What am I watching? America's Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders

Everything’s bigger in Texas, and the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders showed the viewers that so is performing, competing and shining. What didn’t we expect to see? Egos and nepotism.

Netflix released a series called “America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders” on June 20, and the internet can’t stop talking about it. Viewers are obsessed with the athletes, the coaches and the grit, but the series also makes viewers question some of the ethics of the Cowboys franchise. If you didn’t finish this series in one sitting, I do not understand. 

I was on the edge of my seat for all the episodes. However, I was worried there would be no action after the 36 cheerleaders were picked because there’s no end season goal or competition, but this was not the case. If you are like me and were drawn to this because of your fascination with the Netflix series Cheer, then I am sure you loved the series. We might be able to contribute this to the fact they were both directed by Greg Whiteley, who loves to tell the story of underdogs, or it might just be the drama. But similar to the series of a southern and more traditional industry, there were questions raised by the audience about relationships, hierarchy and corruption. 

Vets vs. Rookies

The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders are a team and franchise with extreme hierarchy, respect and skills. I really enjoyed getting to know all of the characters on the team, especially through their confessionals. When you watch the girls dance and when you hear them speak, I sometimes feel like they are two different people, so I really enjoyed getting to see both sides —the performer and the human. 

It is the expectation for the dancers to leave after five years of being on the team, perhaps because their pay stops increasing after five years, but it could also be due to the physical destruction of their bodies through elite training all year. I wanted to highlight my favorite (and everyone’s honestly) favorite veteran and rookie on the squad during the 2023 season. 

Kelcey Wetterberg

Kelcey Wetterberg was so amazing in the series. She is a natural leader who everyone respects because she cares so much about things being done right, but she also is human enough to care about her teammates. There is a line in a lot of sports where the leader has to separate from the group to maintain respect on a skill and career level, but she is so good at balancing being a friend to the rest of her teammates. She also shared so much with the viewers throughout the season, from her difficult job as a nurse to her engagement to her actor fiancé. 

Reece Weaver

Reece Weaver was just such a light in this series. You could kind of tell from her first interview and then you absolutely knew at her audition that she has “it.” She is a natural performer who is confident, but also not egotistical about how good she is. I know Weaver is DCC to a “T” and if you picked up on how much she was front and center, everyone wanted her to shine. 

Kelli Finglass & Judy Trammell 

These are the two women in charge of this organization. Kelli Finglass is the director of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and makes all the big decisions, disciplines the dancers and manages the team. She was on the squad from 1984 to 1989, and has been working for the franchise ever since. I really respect Finglass, I will start there. You can tell she cares so much about the routines, image, traditions, eliteness and more. She is exactly who needs to be in charge of something so respectable, but it is hard to watch. 

You hear Finglass talk about how much she loves and respects the women on the squad, but you don’t always see it. Sure, that could just be the role of a coach, but she seems more isolated from the team than I would expect her to be. I think she is also a little too hard on these women, they are absolute superstars before they even made the team and the directors act like they weren’t. Another scene where she seemed to look a little down on the girls was when she singled out Kleine for being upset there wasn’t an ornament for her. I feel like it was a human reaction for Kleine to look for her name and be a little hurt her name was the only one missing. And instead of pulling her aside, she decided to make it an entire talking point about being a “good christian” and how Kleine wasn’t being one because she was being selfish. However, I do respect the entirety of what Finglass has done as director. She has launched the cheerleaders into a movement and helped them elevate in every way. 

Judy Trammell was a more confusing character to watch and analyze on the show. Her appearance and demeanor make her look like a very innocent and sweet woman, but she also is very critical of the dancers. She is the head choreographer of the cheerleaders and was on the squad herself 1980 to 1984. But you can tell she is good at what she does. Those routines that she choreographs and teaches are absolutely breathtaking. 

Thunderstruck would not be what it is if Trammell and Finglass were not calling out every unpointed toe and unenergized face. They are exactly what the squad needs, right?

