NFL cheerleaders have spent years fighting for justice. Why don’t we take them seriously?
For Mhkeeba Pate, no Super Bowl will ever beat the 2014 game. Her hometown team, the Seattle Seahawks, fought from underdog status to domination over the Denver Broncos, knocking them out 43-8. And Pate had the best seats in the house – she was on the field the entire time. Pate, who was a Seattle “Sea Gal” cheerleader for five seasons from 2011–2017, remembers seeing the likes of Gayle King taking her seat near the sideline, and dancing for and with fans.
“It was just amazing. Getting to dance in the end zone. It’s the ultimate experience. That’s our Super Bowl, too,” says Pate.
But 2014 also marks a low point in the cheer world, the beginning of an unraveling that the industry is still working through today. Less than two weeks before Pate performed at the Super Bowl, the former Oakland Raiders cheerleader Lacy Thibodeaux-Fields filed the first class-action lawsuit against the NFL regarding cheerleaders’ compensation, alleging wage theft and gender discrimination. She alleged she was paid only for the hours she was performing – not the thrice-weekly rehearsals or her work as an ambassador for the Raiders at events. At the end of the 2013-2014 season, she was paid a lump sum of $1,250. For comparison, an NFL mascot could earn up to $65,000 in a year.
More lawsuits followed, including one from a former “Buffalo Jill” cheerleader who claimed she pocketed just $105 for an entire season after paying over $600 for her uniform. By the fall of 2020, 10 of the NFL’s 26 teams had been slapped with wage theft, harassment, unsafe working conditions or discrimination suits.
For the most part, these lawsuits flew under the radar, and the show went on.
The NFL’s “pom”-style cheerleading can feel like a holdout from a different era. But could it be, too, that our attitudes about cheerleading are outdated? There is something in the inherent, rigid femininity of cheerleading, it seems, that makes us less likely to take seriously the struggles those in the industry face. Instead, we deride cheerleaders for embracing a type of femininity that many women have been encouraged to adhere to their whole lives. The complacency with which we ignore their tribulations reflects some of the stickiest aspects of misogyny: the idea that women must prove themselves deserving of equality. And this disregard for cheerleaders – whom the NFL-cheerleader-turned-journalist Emily Leibert calls “a group of women that even feminists tend to forget about or otherwise conveniently misplace their compassion for” – helps shield the teams, their squad owners and the NFL from responsibility.
We don’t seem to mind that many NFL teams force their dancers to adhere to strict codes of conduct in their off hours. According to leaked rule documents obtained by the New York Times, as well as cheerleader testimony, some teams’ rules have included a prohibition on sweatpants in public, a requirement to stay within three pounds of one’s “ideal weight”, and a mandate to leave a restaurant if a player or executive happens to enter.
With NFL cheerleading scandals and lawsuits breaking somewhat regularly for nearly a decade, many teams are considering what the future of their “traditional”, all-women sideline cheer squads should be. Some have changed their squads’ names, switched up their uniforms, or added men to their teams. Some have gotten rid of their cheer squads altogether. But if you ask many cheerleaders – whose voices are conspicuously absent from much of the decision-making – it isn’t cheerleading that needs to be reconsidered. What needs to be reconsidered is how we regard the problems plaguing the professional cheerleading world – and where we place the blame.
For years, cheerleaders and a small cadre of journalists have been calling attention to the real culprits of the issue: the executives who have repeatedly abused their power. In 2018, the New York Times broke a story that described the Washington Commanders staff allegedly inviting suite holders and sponsors to watch an annual swimsuit calendar shoot in 2013 – without approval from the cheerleaders. (While the calendar’s convenient cropping meant the end product would feature no nudity, some of the shoots were done topless.)
Some women were also told they would be expected to accompany those high-rollers to dinner. During this particular shoot in Costa Rica, team officials held on to the cheerleaders’
passports. Two years later, executives of the same team were accused of creating “best of” videos of nipple slips and other risque moments from two earlier calendar shoots, setting one 10-minute sizzle reel to classic rock and circulating it among leadership. In 2021, the team and the cheerleaders reached a confidential settlement. Some of these men remain in their jobs today.
