Talthough the Netflix series America’s sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders is filled with revelations about the organization, one of the most shocking is that despite the intense athletic demands and rigorous schedule of the elite team, many of the dancers also balance the work of being a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader with full-time jobs at to earn enough to survive. Since the series’ premiere, viewers have increasingly spoken out online about how low their salaries are, considering the lucrative organization they represent.
“The owners of the Dallas Cowboys justify paying their cheerleaders a paltry salary (equal to a ‘full-time Chick-fil-A worker’) because it’s a privilege and the women are finding their purpose, passion and sisterhood,” he wrote Amy Diehl, gender bias researcher and author of Glass walls about X (formerly Twitter). “Football players earn tens of millions a year.”
“It’s crazy to me that people who are worth billions of dollars don’t value the people who keep their brand afloat by paying them a living wage and then have crazy demands and crazy schedules that you’re paying pennies to do,” said one TikTok user who uses the handle @dani_bananni, “because obviously the money is there.”
In recent years, equal pay has been a prominent issue for female athletes in several professional sports leagues. In the NFL, the last decade has seen a growing number of cheerleaders beginning to speak out, after former Oakland Raiderette Lacy Thibodeaux-Fields filed the first class-action lawsuit against the NFL in 2014 for wage theft and gender discrimination. By 2020, O Guardian reported that 10 of the 26 NFL teams have received lawsuits for compensation, wage theft, hostile work environments and harassment.
Read more America’s sweethearts It’s a surprisingly unnerving portrait of pink-collar work at its best
The economy of professional joy
In the first episode of America’s sweetheartsdirected by Rejoice It is Last chance U creator Greg Whiteley, fifth-year senior Kelcey Wetterberg details her daily schedule, which involves working as a pediatric nurse from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. before heading to cheer practice, which sometimes goes until midnight. Other cheerleaders on the show also say they have jobs as flower girls and dance instructors. Although Wetterberg says she considers cheerleading a part-time job, the time commitment and demands expected of cheerleaders, both physical and emotional, are significant. They practice at least 20 hours a week, plus work game days and other appearances during the 18-week NFL regular season, plus training camp and additional off-season programming and the possibility of playoffs. In one episode, it is revealed that the cast would work 21 days straight, without a day off.
“A lot of us work full time and then go to DCC at night, so it can be very tiring,” says Wetterberg. “You give up a lot, but it’s five years of your life.”
Former Dallas Cowboy cheerleader Kat Puryear says in the series that her salary as part of the team was equivalent to “a substitute teacher [salary]… like, full-time Chick-fil-A worker.” This week on TikTok, Puryear gave more insight into the economics of being on the team: “It’s a full-time commitment, but part-time pay, she he said. “It’s a lot of work.” Tina Kalina, mother of team member Victoria Kalina and herself a former D.C. cheerleader who danced for the team in the 1980s, says she earned $35 per game and “basically gave it back,” seeing the work as “another privilege. ”
Read more: America’s Sweethearts Star Victoria Kalina on Cheerleading, Mental Health and Her Future
According to a 2022 report from NBCBoston, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders earn around $500 per game and $15-20 per hour for practices, which equates to around $75,000 per year. (A representative for the Dallas Cowboys did not respond to TIME’s request for comment or to verify these numbers.) Although their salaries are technically higher than the average NFL cheerleader, which ESPN reported in 2017 was just $75 to $150 per game, which the average salary of an NFL player is around $2 million (although many contracts far exceed this). At the moment, The Dallas Cowboys’ lowest-paid player earns $832,500 annually, while Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott has a contract worth $160 million. Additionally, the Dallas Cowboys organization is valued at $9 billion (with Forbes estimating team owner Jerry Jones’ net worth at $14.1 billion), making it the most valuable sports organization in the world.