Nepo Baby Charlotte Jones and Salary 

Viewers and fans of the show have been participating in a bit of Charlotte Jones hate online. I do identify as a bit of a hater because I did not like the way she spoke about the dancers and how little she demonstrated respect towards them.

Jones did not have a large role, but two particular experiences really stand out from her screentime: her thoughts on the cheerleaders’ salary and her explicit use of her family’s name. 

Just to begin, the women on the squad are not compensated financially enough for the work they do. One of the girls said it is a full-time job, with part-time pay. Jones’ rationale for this was that being one of the cheerleaders is an honor and the girls aren’t doing it for the money. According to a Forbes 2023 article, the Dallas Cowboys have the highest current value, make the most revenue and have the largest operating income of the entire NFL franchise. If you have the money, then why can’t you pay the girls? 

“There’s a lot of cynicism around pay for NFL cheerleaders—as it should be. They’re not paid a lot. But the facts are, they actually don’t come here for the money. They come here for something that’s actually bigger than that to them. They have a passion for dance. There are not a lot of opportunities in the field of dance to get to perform at an elite level. It is about being a part of something bigger than themselves. It is about a sisterhood that they are able to form, about relationships that they have for the rest of their life. They have a chance to feel like they are valued, they are special, and they are making a difference. When the women come here, they find their passion and they find their purpose.” - Charlotte Jones

According to Sports Illustrated, the DCC make “$500 per game or approximately $10,000 for a season's worth of games.” Per the reporting of older articles, like this PBS article, NFL cheerleaders have not always been paid a lot and this $500 salary is one of the highest in the industry. Perhaps you can rationalize this and say, “Well at least they aren’t getting paid the same as this other team.” However, no one should have to defend their salaries in the first place, they should be high enough for there not to be a debate. If it truly is one of the highest levels of cheerleading, make the pay comparable.

In terms of the blatant nepotism displayed by Jones in the show, I think it can all be summed up with the flashback clip from the old DCC show, “Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team.” Jones asked a girl “Who is the owner of the Dallas Cowboys?” The sweet girl did not know, and maybe she should have, but that essentially was asking “Do you know who my daddy is?” In my opinion, it is very embarrassing for her to only have power by being her father’s daughter. 

Both Jones and her father, Jerry Jones, spoke about how there were a lot of family members involved in the Dallas Cowboys franchise. There are cousins, siblings, parents and more working at some level in the franchise. Now is this a sweet family business, or is this the new way of keeping it (power) in the family? 

Obsession with Appearances 

This is a more gray-line issue for me. I am aware the cheerleaders are expected to look a certain way, and you can argue that “look” is just the body of a fit, strong dancer. But at a certain point, you can’t always maintain a size 0 body and sustain your strengthening body to dance for hours every single day. 

To play devil’s advocate for one minute, I do understand the franchise wanting the girls to look attractive and inshape. It is all in line with them being “America’s sweethearts.” Sounds awfully familiar to the Victoria’s Secret fashion show, but that’s a story for another time. Especially in the world of dance, bodies are supposed to look a certain way and unfortunately that normally is extremely thin. 

We really see the negative side of this with Victoria Kalina. I wish they dove deeper into this issue, maybe asked other girls about their experiences because you could tell Kalina didn’t want to speak too much on it, and they kept bringing it up. Finglass and Trammell spoke about wanting the girls to be fueled, but I wish we got to see what that meant and how the women took care for themselves. 

Of course, from the outside the whole thing can come across as superficial, but those dancers are strong, skilled women and their appearances aren’t everything, until it is. I also felt so bad for Ari McClure, who Jones made Finglass and Trammell cut because she was too short and said she looked like a junior. 

And the makeup those girls had to put on every single day, while they were absolutely working their asses off hurts me. I cannot imagine sweating and moving the way they do with an eyelash glued to my lid and my hair curled to oblivion. 

Identity Crisis After DCC

A hard thing to watch was the obvious identity crisis that so many former DCC girls were going through after they retired. Caroline Sundvold was the character who just retired because of her hip problems and had a sister start her rookie year. She was an absolute phenomenon who didn’t just walk away from cheering, but had it taken away from her with how much pain she was in after the jump-split and kickline destroyed her body. 

