final year to be a group captain. Finglass and Trammell hedge. Their response boils down to, “Sure, anything’s possible,” but from what we’ve seen of their private discussions, we know that they think Victoria has gone as far as she can. They want to keep her on the hook because they know she can do the routines and will be easy to slot in if they have trouble finding a rookie who instantly succeeds. She has no chance at a captaincy, but they want her to sacrifice her time, energy, body, and mental health so she can be someone who blends into the group. That’s not sisterhood. That’s not honorable. That’s not a process you can trust. That’s a cold, hard, business decision—and that’s fine, but you can’t have it both ways. If you’re going to run the DCC like a business, then you should pay your performers the market value for their work. It’s disingenuous to treat the DCC like a breezy extracurricular where everyone’s in it for fun. The cheerleaders deserve better.