The same year, a complaint against Richard Dalrymple, former public relations head of the Dallas Cowboys, alleged that he – the very man responsible for calming the seas of scandal and maintaining a good image for the team – secretly filmed cheerleaders in their dressing room. The Cowboys settled the case for $2.4m last year, with just shy of $400,000 going to each of the four accusing cheerleaders. Other opaque settlements meted out in arbitration – often a contract requirement – have garnered back wages or payouts for some cheerleaders in recent years. But still, many cheerleaders are paid minimum wage for their work in the titanic football industry. And many harassment settlements have come with non-disclosure agreements attached.
The various lawsuits don’t come as a surprise to Pate. During her cheer career, it was understood that she had it good as a Sea Gal. She didn’t have to pay her own way to the Super Bowl, like some teams’ dancers. She was paid for every hour she worked (though she playfully referred to her cheerleading income as “gas money”). The Seahawks were never named in any class-action suit, and Pate says she never personally experienced harassment. But, she says, there are always NFL fans and staff looking to exploit the arrangement. There is, Pate says, an “entitlement to be able to access cheerleaders in whatever way they wanted to”.
‘How dare those little bimbos’
Cheerleaders, many of whom have worked most of their lives for a chance to dance professionally with the NFL, are in a bind, says Kathleen Colaluca, a former squad member.
“They’re scared to address the negativity [because] there’s so much more positivity that they gain from it,” says Colaluca, who cheered in college and served for three seasons from 2004 and 2008 as a “cheerleader ambassador” for the Washington Commanders – a position that doesn’t involve cheering on the field, but rather attending team events in uniform and connecting with fans on behalf of the team. “It’s where I built unbreakable friendships,” Colaluca says.
Now, she’s coaching a team in Virginia called the Springfield Youth Club All Stars. She says her 11-yearold daughter, who is on the team, has great friends because of cheer, and that she’s learned confidence, discipline and adaptability. The team combines the stunting and tumbling of competitive cheerleading with more traditional “pom”-style dancing. Cheerleading, she tells me, isn’t losing steam. “We’ve seen a huge increase,” she says. Her squad’s enrollment has exploded since the pandemic.
Still, she realizes that one of the few professional avenues for the next generation of cheerleaders is laden with controversy and abuse. “It’s terrible. Sad,” Colaluca says. “I’m a coach because I want to change it.”
The way she sees it, abuse and harassment isn’t inherent to cheerleading. And she doesn’t think the whole aesthetic tradition needs to be scrapped. “The makeup and the glitter, the girls – and the boys – just love it,” she says. “People forget to make it fun.”
The aesthetic tradition Colaluca refers to – the red lips, crop tops, short pleated skirts, and dialed-up femininity – didn’t start until the early 70s, though “cheer leading” became a formalized extracurricular activity in the 1920s. Men held those spots on the sideline until women replaced them during the second world war and never left; since it wasn’t classified as a “sport”, cheerleading presented a rare opportunity for women to dabble in sports before Title IX.
In 1954, the Baltimore (now Indianapolis) Colts became the first NFL team with dedicated cheerleaders. It was a different era of pro football – one of local owners and hometown heroes, of paltry player paychecks or, in the case of the Colts, payment in the form of post-game beers – and the modest cheer squad fit right in.
But the cheerleading world changed for ever in 1972 thanks to visionary Dee Brock and choreographer Texie Waterman, who transformed the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders from prudently dressed high school girls (who earned their pay in game tickets) into highenergy dancers with fervid sex appeal. They were all to be at least 18 years old, sexy, tantalizing, all-American. The squad was an instant, if controversial, hit.
Hundreds of women vied for a spot. Seen by many as representing sexual freedom and being progressive – the troupe had been racially integrated since 1965 and by the time the new look was debuted, half of the squad was Black – the Cowboy cheerleaders also drew criticism from certain factions of the burgeoning feminist movement. Many men, meanwhile, adored the cheerleaders only insofar as they could feel ownership over them. Sarah Hepola, who produced a podcast about the squad, documents that, by the late 1970s, fans would chase and grab at the cheerleaders. Some received unsolicited phone calls, prompting at least one dancer to move; another moved after waking up to a strange man at her bedside.
None of this stopped other NFL teams from quickly forming squads in the image of the Dallas girls. Meanwhile, the league was beginning to pay out handsome salaries for players, but the cheering women didn’t get comparable remuneration – by the late 1970s, some were still unpaid. It would take until the 1990s for the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders to exceed their longstanding payment of $15 per game.