However, it wasn’t just her that viewers saw yearn to be apart of the DCC community again. It was sad for them to go from always being surrounded with girls their age, facing similar issues to living a completely different, isolated life with no familiar faces around daily to support them. It really made sense when one of the girls was explaining this and said whenever she was going through something while on the team her teammates would be encouraging and be like ‘We get it too girl but get up we got to go to practice.” There is no one helping them up anymore. There is nowhere to get up for. 

It was also a little melancholy to watch all the alumni come back for the one half time show. All these women, from the 70s to now, dressed up in their glitter t-shirts that read “former DCC” and more, to learn a little choreography and stand on the field again. It was just sad to think about this phase of their life decades ago is still the peak of their existence. Of course that isn’t true about all of them, but it was hard not to think about how these women have changed since their “prime” in their early 20s. 

DCC’s Agenda

It is interesting watching a show like this one, where there were obvious narratives of what the franchise wanted to share with the world and what Netflix was directed to share were different. 

One explanation could be the limit of DCC control in this series. Finglass and Jones are actually listed as executive producers of the previous DCC show “Making the Team” and they were not involved in this production.

The obvious idea the show and characters were trying to showcase was how elite DCC is. The show made me respect those girls so much because they work so hard and go through a lot to get there. These women break their bodies to become a DCC. You see how hard they have to push through injuries and illnesses later in the season when they have Holiday shows and appearances, on top of the football games. There was a clip where one of the cheerleaders was saying how she had strep but was still at practice. All I can say is when I had strep a couple of years ago, I was crying trying to swallow my soup because it hurt so bad. Poor girl. 

Another aspect of eliteness is the appearance the cheerleaders have to maintain all the time. It was a point of the show that the girls are instructed to go to practice and show constantly in full hair and makeup. Can you imagine being in the Texas heat during the summer training camp where you have to show off 110% of your abilities to make the team in full coverage foundation and pageant queen hair? 

Another theme of the show was community and support. It was so obvious these women find a family and community in each other, and I really loved seeing this wholesome side of the grind. I think the most empowering moment of the show was everyone’s response to Sophy Laufer getting groped by a photographer at a game. All the girls were so supportive of her and not once questioned her. It started conversations of sexual harassment in the industry and how a lot of people just view them as eye-candy and not human beings. Kelcey also exposed how a stalker put an AirTag on her car and how terrifying this experience was. 

As expected with the franchise being in Dallas, another community string throughout the show is religion. The girls go to a service together and sound bites from the sermon are used throughout an episode. Reece spoke the most about her faith and relationship with God, but most of the girls did speak about their religion as well.

Final Takeaways 

Even though I did pull a lot of negatives out of this show, I want to share that I was captivated and dying to know what happened next while watching the entire series. Netflix also did an amazing job of filming, editing and producing. Who knows how good the show would have been without the great song choices and illuminating confessionals. 

The show also showcased some extremely unique scenarios, like when Dolly Parton performed during halftime during the Thanksgiving Day show. Just a callout from this interaction, I found it surprising they took Reece to meet Dolly, when she is a rookie, over some vets, especially Kelcey. I think that just proves that she has “it” and is the epitome of what a DCC is and what the franchise wants the girls to be like - religious, beautiful, sweet and humble. 

And let’s just give those girls the credit they deserve for their dance routines. A, the moves and rhythm are very hard. But, B, the fact they don’t know what they are about to dance to is crazy. If you missed this part of the show, the girls basically just play “follow the leader” with routines. The DJ plays music and the leader of the group picks one of the dozens of dances that they think matches the rhythm and all the girls have to pick it up and follow. And oh my goodness, the thunderstruck routine is crazy. They have to book it down the field and give their all for so long, just to end it with an insane kickline and dropsplit. I respect them as athletes so much. 

Saying this, I want to close on the emphasis these girls deserve better. They deserve better treatment and more respect by the franchise. I really hope all the backlash everyone involved has received will benefit the women. 

And if you want to read more, there is an excellent article in TIME by Judy Berman.