In the series, Charlotte Jones, executive vice president and chief brand officer of the Dallas Cowboys and daughter of Jerry Jones, addresses the issue of cheerleader pay, suggesting that cheerleaders are not motivated by money, but rather by opportunity and a passion”. to dance.” Although Charlotte Jones’ salary is unknown, the Dallas Morning News reported that Jones’ ex-husband, Shy Anderson, testified that the former couple had a total income of about $1.34 billion during their more than 30 years of marriage.
“There’s a lot of cynicism about NFL cheerleaders’ pay, and as it should be, they don’t get paid much,” she says. “But the truth is they don’t come here for the money. They come here for something that is actually bigger than that for them. They have a passion for dancing. There are not many opportunities in the dance field to perform at an elite level. It’s about being part of something bigger than themselves. It is a brotherhood that they knew how to form, of relationships that they will have for the rest of their lives. They have the chance to feel valued, special and making a difference. When women come here, they find their passion and their purpose.”
Read more: Why the gender pay gap has persisted for two decades
Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Face Salary Issues
America’s sweethearts This isn’t the first time the issue of equal pay has come up for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. In 2018, former D.C. cheerleader Erica Wilkins sued the organization, claiming there were times when she earned less than minimum wage while working as a cheerleader. In the lawsuit, Wilkins alleged that she was paid less than the team’s mascot and that, at the time, cheerleaders paid for their own gym memberships and did not have access to the NFL gym. During Wilkins’ tenure, they were also expected to wash their own uniforms and aesthetically maintain the “DCC appearance.” (On a 2018 interview with New York PublishWilkins says that to maintain her appearance, she needed regular bi-weekly spray tans and monthly maintenance on hair extensions and highlights, most of which she paid for out of pocket.)
Wilkins’ case was resolved in 2019 and resulted in an increase in hourly wages from $8 to $12 and daily game fees from $200 to $400 for cheerleaders. Despite these gains, it highlighted how little the cheerleaders, despite their highly skilled athleticism, earn in relation to what the organization earns from their talents and images – a number that is difficult to quantify directly. And while a Dallas Cowboys representative said Sports Illustrated last week that the team currently “pays for games, practices and appearances and covers the costs of uniforms, some meals, health club memberships and salon services,” an anonymous former cheerleader told Huffington Post who, unlike football players, cannot use their titles to sign sponsorship deals or influence agencies on social media to supplement their income. About TikTokPuryear confirmed in a comment that although the cheerleaders’ images are used to sell swimsuit calendars to fund the cheerleading program, the cheerleaders themselves do not benefit financially from the use of their images.
“It’s kind of a running joke for the girls on the team: the guys on the practice squad, who don’t even get on the field half the time, making 80 grand more than us a year,” the anonymous cheerleader told Huffington Post. “And I’m at every game, dancing my ass off and every other appearance…it’s unfortunate that with how much they pretend or say that we’re important and the face of the organization, the way they treat us and pay us does this . doesn’t come close to matching that.
Costs that go beyond financial
Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader salaries influence more than just their ability to cover living costs. The true cost of physical performance at this level is different than it is for many other types of work when you take into account the potential for long-term damage to your bodies and the inevitable health care costs that accompany injuries and recovery. America’s sweethearts devotes most of an entire episode to the cheerleaders learning how to perform split flips, an impressive but painful acrobatic feat that has become the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders’ signature move — and the main stressor on many of their bodies.
In the series, former cheerleader Caroline Sundvold details how she postponed reconstructive hip surgery to end her senior season; After retiring, she had surgery and needed an additional procedure on her foot. Another former cheerleader, Michele Sharp, who now works as an administrator for the organization, says she has had 12 orthopedic surgeries in the past six years, while Puryear revealed that she tore both hips during her time as a cheerleader. While Sundvold talks about her time with the organization as “literally the best job you could have,” for Wilkins, who retired after finishing her senior year with a neck and shoulder injury, the price of being a Dallas cheerleader Cowboy was very high given what she was being paid.
“Yes, it is prestigious,” Wilkins said in a 2018 interview with new York Publish. “But at the end of the day, prestige doesn’t pay my rent. I can’t go to my leasing office and turn in my uniform for the month.”
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
