Thunderstruck: Watching America’s Sweethearts

Happy (almost) International Women’s Day 2025! Taking a break from watching the chaos unfold in the news to go back to my favourite binge-watching from last summer. Enjoy!

Last summer I binge-watched “America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders” on Netflix. The show reminded me of the 1978 musical, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (BLW), a country music, dance extravaganza about the closing of a fabled Texas brothel. Known as the Chicken Ranch, the eponymous house operated in La Grange, Texas from 1905 to 1973. The musical (and the 1983 movie adaptation with Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds) draws explicitly on the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, (DCC) through the onstage version of the fictional Texas Aggie College cheerleaders, the Texas Aggie “Angelettes.” As described in the New York Times review:

There is one brilliant number, a dance routine in which the football team's cheerleaders come on. Each of the six is a blue‐eyed, vacant‐faced blonde. Each carries two life‐sized, blue‐eyed, vacant‐faced blonde dolls attached, one to each arm. The 18-member line is hilarious; the dolls—thanks to some ingenious springy legs—bouncing even more idiotically than the dancers. (New York Times, 1978)

The links to the DCC are also evident in the show’s subtler (though not all that subtle) analogies drawn between the women performing in the brothel, the cheerleaders performing on the sidelines and, of course, the actors performing as both on stage. As actors, the women in the company straddle the historical links between actresses and prostitutes, and the demands of women performing for the presumed male audience’s gaze. Indeed, the demands of being a successful Broadway dancer (both then and now) are little different from the demands of the cheerleaders and as implied throughout the show, the physical and emotional challenges of sex work. The show is thoroughly satire, in particular toward the politicians and law enforcement who operate hypocritically throughout, but the main critique is in the show’s presentation of women’s work in the context of late 1970s feminism. The musical’s implicit narrative highlights the expectations and opportunities of women’s labour as both inherently physical and risky, no matter how admired or subversive that work might be.

I found all of this resonant as I watched the Netflix documentary series about the history and current performers on the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders team. The physical demands and required effort is visible throughout, most obviously in some cheerleaders’ descriptions of multiple surgeries following years of performing damaging moves such as the jump-splits in the group’s iconic pre-game routine to the AC/DC song, “Thunderstruck.” (See a 2022 version here.) Director Greg Whiteley also draws attention to the emotional and psychological tolls experienced by the women of the DCC. For example, an early episode’s edits highlight the disappointments of those who do not make the final squad. There is scene in which the DCC Director, Kelli Finglass argues unsuccessfully with the Cowboys’ Chief Brand Officer, Charlotte Jones, to keep just one extra squad member. The scene then moves to the subsequent cuts of the last two applicants and is particularly moving. Whiteley also repeatedly highlights the challenges faced by the women who are on the team as they navigate the demanding schedule (rehearsals, game days and the many community events), constant scrutiny (and more) from fans, media, and their vulnerability to nefarious actors, ranging from the men who try to get too close, to stalkers who follow them home, to an incident of alleged sexual harassment during a game. Several of the subsequent articles and essays about the show highlighted these inequalities of women’s labour: https://time.com/6989744/americas-sweethearts-netflix-review/.

Of course, we might draw similar comparisons to the men on the field, who exist largely as the unnamed and undifferentiated backdrop for the women (both of the DCC and the Chicken Ranch); a kind of reversal of the lens typically aimed at American football. After many years of research on head injuries, average career lengths and particularly chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), it is unavoidable that when we watch professional football, we are paying to watch highly trained, very large men risk injury over and over. But, while the men on the field are making at least the league minimum of $795,000 to $985,000 (depending on previous years of experience) and often much more, the women of DCC are making little more than minimum wage. In both groups, the audience is consuming other people’s pain and bodily suffering for our own pleasure, but the demands on the women are not only that they are available for our viewing, but also must convey — relentlessly at times — that no matter what else happens, they enjoy it. This is the message delivered by most of the team members, though occasional critiques creep in from the alumni, such as former DCC member, Kat, who begs her friend Victoria to quit the DCC.

The Netflix series also highlights the legacy of Suzanne Mitchell, director of the DCC from 1976 to 1989. Her extensive rules continue to inform the team policies today and to my eye, seem to have been a direct inspiration for Miss Mona’s rules as outlined in the early show number, “A Lil' Ole Bitty Pissant Country Place.” Both Mitchell’s and Mona’s lists include prohibitions on: chewing gum, tattoos, lateness, and disagreements with the (notably all-female) leadership. Or, as DCC invokes repeatedly, “Yes Ma’am.”

But, for the purposes of this blog, perhaps the most interesting point of comparison is the role of media performance in both shows. It’s easy to mistake The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas as escapist fluff (as did a number of reviewers for the 1982 movie adaptation), but it’s also a critique of American media and what changes under the glare of the camera’s attention. Narratively, the activities on the Chicken Ranch are only a problem when a popular television personality, Melvin P. Thorpe (based on the journalist Marvin Zindler who broke the Chicken Ranch story) highlights the story, focusing the glare of the media on what the musical portrays as a feel-good community service organization (one lyric states explicitly, “there’s nothing dirty goin’ on”). Indeed the saddest moments of the show are not directed toward the work in the Chicken Ranch, but its closing. The antagonist is less the Sherrif (a frequent customer fond of Miss Mona) or the slippery Governor, but rather its the media.

In the Netflix series, Finglass and the team’s choreographer Judy Trammell, draw repeated attention to how the women will appear on not only the field, but more importantly, on the large stadium screens. It is, as they say, where the real performance will take place for the Cowboys’ many fans. Auditions are filmed with prospective DCC members evaluated for how they appear on screen; a factor that may have also shaped the series itself as the episodes focus primarily on only a few women on the DCC squad. The most punishing choreography, such as the jump splits, are designed specifically for the effects they create on screen, both the stadium jumbotron and the millions of screens that feature the DCC, including both the televised football games and the social media platforms. The DCC coaches are rarely seen without their phones and with the team’s instagram account at 1.3m followers, it’s easy to see why. (Also noteworthy, though perhaps coincidental is that the alleged harassment during a game was from one of the cameramen working at the stadium.)

To be clear, I’m neither defending nor criticizing sex work itself. (I have my opinions, but they’re not relevant here; same for cheerleading.) And I’m not saying that the work of the DCC (or any cheerleading squad for that matter) is akin to prostitution, although I think this is the central critique of the musical BLWIT in terms that are more favourably inclined toward the working girls than the cheerleaders it depicts as vapid, blow-up dolls. More interesting (to me, at least) is that the many similarities, especially the role of media performances in both the musical and the Netflix series, support BLWIT’s original claim that the real tragedy of women’s work is not found in the work itself. As the show proudly sings throughout, work freely chosen has dignity and meaning. This is also true for most of the DCC members, who in spite of everything, talk about the joys and pleasures of being on the team, and the camaraderie is even more salient among the many alumnae who return to celebrate the new team and each other every year. What The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas states clearly is that the attention of the media (read: male) gaze distorts this work and turns the labour, and therefore bodies, into pure commodity. That this occurs at the intersection of sports, media, and musical theatre (have not even delved into choreography!) makes this one of the more compelling reality series I’ve seen in a long time. And apparently it’s back for season 2 later this year. Stay tuned!