The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and the Maddening Pursuit of Perfection
My guilty pleasure is a Netflix docuseries.
And so, unsurprisingly, when the first season of Netflix’s America's Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders premiered in June 2024, I was immediately hooked. I had been vaguely familiar with the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (DCC) prior to watching the docuseries, mostly able to recognize the iconic blue and white uniforms, but not necessarily able to say much else about the organization.
The structure of the show is unique, walking a fine line between dramatic reality television and critical commentary. Similar to its predecessor – Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team – America’s Sweethearts centers on individual girls as they navigate trials and tribulations on the road to becoming a DCC. Dripping with personal dramas and tension, the individual stories featured in America’s Sweethearts gives the docuseries the feel of classic reality TV.
However, the Netflix show diverges from the CMT original through its integration of cutting social commentary. Viewers become well-versed in the often bizarre, and at times deeply unsettling, rules and expectations that govern the DCC.
For example, a DCC cannot gain weight. While not explicitly written in the rulebook (yes, there is a rulebook), the mandate is subtly but not-so-subtly enforced through coach remarks and other indirect pressures. In a segment about uniforms during the first season, former DCC Victoria Kalina explains “You don’t get a new uniform. Like, once you’re fitted for that uniform, that size is the size that you get. You don’t get to go up. If you go up, they’re like, ‘Why does this not fit you?’”
Season 1 piqued my interest in the absurd and painfully outdated world of the DCC. When Season 2 dropped on Netflix on June 18th, I was eager to learn more. While the first season pulled the curtain back, Season 2 digs deeper, exposing the immense pressure and unrealistic expectations placed on the women.
What is expected of the DCC is nothing short of impossible.The role demands that they embody all the contradictions of womanhood, distilled into a single, highly scrutinized image. A DCC must be sweet, wholesome, and the perfect all-American girl, but also seductive and sexy. Not provocative, though. Nor overly meek or modest. A perfect balance must be struck, at once appealing to aspirational beauty and the male fantasy, while also epitomizing Texas Christian values. It’s a minefield of mixed messages, a tightrope walk of double standards, one that these women must balance gracefully without faltering.
You must wear many hats as a DCC. Total devotion to the organization is a must, however so is being well-rounded and professionally ambitious. In Season 2, we follow several of the DCC group leaders through their day jobs. One dancer, Armani, works as a secretary at a law firm and plans to take the LSAT in order to apply to law school after her time with DCC. Another, Jada, is a cosmetics specialist at a dermatology practice, heading straight from work to lead DCC rehearsals in the evening. Chandi juggles up to five jobs during football season, including shifts at a Pilates studio, helping with her family’s mail-order pharmacy, working as a receptionist for a team sponsor, and managing social media for a pediatric dentistry—all on top of her (extensive) DCC responsibilities.
While admirable, this “ambition” isn’t just encouraged, but practically mandatory. The egregiously low wages (never disclosed, although understood to hover around Texas minimum wage) essentially requires the women to work multiple jobs in order to make ends meet. Charlotte Jones, Executive Vice President and Chief Brand Officer for the Dallas Cowboys, justified the criminally inadequate compensation in Season 1 with a ridiculous argument: the women should be motivated by their passion for dance rather than money. This is particularly egregious when considering that the DCC generates over $1 million for the Cowboys organization, which, per Forbes, earns more than $1 billion in annual revenue.
In Season 2, during a conversation with coaches Kelli Finglass and Judy Trammell, veteran cheerleader Amanda voices her frustration over the financial strain and the need to work overtime just to stay afloat. Judy’s response is disappointingly dismissive, scoffing that this struggle is exactly what makes the DCC so impressive. It’s a revealing moment, one that demonstrates that what matters isn’t the well-being of these women, but maintaining a flawless, effortless image that reinforces discipline and high standards – an image that has been deemed essential to the Dallas Cowboys brand. But despite the dancers being essential to the brand, they are not paid their value.
The number one unspoken rule is clear: above all, you must be grateful for this opportunity. If you can’t tolerate the constant nitpicking, unrealistic standards, harassment, and low wages, then you’re free to walk away. The famous Miranda Priestly quote —“a million girls would kill for this job”— is implied, if not outright stated. And this concept alone, like the entire DCC experience, is deeply gendered. It’s infuriating to watch as these elite athletes are infantilized, treated like naïve girls rather than professional adults, and constantly chided with the patronizing reprimand that they just don’t understand the gravity of this opportunity.
And while (spoiler alert!) the issue of low wages is eventually addressed by the end of Season 2, the underlying pressure and toxicity within the organization remains unchanged. The unyielding demand for perfection and the toll that this takes on the women is poignantly chronicled throughout the season, culminating in Chandi’s breakdown.
Chandi is introduced this season as a sixth-year veteran DCC, returning for one last season with aspirations to take on more of a leadership role. She begins the season with the accolades of a seasoned, successful DCC – she is named first group leader and chosen as the point of the triangle during the iconic “Thunderstruck” performance, two honors that not only signify elite status but effectively position her as the face of the DCC. However, despite all this, it is clear from the start that the relentless pressure to please everyone and maintain perfection is wearing Chandi down. Her stress and uncertainty are palpable during interviews.
In the confessional, Chandi opens up about her mental health struggles, evidently exacerbated by the ever-present strain of representing the DCC ideal. Eventually, toward the end of Season 2, Chandi commits a major DCC “no-no” when she invites a man back to her hotel room during the team’s trip to the Bahamas. While the details remain vague, it’s revealed that she is ultimately stripped of her esteemed leadership roles within the squad.
When Chandi reflects on this fateful choice throughout the show, it reads less like a rebellion and more like a quiet cry for help. In the interviews that follow, Chandi says that, while she recognizes that she broke a DCC rule, she had reached an incredibly low point. She explains that, in that moment at the hotel, she felt she had found someone who genuinely validated her feelings and made her feel heard. Against the backdrop of near-suffocating DCC expectations, her actions appear like an inevitable unraveling, rather than a sinister misstep.
Chandi’s breakdown feels like a near-inevitable consequence of the DCC system. This is what happens when rigid gender roles, oppressive beauty standards, religious control, and corporate greed collide: they create a machine that mercilessly consumes the very women it claims to celebrate. The pressure to be perfect – physically flawless, endlessly cheerful, morally upright, and constantly grateful – is something that many women know intimately. But witnessing these demands so intensely concentrated on a small group of young women is especially heartbreaking. It’s a magnified reflection of the quiet, daily battles that so many of us fight: the struggle to be accepted, to feel enough, all while confronting standards that erode our humanity. The DCC story is not just about cheerleaders, it’s about the exhausting toll of perfectionism enforced by a system that rewards performance over personhood.