Culture Study Meets 'America's Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders'

It’s easy, I think, to understand how patriarchy feeds on apathy, and jealousy, and white women protecting their small spheres of power. It’s harder, or at the very least sadder, to think about just how much of it runs on women’s deep, abiding sorrow.

There’s such a fine line between owning the ideal, and manipulating it to your own ends....and being eternally disciplined by it.

These women have thoroughly internalized the male gaze, their to-be-looked-at-ness, and arrived at a place of incredible power — as objects. Their struggle, as evidenced by the ample time we spend with those who’ve “retired,” is figuring a sense of self outside of that objecthood.

I’m fascinated by the way that the cheerleaders themselves have narrativized this sort of self-objectification: in all the talk about locking eyes with a spectator and giving them that special moment , in the focus on the happiness you provide just by existing , in the focus on sanding down just enough individuality (even height differentiation) to... See more