In 1995, New York’s Buffalo Jills became the first NFL cheer team to vote to unionize, arguing for better pay, reimbursements for travel to Super Bowls, and more say over where they practiced and their appearance, attire and performances. The backlash was swift and vicious. “I feel I’ve been stabbed in the back by people I thought were my friends,” said Andy Gerovac, the owner of the Jills. “It’s not like they work in the coalmines.”
In a 1995 satire piece, the Los Angeles Times columnist Robin Abcarian wrote: “How dare those little bimbos … Don’t those Snowbelt sweater girls know that unions are made for people who actually work?” She added: “Why would a grown woman who volunteers her time to cheer a professional football team whose players and owners make millions of dollars a year think she is entitled to any of the decency and dignity accorded your average letter carrier?”
Abcarian’s satire isn’t far from what the casual observer could hear – then as now – spoken earnestly on sports talk radio or in barstool conversations. “Cheerleaders in professional sports are nothing more than showpieces for someone to look at who gets a twitch from a girlie magazine,” said Chuck Dickerson, Bills coach turned radio broadcaster, at the time. “They don’t make a difference.”
‘The answer is to address the misconduct’
In recent years, many NFL teams have started reassessing their relationship to cheerleading. Some teams have made meaningful changes, such as ensuring cheerleaders are paid, even minimally, for every hour worked. Some changes are more subtle: “the look” has veered ever so slightly away from impossibly thin hourglass and Eurocentric – a change Pate is glad to see. “Sometimes as an African American cheerleader, you’re being questioned about your body or your diet or your exercise because you have hips,” says Pate, who in her rookie year was one of only two Black cheerleaders on the 32-person Sea Gals squad.
As for other changes in the industry, Pate feels like they’re focused on the wrong targets. “It makes it seem as though we are the problem,” she says. “And I don’t think we ever were the problem. The answer is to address the misconduct by these male executives that are doing these deplorable things.”
Instead, Pate’s beloved Sea Gals (now the “Seahawks Dancers”) as well as the Buccaneers, the Los Angeles Rams, the Carolina Panthers and many other teams have shaken up the structure by adding men, a move that has been met with a mixed response from cheerleaders. Some teams, including the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Minnesota Vikings, and Cincinnati Bengals, have put their cheerleaders in less revealing outfits. The Vikings have switched from an annual swimsuit calendar to one that favors shots from the gym.
The film-maker Yu Gu, who documented cheerleaders’ legal battle for fair compensation in her 2019 film A Woman’s Work: The NFL’s Cheerleader Problem, feels similarly to Pate. “While some of the changes are positive, many were simply misguided, like de-sexualizing uniforms,” she says. Among the most devastating and enraging “solutions”, she told me, was the choice of some teams to do away with their squads all together. (The Buffalo Bills disbanded their team after the 2014 lawsuit, and the Washington Commanders ended their squad in 2021. The LA Chargers did away with their dancers in 2022, reportedly on financial grounds.)
“There are a lot of people suffering in this country. When you see the image of a most likely white, blonde woman in perfect lipstick … How can they be suffering, too?” Gu asks. But she says that in the simultaneous exaltation and degradation of cheerleaders, there is common cause for all women. “It’s a paradox, but it’s the paradox of this whole country. There are common roots to so much of the injustice here.”
In October 2021, a light flickered at the end of the tunnel in cheerleaders’ struggle for gender equity and fair treatment. In response to allegations by cheerleaders and other female employees of the Washington Commanders and the NFL, Congress launched a House oversight committee investigation into repeated mistreatment.
Two months ago, the findings were released, with the committee confirming that the NFL had “mishandled pervasive sexual harassment and misconduct at the Washington Commanders”.
As cheerleaders know all too well, not all that glitters is gold. At the conclusion of the year-long investigation, Democrats and Republicans on the committee released separate reports on their findings. Included as an exhibit in the Republican report was a collection of about 60 emails, originally sent from the former Washington Commanders president Bruce Allen to other NFL coaches and executives. Purportedly included as evidence, some of those emails contained topless photos of cheerleaders.
The images were circulated among Congress through the report, redacted only with thin black bars over some body parts. While seeking justice for the involuntary dissemination of their bodies, cheerleaders once more became victims of voyeurism. In this industry built on the winks and nudges of the men in charge, many cheerleaders have been left, yet again, with the rage ignited when the appalling is also unsurprising.
When you see the image of a mostly likely white, blonde woman in perfect lipstick … how can they be suffering, too?
Yu Gu, film-maker